Update time!! with 2007 rapidly disappearing in the rear view mirror of
calendars everywhere, it's been a busy old time here of late!
AvP:
Requiem has now shipped
and in doing so counts as the first published title I've worked on, HURRAH! :)
It was also extremely cool to see the new
Simpsons
game being put together. Despite it's inevitable detractors, i was a
quite a fan of "Simpsons: Hit & Run" and seeing the next evolution of the game was
pretty damn sweet!!
All this wonderous work related stuff is also leading to my long-pending relocation to Oxford so that i can join the
Rebellion office full time, so that should be interesting!
Caffeine and Pot Noodles
The 2nd year Animation students at Portsmouth Uni were granted the dubious honour of being on the
receiving end of my help and
somewhat warped perspective as i returned there to take over the character animation unit in a fashion admired by dictators the world over.
It was a bit muddled at the start, but ended up being pretty cool with a lot of good ideas being cooked up.
Hopefully everyone learned some stuff that will help them as they rocket towards year 3.
I'll be popping back from time to time to see how they get on, so
it'll be cool to see how their work progresses.
I declare a thumb war.
Halo. i hate Halo. i hate its tedious pace, its bloated ego and its insipid fanboys. i hate playing it, worse still, i hate watching
other people play it and therein lies its genius. The people who like it seem to have a warcry for the end of their game and it goes like this:
"YES!!!!........ rematch?" ad nauseum.
i became so utterly bored with this that i made the decision to suck it up for the sake of my long suffering social group and make an effort for Halo 3.
Amazingly... i was still crap at Halo. to this day i`m crap at Halo, but for some reason, i don`t mind being crap at 3; it`s actually fun to play.
Purists will hail Halo (maybe the name was a pre-empted in-joke) for hammering home strategy and tactic as "the way to play" but all of a sudden
(or unless i massively missed something in the first 2) you can get yourself on a mounted cannon, remove it and wander around, merrily blasting all you like!
i`ll swap tactics for a big gun any day! It feels faster as well and generally just appeals to me for various reasons i can`t quite determine
but whatever they changed, i like it!
Sadly though, my efforts were quickly nullified as everyone stopped playing it. The reason? Call of Duty 4... and rightly so, it's awesome.
it too strikes a nice balance of play. Some team members can plan a tactic to achieve and objective and other players (like me) can charge in all guns blazing
dispensing rapid fire justice against the ingame infidels. Playing this way is not efficient- you die a lot, but again the game is so cool to play that you
forget your lousy score and concentrate holding the "shoot" button down. Incidentally, if you fancy some manic war - do a multiplayer free for all
on the "shipment" level, it`s a tiny map and it guarantees you blasting!
Well, that's more than enough of an update i think, let me assure you that it was as much fun for me to write this as it was for no-one to read it :)
oh, i`ve put a page up for my first ever 3d project as well. It`s hiding on the Animations page and
should at least prove amusingly awful for you :)
Three.2
Posted: 02 / 08 / 2007
The Amazing Splendidios will be screened on
BBC3
on Friday 24th August 2007 at 24.45 (so technically it`s 00.45 on the 25th.. but let's not quibble ;) ) as part
of the pilot for FAO3 (Fresh Animation On Three)
So if you're not asleep, tune in and see some of the work that made it through the voting!
Congratulations to everyone who made it, and again, thanks to everyone who voted :)
Three
Posted: 13 / 06 / 2007
The Amazing Splendidios has been selected to be screened on
BBC3 in the near future. HUGE thanks to everyone who
voted!!
Work at Rebellion is awesome, having a fantastic time
and learning a lot! can already see improvement not only in my animation, but also in the way i approach
an animation as well; contexts, character attributes, use in game, etc. Fantastic experience so far!!
The Day Today
Posted: 05 / 06 / 2007
Stemming from
this article
on the Portsmouth University website, The News have followed it up with
this piece.
Obviously I'm flattered that anyone was interested in what i was up to now, but should point out a couple of things -
"left school penniless at 16" - .... doesn't everyone? :)
I've also never worked as a waiter in my LIFE!! no way i have the patience for that ;)
but yeah, lots going on! so from this media whore - i say "here's to ya!"
The Rebellion Alliance
Posted: 30 / 04 / 2007
2007 continues to barrel along!! As well as teaching on the Games Design course at
Highbury College,
I've just
received confirmation that i will soon be working with the wonderfully
eclectic
movers and shakers at Rebellion.
I'm obviously pretty stoked about this and will be starting off part-time with them very soon.
can NOT wait!! :D
The men from Auntie
Posted: 06 / 04 / 2007
The Amazing Splendidios has been short listed
for the BBC New Talent animation showcase!! CLICK HERE
to view the New Talent site and the short listed animations
Don't forget to cast your votes!! ;)
Video killed the radio star
Posted: 23 / 01 / 2007
Quick note - If you're a Firefox user and you've upgraded to Windows Media Player 11
then the videos on this site may not display correctly.
To get round this, you can either right click the video and play it from the pop-up menu,
or view this site in Internet Explorer until a fix is worked out.
