Wheely Bin Project

For this I tried not to build a generic looking wheely bin, I found this one that looked a bit more challenging to create. The irregular shape of the bin caused my tri count to rise, sculpting the indent around the wheels and the curvature of the lid proved to be most taxing on the tri limit.

Another reason I choose this bin was that it had imagery on both the front and sides, most other bins I found looked quite bland and uninteresting. The problem with having the '56' on the both left and right meant that the left and right side needed their own individual texture space, which meant that the overall resolution of the textures would be lower than if the left and right side use the same texture space. Fortunately the resolution didn't prove to be a massive issue when the texture was applied to the model.

In hindsight I should have used smoothing groups on the indent around the wheel to improve the resemblance to the reference. I also made a big mistake for the hand in, the settings for the alpha maps were wrong on the version I handed in, so the wheels had white squares around them. Apart from these issues I am pleased with the overall outcome of the project.

First Project: Dalek

The first decision I saw that I had to make when I looked at the tri limit of 1500 and the reference images was which are the key parts to the dalek, and what details were insignificant and therefore didn't need to be included in my model.

I put off most of the decision making to begin with so that I could build the bottom base of it first and see how far each tri could go. The thing that worried me most at that stage was weather to include the 56 tri devouring balls onto my model or not. If I didn't have them, I'd be able to put greater detail into the head and midsection of the model, and hopefully make it look really good; but then there would be great detail on the top half, and then a pretty blank bottom half. 

So I went about trying different spheres and tri density and ended up with the lowest possible tri count geosphere and removing 6 of it's tris to get a semi sphere. I felt that this was the most suitable approach, any more circular would have taken up so many more tris and the only other option I saw was to make a hexagon with a point on it to simulate a semi sphere. I then calculated that it would take up 672 tris for just the balls, so I rolled with that.

I ended up with a 1486 tri count basic looking Dalek, it's far from a masterpiece but I'm glad with how well it went. Although the use of the balls left me with very few tirs for the rest of the model, the model doesn't appear to lack inconsistency in detail which is what I would prefer rather than making a Dalek that looks half finished.

History of Video Games Part 1

In the world we currently live in where our day to day lives are run by computers and our spare time is a slave to video games, it's hard to think that only very recently we have had these two inventions. Although the purpose of this post is to look into the history of video games, I will also be looking at the history of computers, seen as we would not have video games without the invention of the computer.

In 1822 an Englishman named Charles Babbage designed the very first computer, named 'The Difference Engine', designed to calculate equations and then print the results off. So not only did Babbage design the first computer, he also designed a modern day printer built into the computer, how convenient. Unfortunately Babbage never actually built within his lifetime, but was built in 2002 and now is kept inside the London Science Museum.

During the Second World War around 80 years after Babbage's death computers made the leap to becoming electric digital computers. At the size of a large room these computers were a great improvement from The Difference Engine, but far from your contemporary smartphone or PC. There was nothing 'personal' about these computers either, they were funded by large company's and built by large teams, and needed a team of people to use it. It wasn't until the 1960's that the 'personal' was put into 'Personal Computer'.

Now onto video games; The first interactive electronic game was named: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device. It was made in 1947 by an American named Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr and was playable on a Cathode Ray Tube. The game was a missile simulator by which Goldsmith was inspired by radar displays used in the Second World War.

Although the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device technically is the first video game,  in my opinion I don't consider it as the first video game. What I mean by this is the reason I play video games is to enter another world, and become engaged in a situation I'm not going to be able to do in real life, which is why I don't play football games or bus simulators. The CRT Amusement Device is just a copy of what can already be done in real life, granted not everyone could fire missiles in real life, but my point is that it's concept is from something you can do in real life. The first handful of video games followed this pattern, 'Chess' was digital chess, 'Tennis for Two' was digital tennis, and so on you get the idea. I feel that the first video game that took the player somewhere the outside world won't be taking them any time soon was 'Spacewar!'

Spacewar! was made in 1961 and took it's players into space in spaceships to battle other players. Spacewar! did something new, today there's loads of 2D top down space shooting games, but back then it was a whole new idea, and most importantly it wasn't a direct copy of something that you can do in real life. Spacewar! was the first step towards what video games are today, we still have games that achieve to be carbon copies of real life today, but a lot of games now create new worlds and/or interesting narratives that take us away from reality as we play them.The way I see it, Spacewar! was the first video game.

Introduction

Hi I'm Joel, and this is my Game Art blog.

I'm from a small town in Wales called Llandovery, and I'm now living in Leicester studying Game Art Design at De Montfort University. My hobbies include playing the trumpet, I have done so since I was seven years old and have played for a handful of brass bands as well as some ska, funky and folk bands. I also enjoy drawing, but hopefully that's no surprise; I mostly work in pencil or graphite stick and I digitally paint if I was to create a piece with colour, although I am a fan of using watercolours and inks.