AwfulJams 2016 - Grandfathered In

I did a game jam!  Specifically, we did a game jam; we being my old co-worker, Albert Peter, and my brother, John-Mark.  Albert did game design, writing, and art.  John-Mark was in charge of programming.  And I was in charge of character designs and sprites.

It was for AwfulJams 2016, a game jam run by some goons over at the Something Awful Forums.  It's a month long, and this year's theme was "Games for Grandpa."

Coming into it, we had this idea to do a visual-novel style game.  We had an idea of the theme, but it wasn't fully announced until the start date.  Very quickly we shifted from a single-encounter visual novel with 3D characters, to a 2D Long Live the Queen style game.

The story, written by Albert, was that the elderly were getting taken over by the militant-style Millenials, being forced to conform, or otherwise mysteriously disappearing.  We worked in several different endings, such as Grandpa successfully conforming by passing the Millenial's test at the end, Grandpa successfully not-conforming (but still passing the test at the end), and Grandpa escaping with a certain multi-platinum singer songwriter best friend.

Check it out here: https://floteam.itch.io/grandfathered-in

Before I get into a bit of a post mortem, here is the art that I had worked on:

I drew all of the character designs, did the coloring/shading, and inked all of the game sprites, except for the linework in base grandpa, grandma Muriel, and his grandson, Jason.  Albert did the linework for those.

Here are some of the pre-ink-and-color sketches.  You can see some alternate designs here.

And here are the original Grandpa Horace sketches I did, when I was exploring style.

Jacob's Post Mortem (after the jump; click Read More to view)

Genre Swap and the Anti-Grav Meteor Hammer Animation

I did a stream with Ryo again this week. The topic was genre swap, where you take one character, and remake them in a different genre. I decided to take my own spin on this, and redo a D&D character of mine as a sci-fi character.

My original idea was to do a meteor hammer animation. A meteor hammer is a Chinese weapon that is a weighted ball at the end of a long 6-foot, or so, chain. I had a D&D character that used a meteor hammer and I figured it might be a fun genre splash to bring it into a sci-fi setting.

I think this is a nice foundation for something, but this animation is just lacking punch.  My favorite part is the flow and the jump at the end.  The stationary swing could live on its own, and it's not very interesting.  The big swings are the cool part, but either the ball needs to stay on screen, or I need to change my camera.  I am going to revisit this one in the future, for sure, but the point now is that it's a one-evening animation, and I move on.

Check Ryoma's stream recap here (I'm in the top left corner): https://youtu.be/YDiwWek4zZE

And join him on Twitch, every Tuesday and Thursday, at https://www.twitch.tv/ryotazi.

Villainous Animation and Clip Studio Paint 1.54

My friend Ryoma Tazi streams twice a week, and he invited me to join him this Tuesday. While he streamed requests with the "Villain" theme, I animated my own villainous businessman who ends up putting out his cigar on a harmless fly. Goofy.

This was my first real test of Clip Studio Paint's new animation tools, just released this past week. I've been an avid CSP user since I started drawing on a Surface Pro 3, nearly two years ago. For the longest time, I have been looking for a good lightweight animation tool that works with multitouch, and also can handle the high pixel resolution of the Surface, at least with some sort of UI scaling.

I tried a number of animation softwares. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro had great tablet support, but it's animation tools were very limited. High end programs, like Toon Boom Harmony, have lovely features, but terrible resolution and multitouch support. So, I was pretty estatic when I found out CSP had animation tools coming, and they haven't left me at all disappointed.

Check out a sped up version of his four hour stream here: https://youtu.be/06ClbhcZfxY; and he was gracious enough to add sound and stick my animation to the end. I look forward to doing this again!

Also, check out his streams (currently Tuesdays and Thursdays) at https://www.twitch.tv/ryotazi

2D Planning for Action Character Intros

I did these as planning for an action character-intro style animation, kind of showing off each character's fighting styles and abilities. I got inspired by Studio Mir's Road to the Cup League of Legends video.  I only really finished the first one, though I am work on finishing the other two, before doing them all in 3D

Life Drawing October 2013

I've been doing values for the fast few sessions, so I wanted to try some linework this week.

Nassa Color Schemes

As I'm moving towards texturing my character, I painted up a bunch of options for color schemes.  I'm exploring the first two further.  While I really like the colors of the third and fifth, neither fit the character as well, and character comes first.

The next step was some variations on the chosen color.  The second one ended up being the favorite.

Nassa the Gnome, Version 2

I wanted to experiment with animated textures for facial features, which was my original plan with the old Nassa model.  I've been on a low-poly model kick for a little while, so I decided this is the ideal time to create a new model.  The goal was to stay under 1000 tris.  I also intend to take this one through textures so I can test using animated textures for the face in Maya and in Unity.

I did consider working from my older model, but I really wanted to try applying everything I've learned over the past few months.  It's interesting to see how similar it is to my old model, but how the shapes are so much better now, with fewer polys, too.

