Spykes the cactus!

Here I've been playing around with Maya again, trying to get used to working in 3D as well as working with the tools provided. I must say that every time it gets easier and easier, I get stuck less and less and that's always a good thing!
So Spykes The Cactus has been made from mainly cones and cylinders and is just a 3D version of my previously illustrated cactus. This one however doesn't have a balloon. I tried to add the balloon, but I couldn't figure out how to create the string, because when I tried to create a shape and play around with the edges corners etc. it didn't work and couldn't make it look anything like a string no matter what I tried... so I gave up on the balloon overall.

Strawberry

So lately I've been trying to figure how to use the Maya software. I found a few tutorials online and tried following them to pick up on tricks other artists use. Here's the tutorial I've used.
I must say that I had a few problems going through with this, mainly because I couldn't figure out how to turn the soft selection off... till I googled it and it turned out to be just "B". After that I must say it was pretty easy. I only hope that everything will turn out to be really easy!

From a cube to a truck!

Today was basically my first experience with Maya. Our teacher prepared a little tutorial for us to get us into using it. I find those really helpful because he didn't only tell us what to do he also explained why he's doing the particular thing and what it'll do to the overall image. 

This is the progress of my tutorial.

New Brief! Fundamentals of 3D Modelling & Animation

And so we started a new brief! I am really excited because I've never really done any sort of 3D Modelling or animation before. Not only that but we'll be working with toys! But let me explain from the beginning. 

During this brief, we are required to get a toy we like, so we can model it in Maya, then we are required to storyboard and create a 30-45 sec animation with it. 

As soon as I heard what we're required to do I started coming up with so many ideas but before I make any decisions I'll have to think them through well, considering the fact that I am starting from 0, since I've never used Maya before. 

We have till March to have it completed, so my plan is to master the software so I am able to create something awesome! 

To start off with I'm going to play around with Maya as well as watch other artist's tutorials to help me understand how the program works. 

Skyrim

Skyrim is the latest one of the five Elder Scrolls. It is an rpg game in which you're a dragonborn and your main mission is to bring peace back to skyrim basically not only there is a civil war going but also there are dragons coming back to life.
 It's only just about the main quest though, mostly people don't even follow it through, because there is so many other things you can do. As an rpg you're able to play it how you want it. Basically you make the story, depending on what you do and how you do it, will depend how certain people in certain cities react. For example you can join The Dark Brotherhood who are assassins, that will make certain people wish you went to hell and certain people fear and respect you. Throughout the game you complete hundreds of quests.
It's a game where you can either play first person of third person depending on your preferences. You can either use one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, bows or magic. If you don't like to be limited to only one weapon as you level up and use use a variety of weapons all of those skills will improve and make you unbeatable.
Apart from fighting and resolving problems, you can forge your own armor and weapons, make your own potions, invest in a shop, house, get married, adopt a child or two, enchant things, become an assassin, thief, a noble warrior, a magi, you can also mine, chop wood, cook and many many more. Makes the game less boring and plain.
The game expands quite fast, it already has several different add-ons which vary from adopting children, building houses to riding dragons.
I've personally been playing that game for quite a while now and I cannot say that I am near completely finishing it. It's something you get addicted to really fast and spend days and nights playing it without a break.

Halo 4

Since I got myself into gaming mood I decided to talk about Halo 4 which came out not a long time ago.
In my opinion this game was the most anticipated game of the year since Halo 3 was the fastest selling video game ever. It also holds the biggest entertainment launch in history. ( Source ) Which I suppose set the bar pretty high for Halo 4. Also I sort of waited for it myself, with a group of friends, I felt like a kid after getting a new toy you've waited for a long time for and to be honest... It's a disappointment.
I mean I loved it at first when I played the campaign and saw the cinematic, it's really beautifully done, as always they did a great job at making the planets and the whole environment. It's just when we started playing online, the first mistake I spotted was that it points you to the guns. In previous games guns spawned in the same places, which made it unfair for people that don't ever remember where they are (me) and run around like a lost child trying to find them... I was kind of hoping this time they're going to spawn at random places for everyone to have to find them. The second thing I don't like is the maps, I personally think they're way too bright which makes my eyes hurt badly after the first five minutes. A few maps I've had a chance to play were packed with lots of things which made it claustrophobic, also with the mixture of the bright colours I find it hard to find my way anywhere. Another thing, I have sot of mixed feelings about... In the previous games people sometimes left the team, so you ended up being on your own against a full team, which was pretty annoying. In Halo 4, they made it so you can join a game already in progress, a bad thing about it is that you mostly join a team that's loosing badly so you stand no chance of accomplishing anything or, you join a game that has barely any time left which again, makes no sense to join. But the good thing about it is that if your Xbox decides to crash etc, you don't loose the game you can just join it again.
Apart from that they obviously added many many guns which I really am not sure about, I've noticed that every time I tried to use something new, it didn't seem to be working well so I stick to what I know how to use and it goes a lot better, I know it might not be the best approach but in time I will get used to the new ones and see how it goes. The one thing that I find really awesome is the Mantis which is basically a walking tank with guns for hands! Essentially its replaced the Scorpion in the campaign.
When it comes to game types, they changed the Zombies game type into Flood, where players have a chance to experience the thrill of consuming an all sentient life forms. They also added Dominion which is an upgraded version of territories. Another game type they've added is Regicide which is a free for all slayer game type. Whoever tops the leader board is the king. The king has a bounty on his head and whoever kills him gets the additional points. They didn't only add onto the game types they already had, they also got rid of a few... one of them being my favourite: Snipers. It did appear at some point for a week or so, and got removed for no reason which just annoyed me, I thought they might just upgrade the game gradually or at random have a different additional game type to make it different to just having the same game types all the time.
The biggest disappointment however was the campaign where with it's run here, press this objectives. Felt pretty much like a child-like game. They could have been a bit more creative with that one.

