Negotiated Study 2- Journal Pages 2

I have completed the rest of the main monster pages. I still have yet to do the other pages regarding items and game mechanics.

Creative Futures 3- Ffresh Festival and Comic Con

I attended some sessions of the Ffresh Moving Image Festival, but found lots of the sessions were quite irrelevent.

The first one we went to was the Glyndwr Showcase, which hosted a lot of work produced in Glyndwr across a whole host of media. I was disappointed to see that much of the work was very dated, going as far back as 2006. I was even further disappointed that our recent work (for Negotiated Study 1) wasn;t featured at all, even though we had submitted it. I felt that it may have been good promotion for the current students, especially as professionals from all over Wales were in attendance.

Other showcases I went to were largely irrelevant, with the exception of the games showcase. The game showcase offered the chance to see two unreleased games at their current level. One was called Master Reboot, and was a horror game inspired by Project Zero (Fatal Frame) and Silent Hill. In its current form, it was mainly unfinished but the style of being inside a computer was very intriguing and fascinated the hell out of me. It seemed like a game I would play, and it was handily being released later this year.

The second game was Soulfinity, which mixed sci-fi elements with classical Greek environments and mythology. The gameplay revolved around strategically killing yourself at certain points and having a digital version of your last self repeat the same action, in order to get past puzzles. It looked visually better than Master Reboot, but I felt the gameplay probably wasn't going very far with the 'repeatedly kill yourself over and over' mechanic, and the mix of Greece and space didn't sit too comfortably with me.

I also visited Manchester Comic Con over the last summer holiday, and the Midlands Comic Con that happened recently and both journey have inspired me to participate in a Comic Con in order to promote my own artwork and get my name out there. To this end, I've inquired about booking a table at the Wales Comic Con, which is being held conveniently at my own university grounds. I'll update soon if I get accepted!

Creative Futures 3- Global Game Jam

I participated at this year's Global Game Jam, and had to create a game in 48 hours based on the theme of hearts. We ended up being successful, and making a game called Honeymoon about a woman who is trapped inside her husband's heart.

Here's the link to our game page:

http://globalgamejam.org/2013/honeymoon

And here's the link to the game itself:

http://www.mediafire.com/?m0bin6ni6v778ea

It was a great experience as we met some great professionals, as well as discovered what it was like to work exceptionally long hours on something we love doing. It was very tough and stressful, but looking back on it, it feels great to have done something like this. It was as if for 48 hours we were actually working in the industry, on a knife edge to get something produced, and it was great to work in that environment but at the same time really hard work too.

Negotiated Study 2- 3D Sculpting

I just recently got the program Sculptris in order to do my 3D sculpts of my characters. After a little practice, I'm finding it a lot of fun but clearly lots of intense work is need to make the models really good. At this stage I'm aiming to get three sculpts of my monster characters done, in order to showcase them as turnarounds. I am not sure if I will have time to colour them, but if I get them to finished quality relatively quickly, I will paint them as well.

Negotiated Study 2- Journal Pages 1

Instead of just downloading a texture file, I learned how to paint and render old yellowy parchment-like paper from a very useful online tutorial. The results were very impressive and here's the initial results:

Final parchment image.

Putting my own drawings over the top went very well

However, I started to feel as though the paper was still a little bit too colourful and bright, s I went further by desaturating the image and making it even more grungier.

I finally got the look I wanted and did this with several of my other drawings to get the finished journal pages. I aim to do a lot more with these to hopefully make a final book, probably in the form of a PDF.

Dorm Prankster

Feminine Skin

Nightmarish Slayer

Stretched Man

Shawled Scythe

Creative Futures 3- Links to BAF 2012, Creative Futures Week & Dan Berry sessions

Here are the links for my Creative Futures 3 modules.

Dan Berry Sessions - Click here

Creative Futures Week 2013 - Click here

Bradford Animation Festival 2012 - Click here