The picture above is the newer sketch I was working off of for this new model.  I fleshed out my original idea and design, visually describing the materials her clothes were made of, and the individual layers of the clothing.  I leaned towards a more cartoony look, since I wanted to push the designs of our three DnD characters; one short cute female gnome, one big beefy human/vryloka, and one fat stocky dwarf.

D&D Campaign Session Sketches

These are notecard sketches I did during our first four sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.  These are events that happened during the adventure.  I have my own Nassa the Gnome, Robert playing Norgar the Human (Vryloka), and Cole playing Audrik the Dwarf.

If you're interested in following along, I've been taking notes and uploading them to D&D Short Tales.

Elephental Disaster Beat Boards

I just discovered these old beat boards when organizing my files.  For old work, I'm still pretty happy about it.  Click the images to make them bigger, and check out more information here!

Nassa the Gnome - WIP

I must say, she was quite fun to play last week.  She's a Gnome, who wears elven clothes, and appears to be some sort of rogue - appears to be.   I'm really looking forward to the next Dungeons and Dragons session.

But since I wasn't running the dwarf, I had to sculpt a new character.  I started this little piece today at Sean's place.  I was actually able to get some good progress shots on this one.  She's quite difficult to work on because she's even smaller than the dwarf, currently at about 20mm.

It also doesn't help that I'm using regular Super Sculpey modeling clay.  Sean mentioned Sculpey Firm might be a little easier for me to work with.  Nonetheless, using my multiple-bake layer method seems to work alright.  I just have to do a bit of Xacto work in there as well.  I don't work fast enough for the 2 hour window using ProCreate or Green Stuff... yet.

 Armature ready after two tries.

In-progress shots.  The clothing layer will be the next session.

 The sketches I was working off of for the character's designs.

Flower Story Commentary and Credits

Just finalized the commentary we recorded for Flower Story!  The whole ordeal took two days to record our 9 commentary tracks, some in multiple takes.  I cut it all together with the music using Adobe Premiere (mainly because I already knew how to use Adobe Premiere.)

The commentaries ranged between cool technical behind-the-scenes to totally non-technical ribbing and goofing on each other.  They will be showing up on the DVDs we will producing, along with our movies and any other extras for both movies, making them well worth the price of admission.

Participate in a recorded commentary session?  Check one life goal off!

I also have some (really) quick sketches of the characters I threw together for our credits artist.  I boarded out the poses for him, so he just had to repaint them in the style we were using.  I absolutely love our credits.  It draws the entire production to a close, and it somehow reflects what's going on with our lives, how we're all moving on in different directions after finishing the project.  (Eventually, when I am allowed to post the movie online, that will make a bit more sense.)

(Check out the Flower Story Facebook page here.)

Lutra Orthos

Just finished up the orthos for Lutra, my League of Legends style character.  Unfortunately, with the chaos going on right now between school and potential work, I won't be able to start until the summer.  C'est la vie;  part of the battle is already won!

Life Drawing Schmorgasboard

A collection of life drawings from the past 2 years in the UCF Visual Language program.  More to come!

Flower Story - Chip Character Design

Here is the redesign for our little character.  Exactly what we predicted, the two characters didn't work out due to the method we were using; the characters didn't resonate with each other, and neither of them really worked in the environment we had picked.  (This is what happens when you blue-sky the environment while also developing characters.)  As a group, we decided to completely scrap what we had done, and completely remodel the characters.

We formed a character design group to discuss what we liked and disliked about everyone's characters, and then split up to work on the redesigns.  I worked on our little guy with Ashley DeMattos, and this is what we ended up with.  A lot of elements were taken from my original designs (which the group had picked as a potential design) and we smoothed out a bit here and there.

What we were going for was a little more cliché.  We wanted something that the audience would immediately accept, so they can start sympathizing with the character.  I based the little guy off of an animal.  He's got a cute and expressive face, but his brows and nose should still read as a sort of carved statue (mixing in the hard edges with the organic shape.)  We decided to keep the hood, since it really resonated with the guardian-guarded feel of the big guy to little guy.  I described the dynamic as a medieval knight and a medieval archer.  One is slow, strong, and moves with intent, and the other is quick, perceptive, and energetic.

Flower Story - My Character Designs

Here are the final designs I made for the Flower Story characters.  Both of them have a lot of background motifs in them.  I will be sculpting them both in my maquette, since I think they really need play off of each other; the maquette needs to show personality as well as visual design.  However, I get a feeling that we are going to have to remodel them later, due to the convoluted process that we're using at school.

Flower Story - Character Brainstorming

Here are some of the initial character sketches I made for Flower Story.  This was the brainstorm period, where I was drawing inspiration from wherever I could find it.

Various Speed Sketches

Various sketches from throughout the Fall 2010 semester. Each took 1-2 hrs, not necessarily including time coming up with the composition.  Click to englarge.