Flay

Hot damn, first Patrick now Danielle! Time to start paying attention

Oh god, I've been pronouncing le Carré wrong this entire time! The discussion in this episode got me thinking about games where you're asked or suggested to actively and knowingly participate in something that you as the player find disdainful. Plenty of games let you be the 'bad guy', but it's almost always in the service of humour, giving the player a feeling of power, or as a compromise to achieve some other objective. Maybe the 'no Russian' scene from Call of Duty counts, although supposedly your character was undercover so I guess you could count that as 'serving a greater objective'. And I suppose historical strategy games like Hearts of Iron let you sort of do this too by allowing you to play groups like the German Reich. I'm sure there are other examples I'm not thinking of.

I'm back! Sorry for the hiatus but some stuff came up, including an injured wrist and a broken tablet that left me unable to draw for a little while. Last year I was studying art full-time, which taught me a lot very quickly. There were four subjects: perspective, colour and light, anatomy and narrative. The first three are fairly self-explanatory and the fourth was kind of any topic that didn't fit into the others, like thumbnailing or storyboarding. The perspective syllabus was basically the same as Scott Robertson's perspective book. In addition we'd have regular tasks were we were given a rough 3D base and asked to design a building on top of it given a certain prompt. Colour and light also drew a lot from Scott Robertson's rendering book. We also had to a bunch of studies from life and from photographs, starting with marker and working into gouache. For anatomy we actually sculpted a figure out of clay, building all of the muscles individually, as well as doing a lot of anatomy studies and figures from imagination. Narrative is a bit harder to describe but the first semester was basically the same as the dynamic sketching course on CGMA. Studying all of that helps, but for me the biggest thing was being surrounded by equally passionate artists, who were all very competitive. Nowadays my study routine isn't very organised, which is something that I'm trying to improve. Recently I've gotten into the habit of starting off the day doing some gesture drawing and a 30 minute drawing from imagination. From that I'll isolate a particular weakness and then do a couple of painting studies and some anatomy studies to try and improve on whatever I'm missing, then I'll attempt the imagined painting again. After that I'll start working on some personal work, trying to build up my portfolio. Anyway, here's some stuff from today!

Sean is back YES! Here's the Zarya/weightlifter drawing that was referenced

Fiiinally done with this

True, I might be able to get a job in the industry if I looked hard, but that top 10% of artists is where I really want to be. I'm afraid that if I took any old job churning out mobile games then I wouldn't have space to improve as an artist. Unfortunately Australia has a very small games industry, so my options are very limited, and I can't risk moving overseas without guaranteed employment.That said if I could find a studio with artists who are better than I am, and that pushes me to improve, then that would be a dream come true. But thanks! For now I have a job in graphic design. Once I actually start getting freelance concept/illustration work then I'll use that to springboard into the industry.

Thanks! But I still have a long way to go to compete with 90% of stuff on ArtStation or the like. I've been drawing since high school, and I studied graphic design at university, but it was for fun. It was only last year that I decided that I actually wanted to do concept art as a career, and started studying more intensively. For reference this is about where my drawing ability was at the beginning of 2015

A little from column A, a little from column B. I started by doing a bunch of sketches straight from reference, then I went into thumbnailing drawing on the things I'd learned, and occasionally referencing photos. Here's a study of a Scottish footsoldier, exaggerated so I could practice stylising and inking

Cheers, I came to this thread just to ask for this link Also this could be part of a great found-footage film

Thanks! I'll try to fix that up in the next iteration. I liked the cliff design too, but it didn't really communicate 'noodle bar', which was the brief. I could always bring it back as a separate design.

It's been a while since I've updated, so here's a WIP noodle bar concept. Crits are always appreciated!

Cheers!

Does anyone have the timecode for the hammertime run?

Totally agree. I didn't spend as much time on the fabric as I did with the controller, in reality the gradients were a lot softer

Thanks! Any constructive criticism would be appreciated. At the moment I'm teaching myself. I'm trying to narrow my study into anatomy, composition and basic lighting at the moment, with the aim of producing at least one environment piece before the end of the month. My overall goal is to produce enough portfolio pieces to start landing some freelance work as a concept artist.

Hoo boy, hearing my email kind of makes it sound a bit like I'm shitting on Toby Fox for not letting people sell derivative works. That's totally not the case, his choice is perfectly reasonable and well within his rights, but it's a topic that I think is worth discussing. That said your discussion about copyright was really interesting, so thanks!

I'd describe Sven Coop as Warcraft 3 custom maps but for Half Life, if that comparison makes any sense. There are some really great maps, but there's also a lot of fun in playing a terrible first person Mario 1-1 remake. It's just interesting to see what happens when all conventional game design wisdom is thrown out the window, and then puzzle through the creator's insane logic with a bunch of confused friends.

Oh wow, that looks fantastic

The plot you guys were describing about meat factory workers packaging themselves to be eaten in the emails section is basically the premise of Abe's Exodus.

I'm not actually that outraged, but it is a good game that people should play. My secret gaming shame is that I have played more Rayman games than Mario games. So by my reckoning, Superstar Saga is actually the best Mario game ever made.

Second time having an email read, woo! I always feel like a bit of a doof any time someone reads something I've written out loud but oh well. I totally didn't mean to make it sound like I believe Panspermia is 100% fact or even that it's likely, just that it's a theory that exists. Oh well! Also I'm outraged there was no Undertale talk this week. Outraged!

I'm pumped for Moss's Dota 2 virgin tournament, but I'm also sad because I've played about 100 games and can't join. Are there any tournaments for people who are bad at Dota out there?

Hello hello nice to meet you. I'd like to thank whoever made Potato Day a valid answer the security question to name one of the podcasts on the site. It made me very happy.