Rediscovering the Road Not Taken …

Well I am still slogging along. I spent hours trying to sort out the div tags today - it’s only a few tags but my head almost exploded in frustration to get stuff lined up right. Finally got the basics done enough and I turned them into templates for the CMS I am using. Lots more has to be done but it is starting to take shape.

http://www.stormvisions.com

I have a couple pages of sketches I need to scan Monday and then will post. I’m also trying out the Illustrator lessons on Lynda.com as we only had two short classes on it in school. I hope to get a paid subscription soon but for now I think I have one more day on my trial so I’ll be up late watching as many videos as I can. I hope that getting some basic Illustrator skills will increase my employability..

I have started to work on a redesign for my site. I am not comfortable enough to do all the interaction in Flash so I may go static. I’m just drawing it now and then will convert it to a template that works with the CMS I am using. I’ve always created boxy design - the sites I owned in the past have been content sites so the object was always having a neat hierarchy so people could drill down and find a specific tutorial or download. Plain, ugly and boring.

I’m going to try something more like a kid’s storybook this time. Here is a shot of the main page in progress.

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Due to some changing needs from a major client, a bunch of illustrators were laid off on Monday - me included. It was a sad parting. Animax is a fantastic company and I loved working with my wildly creative companions.
So, in between updating my resume, trying to put together a new portfolio with all the work I’ve done at Animax and applying for unemployment, I decided to set some time aside each day to explore selling vector art and textures on sites like iStockPhoto and TurboSquid.
The first is just because … a bee, his hive and a cool breeze. Can you tell I’ve been working on props for Beanie Babies for a few months? I need to start drawing stuff with dragons, swords and wizards soon or I’ll slide all the way down into cute land.
The Robosapien image is an early shot of a recent job -it has several problems that I corrected later in the process. This was done in Flash with gradients and the file size was surprisingly small since I built it with the line tool and by manipulating the points. The finished piece was much better and shows a full turnaround but I don’t have permission to post that. This wip had issues with symmetry, the feet and hands and the location of certain features; we didn’t have the exact product on hand for reference so I was unsure of certain details. It was tough to find reference on the net as most people take pictures of the front of the bot and I needed close ups of specific features.

[Updated: April 2: Final Image]

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[Updated: March 30: Added a few more details]

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I don’t have much character design experience but I’ve been kicking around some story ideas with two fellow artists and these drawings were one late night effort. They were quickly rendered so you’ll note some details aren’t as clean as they’d be if they were for prime time viewing.

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I first saw Ichiro’s work on the 3D Game Studio Forums. 3D Game Studio by Conitec is a suite of game development tools and a game engine that is very popular among indie developers. I was instantly struck by the innovative look and feel of his games. I find his approach interesting and think you will too. Please comment if you find these indie spotlight’s helpful.

Intro:

We founded in 1999 with the intention of creating games for PDAs and desktop computers. Over the past 9 years, we’ve created 12 titles, our latest being The Wonderful End of the World for Windows.

1. What is your background and how did you get started as an indie game developer?

Burt, you know the way most kids’ fathers throw them a softball when they’re young? My father sat me down in front of a computer. (I bet the same’s true of a lot of your readers, so we’re all in good company.) I cut my eye teeth programming for the TI 99/4A, which had a 3.3MHz processor, 16 kilobytes of memory, and a screen resolution of about 1 pixel, which you could flash one of 16 colors. I started
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