Bugs on Ice

 I am still working away at Jason Frank. This render is from a couple weeks ago because I haven't saved out a newer render in a while (notice the seam on his neck from where I re-attached the head lol.) This model is taking me quite a long time, I realize. I'm really trying to go for a super high poly detail in this model. All of my past models have been very... low res(?) I've never incorperated things like lip lines, crows feet, and skin pores before, so this is my attempt to bring all of that together for the first time. I want to go all the way with this model and so I'm taking my time to make it as perfect as I possibly can. My only hope is that after spending all of this time on the sculpt, the detail isn't lost when it transitions to a low poly form.

Most of my time recently has been devoted to Easley-Dunn Productions and their game Monster Football. For the past couple months I have been spending all of my free time (when I wasn't playing Grand Theft Auto 5) modeling the wicked team of bug monsters! The image above is of the coolest looking one so far.

 At work I was given the opportunity to come up with some booth concepts for our swamped design team. Although I think some of these ideas are really cool, I was told none of them work LOL. So I guess I'm not a very good designer. Oh well.

We also got an Oculus Rift at the office! It's pretty awesome. I have been working on a futuristic roller coaster ride in Unity. Even though roller coasters were one of the first things we made in school, I am still struggling to animate a car going around upside down loops! DAMN YOU! I'm starting to remember things though. It should be wild :D

The last bit of news is about a GameStop weapons challenge for Saints Row 4! I heard about it from a co-worder and teamed up with my good friend Brad (who could be considered a Saints Row fanatic) to come up with a cool gun idea. One of the many guns he thought up was one that uses magnets and polarization, which I thought would be a really fun weapon to use in game. So I drew it up and submitted it to the challenge. Low and behold, we were chosen as a finalist!! I filled out the paper work a couple days ago and we're now waiting until the 27th when the public voting starts. I'll probably be posting voting links all over social media when the day comes, so I hope anyone reading this can vote for the Polarizer!

I just wish (since the winning gun will suposedly become DLC) that I could actually model the gun myself; just because that would be awesome to have a weapon I made show up in a AAA title like Saints Row.

A guy can dream.

King Tutlr

That is a picture of a new character I'm working on. I actually made that the other day after a couple hours of screwing around in Zbrush. I haven't had a chance to continue working on it, but it should be pretty cool when it's done. There are a lot of new ideas for stuff I want to model and things around me are starting to change which is giving me a boosted work ethic.

I've started making a LOT of prop models for Vteractive's Facebook game Questinations. They are all up on my website on the props page. We're breaking into the Easter stuff now so I have some eggs and baskets to make next. I also finally finished that mobile crane for Flaming Brain studios. Speaking of which, Flaming Brain has just redone their site and it's looking pretty snazzy, so check that out.

I'm going to spend the rest of this entry venting about the gaming news site Kotaku. Kotaku is a site that I love because it gives gaming news in a fun way. It "was" easy to read, very simple, and had people that are passionate about what they are writing about. But in recent months, the site has gone through a lot of changes. The visual changes to the site are very different, but that kind of thing I can get used to. What I'm a little upset with is the changing in the actual articles. I don't know if they have always been like this, or if I'm just getting older and starting to think about things more. I'm going to make mention of a couple in particular that bothered me.

The first comes from the writer Stephen Totilo and the article is called 'A Plea For Games To Grow Up". Stephen was at GDC this week and he walked into a presentation by David Cage (founder of the company Quantic Dream and creator of Heavy Rain among other games). Totilo explains how he started listening to Cage before dismissing the speech as "information he already knew" and so he moved on to another presentaion across the hall that interested him more. This is perfectly fine in my opinion. I probably would have done the same thing if another panel interested me more, but Totilo explains how he returned to Cage's presenation and found that it was a pretty moving speech. People were all abuzz on Twitter about how great it was, and so Totilo felt he had made the wrong choice by skipping out on the speech. He tries to make up for the fact that he missed it at the end of his Kotaku article, but honestly, there is no reason to, and I don't really care anyway. I understand that you are upset and a little embarassed that you missed the speech, but then why even add any of that to the article? Why not just report on what it was that Cage talked about and leave the rest out? Is that so hard? You shouldn't be so hard on yourself anyway, Totilo, because I think you were right in your original accusation: that the speech was all information you've heard before. I think you are just overcome by peer pressure.

Another article that I read just this morning is called "Why All The Call Of Duty Hate?" and it's written by Mike Fahey. This article takes the cake. The last one was just a little irriating, but this thing just angered me. Fahey talks about Call of Duty (CoD) and how people "hate" on it for no reason. He even goes as far to say that "In my honest opinion, I think these comments are because, well, they are horrible at the game." Fahey actually blames haters of the game because they "aren't good at it". Are you fucking kidding me? That is a response that a 14 year old would make. The fact of the matter is, everyone has their opinion, so Fahey can say whatever he wants, but belittling the people that play games, people who don't like the games that you like, and the readers of your own articles is a pretty shitty way to be a journalist.

People like Mike Fahey are the reason I don't like to play shooters. Not because I'm "not good at them". Not because they are or aren't "the same thing every time". Because assholes like Mike Fahey are fans of them and then spout off on professional web blogs about how shitty everyone else is because they don't like the same things he does. Grow up, ya big poop face.

And while I'm on the topic of poop-faces. Go to my friend Reuben's blog: http://reubnick.wordpress.com/
This kid is about 6 years younger than me, but he writes like a pro (and not really a poop-face). I only wish I could write blogs well as he does.

Maybe then someone would actually read this one........