Minecraft 1.4.6

To those who don't know yet, minecraft is a sandbox construction game. But to not go by a dictionary definition. It's a game for everyone, you get kids as well as adults playing it. You basically spawn in a normal world, and have to find and chop wood, make tools, dig ores to help you build amazing things and survive the enemy attacks. It's an 8 bit world which means that the world is very square. It's not a bad thing, it's actually very fun and challenging when you're trying to build something round! It's a game with no limits you can build whatever you want and make it look however you want, you can go as big or as small as you'd like. It's so exciting and rewarding that you get groups of people building huge amazing cities etc. just to show it off to the world. There even is a YouTube channel called "Machinima" with "Top 5 Minecraft Creations" where every week or so the best things get reviewed! 

Top 5 Minecraft Creations

You can really see how creative people get with normal everyday things and a square world to work with! 

It's a game that's constantly expanding, they keep adding new features, ores, monsters, traps and biomes to make sure it never gets boring and really... it never does! I personally really love it, and if you're a creative person I really recommend you try it too! 

Diablo III

I have waited a long time for Diablo 3 to come out. I was in love with the second one for a long time and the wait for the third one was killing me. I was equally excited and scared of the outcome. What I was hoping for is for the game play to stay very similar, improve the graphics, but for it to maybe have a few more enemies, weapons etc. And they did exactly it! They made the image very crisp, dark and scary to enhance the experience. For a game it's one of the best looking environments out there. They not only do a great job with the environments but also the characters, they look very real. The only disappointing thing about the beautiful environments is that they had to sacrifice the map generation for it, maps do not change every game, the layout stays the same. They've added a range of different enemies making it more exciting than constantly killing the same things over and over again. When it comes to the game play they didn't change much, they added one more difficulty level we now have: Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno. Inferno being where all the enemies start out as a level 60 or above, making it hard because the maximum level you can be is 60. They changed the way you level up you no longer can choose which attributes you add to, it does it automatically, you can only pick the skills you have which is a bit of a disappointment. The thing I probably love the most about ii are the cinematics. It seems to me like sketchy, pencil and ink drawings made into like a flick book, turning into a really amazingly detailed animation. The fire, skin, hair and their movement makes it hard to believe they're not real.

Intro Cinematic

I love how the story also starts in Lut Golein, and from there takes you East, which is exactly what happened in the second game. Also the music has been changed enough to notice the difference but not enough to change the feel about the game, it makes it clear they they're just continuing it from the second one instead of completely starting it from scratch which means instead of ruining it by adding completely different music they changed the original to remind you of the days and nights you spent playing the previous game, and hoping you'll feel the same about this one.

Hobbit vs. Hobbit

Recently I've been to the cinema to see "The Hobbit". A lot of people weren't saying good things about it but I wanted to see for myself if what they were saying is true or not. To be honest I didn't believe they did a bad job at it, I just thought people are comparing it to "The Lord Of The Rings" which is one of the greatest movies out there. I assume, from what I've seen that Lord of the Rings's target audience aren't children and The Hobbit has been written for J.R.R Tolkien's children, would make it probably more boring for adults, hence that's where the bad reviews come from. But I suppose I wouldn't know if I wouldn't see it for myself.

Comparing the movie to the book, they have changed quite a few things, mostly the order of the events that happen, which isn't a major thing. A major change that has been made is adding new characters, which I must say was a good move, and that's only because they were trying to make it more exciting for the viewers. Let's admit it reading books is different to watching movies, in movies you need a good and evil characters fighting throughout the movie, and they are there to make the movie more exciting and full of action. (eg. Harry Potter vs Voldemort, Thor vs Loki, Superman vs Lex Luther). But again with enemies, comes violence, which makes the movie less likely to be enjoyed by kids.
The things that I loved is the little connections to The Lord Of The Rings, especially the music. They did compose the main song for "The Hobbit" which I must say they did an excellent job with, it's equally as brilliant as the others. Apart from that similar situations, like entering the Rivendell etc. had the same music in the background which gave you that flashback feeling to Lord of the Rings.
I also loved the scene that takes you to Lord of the Rings which is the one right before the party they have for Bilbo's 111 birthday.

To sum up, I really enjoyed the movie, it was a time and money well spent. I think everyone should get to see it and not listen to peoples bad comments about it, they're not true!