Lemons from Life

Still looking for a job, still stuck in Israel, still living with my parents. Things haven't been too hot. Gotta keep working despite that and hope for good news.

I though I would update with 3D work, but that has been going super slow. I blame the book I am trying to follow along with, but the instructions aren't clear enough for my liking.
Working on unwrapping the floor buffer I modeled:



 Still doing the occasional study:

 



Some concepts for Europa: First Probe a game I hope to make someday.
I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but it's an idea I had while brainstorming ideas for a game jam with some friends in the bay area. Simple enough concept iterating on an old game idea: fall down a tunnel and avoid the walls for as long as possible. Fingers control a light, tilt controls the angle of descent.



No reason to stop doing daily speed paints, but now I have 3 pages on deviant art to pick from and post here.

My First Global Gamer Jam

Last Friday at 8:45 am I showed up at the Electra building in Tel-Aviv, ready for my first legit game jam. I was the first art guy there, and found myself a team soon enough, coincidentally including people from my hometown, Haifa. We watched some keynote videos giving us advice, urging us to create games for changes and giving us the theme, familiar perhaps to those who have been to earlier GGJs. 6:00 pm Saturday was the goal time to finish (Sunday is a work day here in the holy land,) though most teams continued compiling and what not. I had been working hard until a couple of hours before then, sleeping for maybe an hour and eating nothing more than a couple of granola bars and snacks. Then we saw what everyone else had worked on and I finally saw what I had been working as a whole, which took almost 3 hours, and while it was cool to see, everyone was exhausted and wanted to go home. Here's some of the work I did on our game, from concept art to background and foreground elements to character and UI animation.

: HELP

Seems like a good time to update

I really should keep this blog updated, you never know. Start with the speed paints:

Decided I liked the Cloud Dancer one, so I put in a few more hours of polish. I think this was a big stride in my anatomy from imagination skills. I'm not sure how much more work I'll put into this, if any.

Inspired by a Scott Robertson video, by the lack of any concept art for too long, too many ideas that I needed to get out and the slow progress I've been having with 3Ds Max (it's kind of a pain to follow the book when I want to do my own thing, but I don't want to miss any insights,) I've done the following:

Outside of my own personal projects, I've had a job interview with a laser cutting and engraving service last Sunday, but haven't received an answer yet. I don't have much confidence I got it, but that's ok, I think I can do better.

The World Didn't End

It's 12.22.12 and I'm still here, so I might as well write about the things I'm doing. Since I now have access to a PC capable of handling more than my aging Macbook, I decided to install 3DS Max and start adding that skill to my resume. Since I've taught myself Blender, I knew it's just a matter of getting used to the interface and idiosyncrasies, and putting in the hours. Not much to show yet, but it's coming. Speaking of going back to things, I've also started capturing and editing videos of me doing my speed paintings, uploading them to my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/Hamsta180 Here are some of the latest:

And a few studies:

Back in the Game

I'm working on my board game again, after a brief hiatus to do a couple of art test, and hitting a rougher patch of the unemployment roller coaster.

At least I kept up the daily speed paints. Here are a few samples.

Went to the 5th Israeli Games Unconference after being at the 3rd, and made a few new contacts. I still think I need to leave this country ASAP, but it isn't easy. Made good use of a website I found offering game internships in France a couple of weeks ago, though I've only received a few rejections for my efforts.