After all these years, I've finally got some hardware capable of doing digital drawing - and so I've been spending time playing around with it in my spare time, getting used to how it feels, and learning how to use Manga Studio 5.
Here's a quick drawing I did today, just for fun:
No story behind it, just a bunch of random doodling here. Hopefully I'll have more soon!
With the New Xbox One Experience right around the corner, I decided to update my collection of "theme" images (basically home screen wallpapers) to work better with the new UI layout. I don't have any of these posted on this site yet, but since it already exists on imgur, I wanted to at least put the link out there for anyone who might happen to be visiting.
So, check out my new set of NXOE Themes here.
If you've ever looked through my album of drawings for the Year of Art 2011 project, you might recognize one of the illustrations used in the Los Angeles Coalition for Water Conservation (LACWC)'s new campaign, Dustbowl Disciples.
46 seconds into the video they produced, you'll see this:
And that should look pretty familiar - here's drawing #150 from the Year of Art 2011, appropriately titled 'Dry Mouth':
Some of the people who worked on the Dustbowl Disciples project were kind enough to reach out to me about using the artwork, and I was happy to help. I re-drew this illustration for them, providing a much cleaner vector version!
I wrote this post with the intent of highlighting the use of one of my illustrations, but I'll close it by saying that if you've got a project which requires illustrations (new or existing), do get in touch with me using my contact form. I'm almost always up for work like this!
After finishing the last render in this series, I posted it to Facebook and a friend of mine who has a lot of experience working in the VFX industry gave me some great critique. So I took this the project back to the drawing board and using his notes, re-worked almost every part of the scene. The result is a much better render!
You can read a bit about the process of building this render here.
Here's the final render for my handheld system, which I've dubbed the Martendo.
To finish this one off, I tweaked a lot of the finer points of the geometry of the cartridges, added pins to the boards, and put some images on the screen and cartridge labels.
This was a satisfying little Blender project for me. It's always nice to be able to set aside some time and just make something for the fun of it.
A small update to the render I posted the other day, featuring a chunky little handheld game console.
I've worked on the back a bit, adding a battery compartment, an indentation for the console information, and some screw holes (which actually have screw heads in them).
I thought I was pretty much done with this, but after I rendered it out, I noticed that the cartridges just don't look finished. I think I also want to add some generic branding/labels to the carts and the back of the console too, and maybe a simple image on the screen. I might do that part (the screen) in Photoshop though, just to make things simpler. We'll see!
This is just a quick little render of a handheld video game console I made today. The proportions are probably all off, but I like how it looks. There's a volume wheel on the opposite side, and I even left a slot in the back for a cartridge.
Future additions will probably include a game cartridge in the back and a battery compartment cover.
Last week I switched web hosts for all of my websites, including this one and Reflect Games, which are the two largest. Although I'm sure there are a few broken links here and there, overall things went surprisingly smoothly. This is the first host switch I've done since I got serious about having my own website and purchased hosting services way back in 2004, right after finishing college. I'd been renewing the same contract with this company since then, upgrading things when necessary, and generally I'd always been happy with the service.
My old host began as a suite of websites that supported the PHP community, and there were a lot of neat perks for hosting there. The service was reasonably priced and the upgrade path was smart. Over the years things slowed down though, and one by one the supporting websites dropped off until only the hosting service remained, operating under a new name. The service remained good during this time however, and whenever I needed help the support staff was there for me.
Then the hosting company's website began dropping features. One day you could no longer see the various hosting plans they offered. Another day the help system disappeared. Gradually, the site was reduced to nothing more than a client login page, with a bare bones set of options for billing and support. This bothered me a lot, and I half expected to wake one day and find the company entirely gone, and all of my websites down. Thankfully this never happened, and the support staff still remained useful.
Over the last year (okay, I'll be honest... probably the last 3-4 years), I would occasionally notice that my websites were mysteriously down. I'd send off a support ticket, and the sites would be fixed within a few hours. It was an annoyance, but not one worth hassling with a host migration, I rationalized. The thing is, I wasn't always using my sites a lot during this time, so the problem was probably much worse than I thought. It bothers me to think this, because I'd hosted my websites with this company for 11 years.
Last week, I was up late at night working on things, and I noticed that once again my sites were down. I went to bed, thinking that by the time I got up everything would be sorted. The next day, the service was spotty, with my websites remaining up for a few minutes, going down, coming up without the database server, and then repeating the cycle. I reported the problem to the support staff. Hours later, after making it through a few levels of support staff, I was informed that the server was under a load from another client (it being a shared hosting solution) and that they would monitor the problem, but that there was really nothing that could be done. By this time, I had had enough with this - and so I downloaded a full backup of the site, exported all my databases, and literally took my business elsewhere. Incredibly, by the end of the night, all of my websites had been uploaded to the new host, the DNS changes had propagated, and everything was working. I'd even had a pleasant and helpful interaction with the support staff on the new host, when I'd accidentally purchased the wrong plan.
I had stayed with my old host out of a sense of loyalty, but also because I believed switching hosts would be an incredible hassle. If there's a moral to this story, it's that you should always be aware when you're not getting the service you're paying for, and know what your options are if it comes time to make a change.
Sorry if this comes off as kind of a toothless rant, since I'm not mentioned any company names. My intention here isn't to shame anyone, but just to vent a little bit.
I've updated another of my old GameMaker examples to be compatible with GameMaker: Studio! This time, however, I've completely re-imagined the old example, and replaced it with something that demonstrates the same principles, but in a totally different way.
The new example is a 3D Starfield simulation, and it replaces the old 3D Night Sky file.
This new example uses the same technique as the old one, creating a model and using primitives to add points to it which draw as our "stars", but this new example also adds some linelists to the mix, as well as some infinite motion. I think it's a much more fun way to see this technique demonstrated, and it wont feel quite as redundant when I get around to updating the day/night cycle example as well.
As usual, you can download this new example over at my GameMaker Examples & Tutorials page. Thanks for checking it out!
I've updated my old 3D animated water examples to be compatible with GameMaker: Studio today, combining the two former examples into one superior example.
The previous examples used two methods for creating the water effect. The first used layers of scrolling, textured 3D planes drawn with an additive blend mode to make a detailed, if not always pretty, body of water. The second used a pre-animated texture, created in PhotoShop, to create a similar effect. A skybox was also employed, to make for better background scenery.
This new example combines methods from both of these files to create, in my opinion, a superior effect. With this updated example, the layers of scrolling texture have been relegated to a surface, which gets updated each step. This surface is then drawn over a base color plane for the water, all over a skybox with pre-baked reflections built in.
The effect could probably be more detailed, or could benefit from shader support for true reflections, but for what it is, I think it's a notable improvement.
You can find the updated file for this example on my GameMaker Examples & Tutorials page.