waw...a month already!

a month.....A MONTH! my word. my apologies for the lack of posting but the work hasn't, until recently that is, been going to well. I've been looking at my work recently with a lack of optimism, Ive been questioning many things- whether to go back to graphic design etc.
The thing is, I still am having these thoughts and I'm sure I'll have similar kinds all the way down the career path i chose. but alas, i have to pick myself up, get on and finish what i started.
I think the work i have done so far is fine but to me seems a impulsive and poorly revised. so at the beginning of last week i decided to revisit ideas within my game and bolster/reinforce them them.
I'll be in uni tomorrow scanning in the sketchbook ideas I've been working on so far. Ive started to tackle the '8 kings' the enemies in my tale and probably the most important design aspects in the game. they will hopefully set the mood so the rest of the design work: npcs', environments, pros will come a lot easier without the gas tank running on empty.

so.... watch this space! hopefully I'll be posting some professional standard stuff in the next week- lets see how much i can churn out ;)

Mushrooms!...(lighting again)

Still designing away into the night, just looking into alternative terms of lighting for the cave environment- luminescent mushrooms? I dunno. let me know what you think ^^

Speed paint...

here is a speed paint i did tonight, just to get a different feel of the exterior of the cave. I like the colours not sure about the layout but I didn't dedicate so its fine ^^ comments welcome!

bugs!

just some quick ideas for cave lighting me and jay brought up. Im sure its been donr before and these probably wont be the final ideas however it seemed the most logical concept to fit the environment.
Having fire lanterns would give off a lot of fumes- being in a cave isn't so good for the locals. also it saves a lot on resources and Archims all about living off the land ^^ comment if you have further ideas, they would be considered.

the only other light we could probably look at is cracks hidh in the caves ceiling pouring in natural light or gemstones or geodes giving off colours accenting different areas helping the eye distinguish difference.

modelling Archim...

Towards the end of summer i bought a few books and started to teach myself z brush. The main reason being i like traditional clay sculpting and it seemed a lot more appealing than Maya. this model is more of a test than a usable sculpt/model but i have learned a lot just from it alone.
here is where I'm up to i hope you like the look of it, i enjoyed sculpting it greatly.
when sarting i created myself a basic mesh in maya. i then knew i had good strong topology to work from and the model size also. the preliminary stages were dominated by just using the move tool on the imported mesh to get a good feel for a base structure.

further rough designs: Weapons

Just a heads up these were drew in an animation pencil so if you have trouble seeing the images just click on them to enlarge^^
I knocked these up the other night, I wasn't in the greatest moods for designing characters so I switched to weapons for the night. In my first finished design for Archim he is wielding a Turkish compound bow- mongolians would use them because they were light, small and could still fire to 350 feet, extremely powerful. However I didnt want to rule out the chance of crossbows; even if i didnt equip archim with one a villager could easily do so.
In these pages i was just looking at overall shapes, possible blade attatchments and other variables. I came across a pistol crossbow and thought it a great idea. For missions where you would have to sneak and assasinate they are powerful yet small and concealable.As for the ones where they look as if a ladel has been nailed to a block of wood- thats more of a medievil grenade launcher. It would be useable with shrapnel, smoke or slime bombs.
hope you like ^^

Backgrounds!

So as as I mentioned in my last post i want to start creating some concepts for enviroments so Jay could start getting a rough feel of the world I wanted to create.Enviroments have never been my strong points but ill try my best to give jay high quality referance material.
Heres some thing i pulled together tonight- I'm happy with the outcome didnt spend too long on it.


here a tweaked version of the image i did recently.