Target Practice - AO and Normals

Low Poly! In UDK! With 16 million pixels of uncompressed normals and ambient occlusion! And lovely clouds (didn't make those)!

Couple of minor issues to sort through (and rebake at the speed of something that moves slowly), but purty much ready to texture. May be taking a slight break from this project to participate in Polycount's 'The Escape' Challenge. So look for a change of pace here soon.

Target Practice - Unwrap and Low Poly

Meant to show the low poly last week. Totally spaced it. I'm not too worried about sticking to an exact tri count for this one. It's a little over 12K, but for a personal project that's just fine. 

Anyway, unwrap's (finally) ready. This probably isn't the most exciting step to show (especially for anyone just hoping for pretty pictures), but it is important. Next up, projections!

Target Practice (WIP)

So I started 2013 off with the farcical idea of having a finished piece to show every week. I've made this resolution five of the past six years and kept it zero of the past ever. Obviously, I have not succeeded so far this year.

Recent experience has taught me some important lessons. I've always known that there is virtue in pushing oneself to the point of failure - it's about the surest way to make sure you're actually gaining ground, and not simply rehashing the most comfortable aspects of techniques you already know. However, unrealistic goals aren't only demotivating - they're disorganizing. Taking on a project 110% greater than you can reasonably achieve seems to lead to good results; insisting on 200% overscope tends to lead to a lot of fractured, half formed materials.

Basically, what I'm saying is putting out the volume of work I used to insist on isn't as useful to me as I'd like it to be. It encourages half solutions that don't really improve on the existing skill base in a really useful way. As such, I'm revising my idea to give myself a little more breathing room, and hopefully find a way to to really improve my work in the process.

What I will try to do is show _something_ once a week, generally a work in progress or a series of thoughts and sketches on a particular subject. As a bonus, this pacing makes me more accountable to an intelligent, structured working process, which, at this point, is actually more interesting to me than the results. And maybe it's more interesting for you to see to see how I'm thinking as well.

Anyway! Here goes:

I do a lot of different things at Hi-Rez, and recently I've been concentrating more on organic sculpting and concept work, which is awesome, but I miss hard surface a mite from time to time, so I built this'n to keep the ol' skills sharp. High poly is basically ready - next up comes the low, uv, and bakes.

Oh, and P.S.: I'm working on migrating to a Wordpress site integrated with my main site. This should give me a little more flexibility in terms of presentation and ease of use. Also, only three people on earth (max) have any idea who 'Makanops' actually is, which makes it a dumb name for a blog. I'll let you all know when it switches over.

Sometimes I draw myself.

Based on my actual experiences during the Mayan Apocalypse. (I come from the future. It'll make sense here shortly.)

Consumerism

In a time honored tradition I've honored precisely once (and not recently), I've done made up a mess of Christmas Cards. I'd like to take this opportunity to offer the cards gratis to any of y'all website visitors what might wants thems. As a rule, these are limited edition - I will print only sixty, and the first fifty o' these are already spoken for by my nuclear family, meaning there's ten up for grabs. If you want one, get in touch and I'll send one signed, high-quality print your way, possibly on the back of a specially trained albatross (no promises!).

This whole deal is strictly first come, first serve, while-supplies-last, one-per-customer fire sale, so if you want one chime up!

Infinite Insouciant Intermission Improbable

The blog is back! Updating the 'real' portfolio site is hard work, and now that I'm no longer unemployed, I can let it mothball a little.

For those who missed it, I recently a) graduated from the Guildhall and b) accepted a job as an Associate Artist (Hard Surface Modeler) at Hi-Rez Studios in Alpharetta, GA. If you're not familiar with Hi-Rez, they're the makers of Global Agenda, Tribes: Ascend, and the forthcoming Smite. It's an awesome position, so I'm pretty psyched.

I don't start until early July, so I've had a little bit of time to make art for fun instead of horror and survival. A sampling:

It's Quiet Around Here.

So, you may have noticed that the last post here is a bit ... old. I'm not dead, nor have I quit making things. It just happens that at the moment I'm a bit busy building my portfolio site, which, by comparison, is fresh and new. I'll get back to blogging soon enough, but for now, may I humbly recommend you saunter on over?

http://www.brianiswells.com