Bomboy - Schedule 8/22-8/26

Monday- Schedule was wrong ;-;
Tuesday- Same ^^^
Wednesday- First Day of Class :D (Wrote Theme Paper)
Thursday- Theme Paper
Friday- Trying to figure out Parallels... I failed

Bomboy - This Year's Art Themes

     This is my second year taking this portfolio class and I already completed this assignment here: 2015-2016 Themes.
     However, even in this short span of a year, my concentration already has altered greatly to a more defined and ambitious path. Last year I gushed on and on about my passion--video games--but I dilly-dallied around by being interested in character creation, concept art, and still modeling. While these are still very import to what I accomplish this year, my goal by the end of my senior year is to make as many polished video games as I can to include in my college portfolio. With this said, my chosen themes are not very different from last year, but what I wish to accomplish with these themes in mind are.

     Therefore, invention and fantasy are still the main themes that will relate and show up in my art. Last year for invention I wanted to make characters, worlds, and objects that are not real. This time I would like to add level design, have an original video game concept, make a whole game from scratch including the art and coding--basically be more game-design related. As for fantasy, I wish my video games to be set in a mystical time where I will be able to make my own lore and specific look for the world and place the games take place in. I believe my art will be more fantasy as opposed to realistic unless I attempt a more realistic 3D game. An added theme is stories and history; my mom wishes me to make a video game using the stories behind what animals stand for in Chinese culture. For example, a salon is strong because is goes against the current--it's okay to be different. There is also a fish that turns into a dragon. This sounds like an interesting basis of a simple video game with beautiful art.

     Additionally, as always in video games, there is going to be some form of violence and a way to commit this violence. This is why I am still including war as a theme. I will make weapons and there will be death--all the natural video game components. I have also been more interesting in the concept of death; what happens after death? what journey do you go through, if there even is one? I have a couple of game concepts revolving around death bouncing around in my brain, but still no actual product.

     So while some of these themes may be repeats of last year, this year I hope to develop these ideas into professional and more serious pieces of art. I want to make games as game companies do: including GDDs, postmortems, paper prototyping, concept design, level design, and so much more. I am excited to see what I am going to produce using these themes this year and, hopefully, even in college and my future career.

Nagle - Motivational Art

Claude Monet, The Water Lily Pond. 1899.

Monet was an artist during the period of Impressionism. The impressionist style is using small dots or dashes to create a complete picture--even layering colors to create a different one (for example, Monet layered yellow and blue paint to show green here). It originated in Paris and was very popular during the 1870s and 1880s. Monet painted this piece at his home in Giverny, France, using oil paints; there, he had large and magnificent gardens where he completed his water lily series. When he created his gardens, it was with the intent of having a beautiful, peaceful area that is the perfect location for concentrating on his art. I visited his home in Giverny and fell in love with both his beautiful home and art. Therefore, this is a very inspiring artwork to me because it takes me back to Monet's "perfect art location" to complete my own art.

Exekias, Achilles and Ajax playing a dice game, from Vulci, Italy, ca. 540-530 BCE.

By the mid-sixth century BCE, Athenians learned the black-figure technique from the Corinthians and painted vases became a popular export market. Exekias is an Athenian artist that used the black-figure technique and one of his works is of Achilles and Ajax playing a dice game while both are ready for battle. The "calm before the storm" was made this way for the Archaic preference for dramatic action. Gravity and tension will later characterize much Classical Greek art of the next century. Dice games of "luck" had always been popular in Greece, shown in art such as this vase and even writings of Homer. In mythology, the Greek Gods even played "throw the dice" in order to split up the universe between them (mythology was also important to the Greeks, the Greek Gods being the ones they worshiped). Therefore, this vase is a product of popular activities at the time: making black-figure vases, dice games, and worshiping the Gods.

Iktinos and Kallikrates, Parthenon (Temple of Athena)

The Temple of Athena is a temple on the Acropolis of Athens; it is the earliest fully iconic temple on the Acropolis. Greek architects tried to achieve perfect beauty by using harmonic proportions, which is a relation of three to four quantities such that the first is to the last as the difference between the first two is to the indifference between the last two; so 2, 3, 6, are in harmonic proportion. Construction began in 447 BC, and was completed in 438 BC. The temple was built to host a shrine to the goddess Athena, and was used less as a place of worship and more of a symbol of Athena's values.

Discobolus, by Myron

The statue is a frozen moment of time, meant to capture the tension of action right before a discus is thrown. The original bronze piece was lost many thousands of years ago. The piece was made in 450 BC, the classical period of ancient Greek (480-323 BC) and stood at 5’1”. In Greece, both the human figure and the Olympics were very important. The men participating in the Olympics competed naked in order to admire the human body as they did athletic activities ("athletic energy"). Again, this piece of artwork showcases potential energy that was very popular at that time. The statue is made in an unnatural pose that would be inefficient to the throw of the discus and the muscles in the torso are not strained even though the arms are out flung... either way, this statue showcases the advanced sculpting skills of artists at the time.

Game Engine Experiment: Domino

First time playing with the Blender Game Engine. Made the ball move with keys from the user, used physics to make the dominos fall, textured everything with UV Mapping and GLSL Shaders, and had fun XD

Steps in Making Kiko

This short video shows the steps I took in order to create my OC Kiko. I sketched, lined and scanned the drawing, put it into Illustrator to trace it, then filled in the color and added details.

