Freshman Year Retrospect (Some NFSW)

For those uninformed, this year (2013-2014) is my sophomore year. Much has happened in the last year, in which I've taken the initiative to create and save most of my work. Things such as drawing, sculpting, and animations have been developed last year, and I'm hoping to share them on this blog for the time being as a reflective analysis on what I covered last year.


Traditional Animation

TA was a class where we were able to develop multiple frames to make short motion pictures such as walk cycles, bouncing balls, and flour sack movements. This project was a simple characterized walk cycle for a creature or person we had to come up with our selves in a short time, followed by the practice of movement of the arms, legs, and body to display the character's personality and frame.

3D For Game Art

This class was based around our use of concept design and our ability to make those ideas into actual sculptures and be able to create backstories, detail textures, and show material use to develop the characters and landscapes we were assigned. This project is the Grunt Project, to which we were tasked with coming up with a background story, why the grunt is attacking, and what sort of landscape it would be found in. We were also given the work of creating an environment using real-life resources and sculpting/building a diorama.

Figure Drawing

Figure was a class revolving around the study of the human body in an effort to replicate it in terms of form and value. The weight shift, lightness to darkness, and overall sense of balance and action was a key feature in this class, consisting of the use of gesture drawings, renders, and the like. Here's a few examples.

This all is what I've accomplished in my Freshman year. I feel like much has been accomplished within the time I've had last year, and I hope to continue onward with future improvements.

Trailer of Choice

Castlevania has been an ongoing series for more than 25 years now by Konami, and with each game they've developed, they push the envelope just a tad further each time. Whether it's newer gameplay elements, environment expansions, character and animation depth, or even their music and voice acting. The spinoff series, Lords of Shadow, has been a more recent subject in the Castlevania series, and the new upcoming game, Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2, has definitely lived up to the ongoing expectations of Castlevania constantly going on with each game.

The trailer I present is most likely one of my favorite all-time trailers, mainly because of multiple reasons. The trailer shows the scopes of areas, the gigantic landscapes, details in the environments, the animations and effects, as well as the newer difference in sound quality in voice acting as well as ingame music and sound effects as well. I'm also quite interested in how they threw in narrative points without breaking the display of action, footage of gameplay, and the overall expansive and portrayed variety of environments. I must say, I'm overall very interested in this trailer, because it also sells the game itself, displaying the extent of what all the game is capable of in terms of visuals, gameplay, and story.