Haven't been on here in a while....

Yeah, since I last posted there have been presentations and dissertations galore. That was the 20th. Since then I've been doing.....not a lot? Been doing some sketches of my creatures and the like, so I will load 'em up in a bit.

'Kay, time to get uploading!



In order from above - Abyss Swimmer, None Walker, Forest Walker. These are the latest sketches I have done for their development. I've got some progressive sketches but I wanted to give a good impression of what I'm going for. I don't really know what to do with the Abyss Swimmer - I want to go for something graceful but crustaceans aren't the most beautiful of underwater creatures. I'm sticking with an elongated/eel-like body for now but I'm looking at crab-like armour and the like (hence the carapace on my Swimmer).

Squids, elbows, skittles and kestrels.

Whilst researching some more (I have to do some photophore research for my Swimmer) I came across this crazy video of a squid with ELBOWS. I shit you not.



Turns out to be a Big-Fin Squid that (oh, guess what!) science knows next to nothing about. To quote Mock the Week:

Scientist 1 - "Hey, do want to find a cure for cancer?"
Scientist 2 - "No, I think I find out how many skittles it takes to choke a kestrel."

Makes my research pretty damn vague to be honest, but I guess it's a lot of freedom as well.

Yay for Action Replays and Devil Summoner!

Oh my God. There's a new Devil Summoner game :3



Oh yes. I am looking forward to this. Shin Megami Tensei spin-off, revolves around the demon summoner (fancy that) Raidou Kuzunoha ridding the world of various nasties. Apparently the game has been improved in every way and you can negotiate with demons again! Basically, if you find yourself either a) too lazy or b) too weak to kill demons for EXP, just chat to them and depending on how much of a twerp you are (i.e. don't give the "evil" answer to a holy demon) you get them in your group. Uber cool.

This relates to my project as Kazuma Kaneko (basically the game artist that got me into the whole thing) is handling the new creature/character designs. Hoorah. Doubt it will come out in time for my project but I am SO buying this.

And yeah - Action Replays rock. Ask my friends ; )

Yay! Finished. And now, Xenogears III...

Ah! Finally got all my work done to the best of my ability. I've tried pretty damn hard this past week to get all my research together in the most creative way I can. I decided to try and make my research document look like an old journal, using black ink-like font and brown-stained pages. It's probably the best portfolio I've done (and one of the only T_T).

I was a bit annoyed because my Powerpoint file was really big (91 mb and 47 pages) and basically the computer would freeze every time it tried to create page 37 as a pdf so I had to split it into two pdfs which I didn't want to do >> MC seemed OK with it. I labelled everything I could and just made it as neat as I could. Oh well, let's see what happens when I get feedback.

I'm a freak, I'm a weirdo.....

Yeah, been listening to Radiohead alot recently, spliced with a bit of hardcore industrial (obviously). Been working my goolies off on the research document and never got my Xmas present : ( No Persona 4 for me. A certain sir close to my heart dragged me out of my depressive abyss however and got me Xenosaga III instead! On deadline week. Soooo, I shall be playing that past the 26th but to work! After researching loads on my dissertation (Do video games reinvigorate mythology from around the world through aesthetic character or creature design?) , I came across the Valkyrie from Too Human. Wow, it's an amazing design! Very original take on the valkyrie from Norse legend. I found this demo of one standing.



I found a load of concept art as well but you get the point from the video. I've got eight pages of diss. so far, but three of those condensed are pictures. I'm not even half way through my research document and I've already got twelve slides in Powerpoint - I must of spent over seven hours working on the damn thing now.

*sigh* Well, back to work and hopefully some noms. Wait for me, KOS-MOS....


Oh yeah, and I got a shiny Mew in Pearl ^^

Feeling gloomy....

Eh, I hate this time of year. Everyone's so miserable and I can't exactly blame them, with the recession and all. Probably means my hopes of getting a part-time job this term are zilch - yay for starvation during deadline time!

Anyways, my main Xmas present still hasn't arrived (damn you United States Postal T_T) and I smashed my head on the card door a few days ago so I have this horrible achey patch on my left temple and forehead. Grah.

However, I was bought two books for Xmas on the unexplained - ghosts, UFOs that sort of thing. There's some nice stuff in there on Cryptozoology, specifically mentioned the Jersey Devil and "giant" creatures no one thought existed but do, such as the giant gorilla and giant squid. I even read up on some jellyfish 40m long that attacked a small boat - scary thing is, said jellyfish actually exists and the longest recorded one was 37ft long. So, yeah.....scary.
I've done some drawings and sort of come up with a Swimmer design I quite like, but I can't scan it in (don't have a scanner here). Talking of monsters, my brother bought me Dragon Quest Monsters Joker for Xmas - it' basically a DQ Pokegame but with Akira Toriyama's designs, giving it a very unique, humourous edge over it's competitors. More like Monster Rancher and Megaten than Pokemon, your monsters can be Synthesized together to create more powerful monsters in an alphabet tier system (lowest to highest: F, E, D, C, B, A, S, X) which gives you a good inidicator of what strength it's going to achieve. I've really been enjoying playing it and the monster designs are really, really good.




These are just some examples of the monsters I've seen in Joker. They're very cartoony, but look so bright and colourful when rendered in 3D, cel-shaded graphics. I just think they have a distinctive look, something I'd like to incorporate into my game. I've been looking at headresses for my None Walker and have been looking into The Endless Forest and Shadow of the Colossus, two games which certainly contain pagan themes in my eyes (masks, gods, nature etc) and have come up with some designs in which the headresses are "alive" as in they are either one with the creature or with their surroundings. I can't post them (yet) but I will continue doodling.

Wow haven't posted for a while.....

Phew. I haven't been keeping up with this since I came home for Christmas. I doubt I'm gonna be able to update much more either due to helping mum get ready for Xmas (tree, presents, Xmas shopping....oh God, Xmas shopping....) but I'm gonna line out what I hope I shall achieve this break.

1) Get some texture/colour studies done. I collected a vast amount of different snake textures and tried to create a snake siloheutte made out of different scale textures but it was an amazing failure. I just tried looking for said travesty but I think I may have deleted it. Maybe it's on my Norwich PC? Anyways, I'll probably have to present my textures in a more conventional way T_T

2) Do more drawings. Although you can research something all you want, you need to get down with the nitty gritty and get doing some doodles. I've got a sizable amount but I want to do more ('tis 90% of the reason I'm doing this). Hopefully I will come up with more mask/headgear designs and Swimmer designs.

3) Research The Endless Forest. This is something MC pitched to me and I've got to say, it's bloody bonkers but in a delightful, New-Age sort of way. I intend to try and get it to work so I can have a rummage and hopefully create my own "deer". The headcrest designs for special occasions (Halloween etc) are really genius and hopefully will inspire me.

4) Keep up the research generally on mythology - it's a much bigger subject than Crypto zoology (been round for yonks longer I guess) so I need to put more effort in. I'm onto eastern mythology now so I'll be looking at Shinto/Hindu/Buddhist creatures. I recently discovered Ananta - a snake with a thousand heads that Vishnu rested on before creating the universe (as you do) and Vasuki, a serpent-like creature that the gods used to churn the ocean of milk. I love mythology - it makes no sense ^_^

Anyway, that's what I'm hoping to get done over the holidays. I will post though if I discover something I must share.

Merry Christmas!