Final Production - End of the Year Summary

Illustrator Project - Kiko the Rogue

Above shows the steps of progress as I worked on the project.  It started out as a sketch that I lined, then scanned and turned into line art to color in Illustrator.  I added detail to the eyes, added light and shadow, and overall made the production more realistic using a digital tool for the first time.  I have many more sketches that I am going to scan and make into line art too.  Next time I'm hoping to try tracing the lines by myself and then adding a background.  Backgrounds are hard if you want them to look more realistic and I'm expecting to struggle and hate whatever I make, but you have to start somewhere to get better, right? (Original Links: Kiko1, Kiko2, Kiko3)

Video Games Using Unity

Since I am interested in the production and design of video games, I decided learning how to use a game engine would be beneficial.  So I made two mini games in Unity using their tutorials online: Roll-A-Ball and Space Shooter.  I enjoyed making them and learning basic game creation with physics, coding, building the level, and so much more.  In my Animation class, we are currently practicing using the Blender Game Engine too.  Next year I plan on making my own video game without the help of tutorials.  Next year I am also taking AP Computer Science so I am hoping my coding skills will be refined enough to code something complicated.  I'm thinking either a puzzle game or some sort of fighter.  My favorite would be if I could make a first-person shooter but... that may be a bit complicated.

Blender Models and Animations

 Of course, since I am a digital modelling student, there is modelling and animation.  Here are some pictures of small projects I did for fun.  I did a whole post on the sword pictures and I'll link it here: Sword Post.  I learned about lighting, modelling, making textures using nodes, mapping realistic picture textures (rocks), making grass with particles (made a couple variations of grass and had them randomly spread), and learned how to control the global world to change the sky (added color and used noise to make clouds).  Of course for more details you can just click on the previous link.  The light saber I made during free time in computer science this year but I modeled it using a reference picture and had to play around with materials and nodes again.  I'm not posting any of my animations because you can just go through my blog and watch some, but I will talk about them here.  This year's animation class taught me a lot of stuff that I did not know previously (that's the point of the class XD) and it will definitely help me in the future for the job I want.  My favorite project I worked on would have to be the character animation.  I animated Sintel and made six different actions.  I am proud of it even though it is a bit rough, but it was the animation where I added the most detail and tried to make it as realistic as possible.  Link: Sintel Post.

Trend Video: Open World Games

I am also quite proud of the video my teacher had me do for NCCAS.  I thought the finished product was going to be way worse than how it actually turned out.  Since I am not a film student and the only times I've used Premiere Pro were in Animation class with a whole different media, I was expecting a video that clearly reflected my inexperience.  Maybe it still shows that (idk XD) but I am still very happy with how it turned out... Working on it was also very addicting.  While it was time-consuming, it felt valuable; I love projects that take a lot of time and challenge me.  This school year my teachers for some reason all really got into video projects so I had to make three of them this year.  While they were stressful and a lot of work, I am glad I learned the skill of video making.  In my college years I am going to attempt being a YouTuber so the practice of recording and editing videos are needed.  Later when I make a reel for a job will also be useful.  From this experience, I also learned that having good applications are a must... MovieMaker sucks and Premiere Pro is an angel (I'm buying it now XD).

Drawing

This year I drew a lot and, at the end, experimented with colored pencils, markers, and Copic markers.  I am not going to post all of my drawings, they are all on my blog, but the one I am posting I have to say is my favorite.  This is a more recent drawing where I think someone can clearly see the progress I made with more realistic people, details, and the interaction of two figures.  This is one of the drawings I am also planning to put in Illustrator and I'm very excited.

Most of what I worked on this year were smaller, finding-myself projects.  I spread myself out to find my niche and I enjoyed everything I worked on.  I believe I fulfilled my goal from the beginning of the year (LINK: Goal) of tackling character creation and modeling with fantasy and war themes.  In fact, character creation is what I mostly did this year.  I have a ton of sketches and notebooks filled with people, backgrounds, descriptions, worlds, everything.  I also played with weapons and armor in my drawings and models.  The only thing I failed to do was creating environments.  I did learn how to make grass, rock, and sky as I said above; however, next year I am hoping to explore in world building more (not just the writing part but the drawing, modeling, art part).  While I was not very sure what direction I was going to find myself heading at the beginning of the year, this year of portfolio helped me a lot to find and refine what I enjoy to do.  Next year when I have two portfolio classes.. it is going to be amazing and I cannot wait.

Open World Video Game Trend

This is my trend submission for NCCAS. I decided on open world video games because I am pursuing a game design career and I am just very passionate about anything game-related. Being so passionate, I already own many open world games and that became the basis of my idea. I was going to find the history, the current advances, show gameplay, and play music from open world games. During the creation of my video, I ended up having to use or do things that I was very unfamiliar with. Since I am mainly a digital modelling and animation student, I had no clue how to use Premiere Pro, a tripod (sad, I know), get YouTube clips, or how to edit video and audio. Thankfully, most of it came pretty naturally to me but I know it took me longer than someone who has used or done these things before. Getting to watch one of my peer’s videos for this project was also very helpful in the making of my video. He also used YouTube clips and put the title of the videos he used in the corner of the screen as it was playing. I had this idea to put the name of the game playing on the screen and I decided against it because of my inexperience, but after seeing it in use I realized it was beneficial to people watching my video who aren’t as game-knowledgeable as others. Other peers and my teacher were also very helpful whenever I had a question or when I was unsure how to do something. This project was a fun challenge to complete and now I know how to accomplish some things that I would have never otherwise attempted (and I’m pretty proud of my video too :3).