Client Project

Here's a few pictures of my client project. More pictures and a video to come soon.

Counter Strike: Source Tournament Map

As part of my client project I am to create a "Counter Strike: Source" (CS:S) level, or map, for a competitive multiplayer tournament such as the iSeries. The i-Series is the largest tournament host in the UK and can accommodate 2,000 players and spectators.

Traditionally Counter Strike: Source maps are grounded in realistic atmospheres.



de_train. Set in a train depo.


de_inferno. Set in a South American town. Miseenscene includes clothes drying and flower pots outside peoples homes.


cs_assault. Set in a down town industrial area. Fire hydrant and train station for commuters.

Grounding my map in reality I will consider areas such as factory floors, industial parks and other urban areas.

Simulated Client Project

The Real Cost from Jay Jackson-Hicks on Vimeo.

It's taken a little longer...

It's taken a little longer than I thought it would to move the blog to my website. So in the mean time I will still be using this.

After having my request to change to webdesign rejected i've had a very short time to get my ideas reformed so I can make an animation in time.

I've been thinking long and hard about how to protray a message about piracy in a video game environment. Aside from somekind of machinima, which I don't believe would count as own work in this case, their really isn't any way of getting the message across without the aid of characters to relate to. I put this down to a terribly thought out idea that was, in my opinion, developed as far as "a good idea for an AV brief, all the 3D guys can just do the same but animate it" train of thought.

I've decided to bite the bullet and ignore that animation has nothing to do with 2/3 of the virtual environments pathway I did last year and just get on with it. Due to the time restrictions and my absolute hate for rigging models I've decided to create the my animation in the style of a Bupa advert.



I will use simple geometry shapes and give them character though objects such as glasses, headphones, hats, etc... these objects will also act as a way of showing where the simple shaped characters are looking. I will use simple block colours to follow the theme.

To represent the emotional content that people are getting from products I will have explosions of life coming from their products. Much like in recent Fanta adverts:

New Site :D

I've moved to a new site. Come check it out:

www.radicalewok.com

Simulated Client Project - First Ideas

I've been thinking about how to send my message across about media piracy. My first idea is to have a little girl skipping down a road which then tranforms into an apocalyptic landscape around her. There will be a voice over describing the danger to media industries that piracy creates.

For a visual representation of how I imagine the transformation to look please watch the video below from a game called Lucidity. About 40seconds in to the 1minute mark is where you will find the transition.


As for the asthetic look of the apocalyptic world i'm trying to create i'll be aiming for what was protrayed in the animated film by Shane Acker called 9. Here's a picture:

Moving Blog Soon

I'm moving my blog to a website that i'm creating. Links will be posted here and on the reflective journal index.

Visualisation Walk-Through

Here's a short fly-though of my visualisation project.

Second Year Visualisation Project from Jay Jackson-Hicks on Vimeo.

Visualisation

As I said in a previous post I've done a truly horrific job at my time management and I've spent the last week living off ridiculous amounts of coffee and a hand full of hours sleep.

Here's an update on my Visualisation project. It's of a train station. I was inspired by Robs project. He chose to make a skate park because that's one of his passions. I thought about what one of my recent passions was and I started thinking about a computer game called Left 4 Dead. It's basically a game which takes place in a work undergoing a zombie apocalypse. There are many areas such as hospitals and Airports which lay in ruin after attacks. I decided to base my project on this theme.



Here's a screen shot of the scene untextured.

Animation Scene - Corrior

Corridor - Aniamtion Year 2 from Jay Jackson-Hicks on Vimeo.

This is one of the scenes I've made for my animation. I was going for a cross between the hallways in the first battle of Star Wars: A New Hope and the corriors on the main spaceship from Wall-e.

Biped Animation

I've modeled one of my characters with Biped Bones. Although this is a fast way of generating an animation for a simple human like character I'm not finding it flexable enough so I'm going to continue to animate with my custom bones version.

Clarc Animation - 3D Studio Max Biped Bone Test from Jay Jackson-Hicks on Vimeo.

My aim is to have the character Clarc walk like Dog from Half Life 2 when he's excited or moving fast:


The character Clarc is a lifing robot so he will also be able to walk on just his feet when carrying heavy loads.

Clarc Animation

Here's a screen shot of Clarc with his Biped bones in:

Well i've done it again...

Like everytime before I've left things with one project to the last miniute after concentraiting all my efforts on another project (aka my UT Map). I have untill wednesday to get my animation done and it's going to be alot of work. Currently I have two areas for my characters to interact with almost complete. I'm confident that I'll produce work good enough to hand in and host a video online.

I think once I hand the project in I'll still put more work into it over the summer holidays. I've spent quite a bit of time into character development and I really like what I've come up with. I think my charcaters are well established and have great personalities. I just hope that I can put this across well enough with the time I have left.

All this being said I'm really very proud of how my Unreal Tournament map has turned out and I think it's some of the best work I've ever done. I've had a few focus groups of hardcore gamers play it now and I've had great responces. Also personally I really love playing it, being a quite hardcore gamer myself I find the flow and pacing of the level works also all the areas seem to have equal usage instead of just one area which everyone fights for controll over.

Well I should get back to work on my animation. I'm quite sure my animation will be to a good standard. I'm just ashamed of myself for not giving it more time. I'm really sure that if I had another week to work on it I could make something truely amazing.

Unreal Tournament 2004 Map Complete

I finally got it finished and i'm really proud of how it turned out. Here's a video of me playing it against adpet dificulty bots.

My Unreal Tournament 2004 Map from Jay Jackson-Hicks on Vimeo.

DM-Spectrum - Who said UT3 was just gray?

A new custom map was made for Unreal Tournament 3, and it has a great twist. The rooms are pitch black and the only way you can find other players is by the trail of light they leave behind them as they move across the map.

DM-Spectrum from Matthew Bradley on Vimeo.

For more infomation I recommend you check out the artical on Kotaku.

Unreal Tournament Map

I'm almost done with my map now. There is just a tiny bit of texturing to do and apart from that all I have to do is bot paths and lighting. I've placed all the static meshes I think I'll need.

Here are a few screen shots I took awhile back. Some rooms have been improved since they were taken.

Animation Trouble

I've been working on my animation recently and i've run into some trouble with the arms.


This is a picture of the hand when it is straight, all the joints are perfectly round and how they are ment to be.


Once i try rotating the joints though they warp and strech.


This problem is starting to concern me as I remade the hand once already to try and fix this problem.

Level Design - A walkthrough of my map so far

I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd upload a video of my level design so far.




At the moment I'm just using working textures and lights to create. Once I'm satasfied with the layout I will be adding static meshes, atmospheric lighting and relevant textures.

Inspiration for Visualisation project

Trousers Hindering My Progress!

Just switched out of trousers into PJ bottoms and I've been flying through my work. I remember a conversation I had with Will about the benefit of working in new media, "we get to sit at home in our jammies, with a nice cup of tea and a duvet just coding html and css..."

I'm feeling so cocky about my progress since getting into my PJs that i've taken a break from my essay to write this. Doctors have the right idea, they just wear scrubs which a basically PJs and they're wicked sick at saving peoples lives.

We should all take notice of how productive the world is when comfortable. As a society we're evolved past trousers. Sure we needed them back in the days before decent heating in building and occasional bear attacks. I propose a remodeling of our society to exclude the need for trousers and bring the era of PJs.

Although that might be a society of Jack Wills and A&F douche bags running around in there baggy jammies, white framed bug sun glasses, iPod nanos and flip flops talking about how far back up there heads they make there quiffs as they rush to nandos to mack on the hunniez.

I guess no society will ever be perfect :(