Apologies for any inconvenience, here's to "upgrades"
Happy Season!
Posted: 11 / 12 / 2006
Welcome to the last update of the year! And what a year it has been - graduation, the Asimov video, my first foray into
teaching and numerous other steps forward. Here's hoping 2007 rocks as hard!
So to all I say "Happy non denominational winter season" .... i think that should be safe enough.
My showreel has been updated to include a couple of shots from Asimov
and the new version can be downloaded from
here
Rise of the Robots
Posted: 29 /11 / 2006
Well, it's done.
5 months, 1 man (mostly ;) ), 1 piece of music,
countless late nights and 426,805 cups of coffee later, let the
proclamation go forth; "The Asimov video is finished". Yes, the video
accompaniment to Tim Wrights track of the same name is now finally
complete and can be viewed here. In the next
week or so I will be shamelessly promoting this in as many places as
possible, so if you like it, by all means stick a link to this site up
somewhere and help spread the word!
In addition to this, I'm temporarily doing some part time work at
Portsmouth University - teaching software skills to first year animation
students!! It's my first foray into teaching and was somewhat of an "in
at the deep end" affair, but hopefully I'm getting away with it and
helping people get some good results.
I've also made a few more changes to how this site works which will
make things a little easier for me to update (until i stumble across
another new idea and spend 2 days reworking the entire thing for little
or no change :D )
That's all for now! I'm going for a well-earned pint ;)
It's all about the game....
Posted: 21 / 10 / 2006
3 months since the last news update eh?? how time flies when you're insanely busy!!
So what have I been up to?? well I'll tell you!
I've been working on a video for Tim Wright a.k.a
Cold Storage,
a veteran of the games industry who's responsible for the music to some of the most memorable
(and significant) games both past and present. Well, our friend Tim has released an album entitled "Melt
(available through
http://www.coldstorage.org.uk)
"Asimov" was a track that I took an instant liking to and am STILL a big fan of (and given that
I must have heard
it about 14 trillion times over the course of the videos production, is testament to just how good it is!)
and so with tims help, I fleshed out a story to accompany the music. Centred around robotic characters
(c`mon... "Asimov"?? it was going to happen :D ), hopefully I've managed to produce an entertaining short film
that will do Tims music proud. "Asimov" is in the final stages of production now and should be ready to
unleash upon the world in the next month or so.
But that's not all!, I've also been producing some animations for fishing site
www.ausfish.com.au. Now you can see the knots tying themselves in full 3d splendour!
Thanks to Darren @
www.2fishproductions.com for bringing me
onboard (no pun intended ;) )
This site has also been completely rebuilt.. which you probably
haven't noticed! The old design made use of iframes which, for those in the know,
cause problems when trying to get your site seen by search engines, web spiders etc. SO! on my constant quest to shamelessly shill myself
at every opportunity, I set about rebuilding the site so that it looked *gasp*.... no different whatsoever. I think
you'll agree, I managed admirably :D
Anyways, hopefully now this site will show up in some search results and
I won't be the only person reading this
(which, given that I wrote it in the first place, is pretty lame :D )
In addition to all of this, I've been keeping an eye on the vacancy sites and trying my best to get a foot in the door somewhere.
So far that old bugbear of "no industry experience" has been a thorn in my side, front, back and pretty much every other place it could possibly get to :(
Hopefully "Asimov" will go some way to suppressing this complaint and, coupled some additions to my showreel that
I've been working on, will convince someone to
throw caution to the wind and give me a chance to run with the ball.
"Mister... Mister!!... gis a job! go on, gis a job!" :D
So that's my news updated for now, back to work!
minor tweaks
Posted: 21 / 07 / 2006
Having noticed that Internet Explorers interpretation of my CSS code
was incorrect, I have trawled through the site tweaking little things to
ensure that the site displays properly in all browsers now (well, as
close of a compromise as I could get... once again a straightforward
website has to hold IE's hand lest it fling it's toys from the pram)
So! for anyone who may spot a slight misalignment here or there, I know aaaall about it,
but if I set it up properly (i.e. - to W3C standards) then it throws up ugly scrollbars
at the bottom of this window in IE.... and who wants to see ugly things? exactly. no-one.
Come along now Mr Gates, stop spending so much time devising ways to dictate what we
can and can't watch (or listen to!) and just bring your browser up to scratch, there's a good chap.
Midnight gets closer....
Posted: 19 / 07 / 2006
After adding various bits n' pieces over the last week or so, I now have
all of my animations uploaded and thought it was
about time I started putting something more substantial on this page ;)
With any luck, I will soon have images from my portfolio online as well,
but am busy preparing application forms and working on a couple of new
projects, so most of my time is spent learning new things, holding a
pen, looking for work and trying desperately to maintain a degree of
social life.
In addition to all this, after 2 years of owning the worlds most
biggest waste of web space (an omnipresent "under construction" page and
some unrelated files does not a website make!!) I have been racking my
brains and "liberating" ideas to try and
this site to be more
than a (albeit awesome ;) ) name.... or indeed, a link which brings you
right back here :D
