mediaho

The value of the so-called "game design" schools are mostly hit or miss in terms of quality. Not just from school to school but semester to semester depending on who happens to be teaching (there's often a very high turnover rate) and the dedication and enthusiasm of the other students. The degree you exit with doesn't really have a lot of value other than it showing prospective employers that you can commit to and finish something you started. Students will typically come out of the program with some sort of finished class project and your contribution to it can be very beneficial if it's done well but it can also be a double-edged sword if you have classmates who are not as dedicated as you are. Group projects tend to only be as strong as their weakest link. Read books, get involved with online communities. The best way to show you can make games is to... make games. Simple puzzle and logic games are a great start, board games, card games, pen and paper RPGs, things like that. Good game design can be demonstrated in any media; some of the best designers I know started with or continue making non-digital games. Getting involved with the modding communities is a great next step. Modding an existing game lets you focus on the flow of design without having to worry about things like art and programming (although at least some basic knowledge of scripting languages can be very helpful and useful). Good luck to your daughter. The industry needs more women. All the best,

Excellent!

Mag-fuggin-nificent. Some of the best stuff I've seen anywhere. Congratulations!

That was fun. Go Terps! If you haven't seen it before, check out Al's Animate With A:M the Easy Way tutorial.

Bee-yooteeful!

I haven't made it to one yet but not for lack of trying. Let me know when the next one is and I'll try to be there.

Awesome stuff. Beautiful poses and timing.

Excellent!!

Congratulations! Nicely done.

That's beautiful. Excellent work.

That's awesome. Amazing stuff everyone.

Mag-freakin-nificent! Beautiful rig. This is going to make animating a real pleasure. Thank you so much for your effort and generosity.

I love that torso control. I like how you control the shoulders by moving the upper arm. I would prefer if it had a translate limit to keep it inside the mesh but it's a nice simplified solution to the shoulder controls. I should add that I really love everything else about the rig that I've used so far. Gonna test some more.

Very nice! I can hear that idiot frog Slippy crying for me to help him now. For the planet, you should try using the 'planet' material. That way the resolution will hold up at any size without getting blurry. Quick and dirty: model As for the lights, they look good to me. Why do you need to enclose them in geometry?

That model looks great!

Two conventions that really help sell a night shot are bluish lighting (which you have) and sharp contrasts. Check out the night shots in Prince of Egypt. They're not really dark images at all but they do have those two factors that makes you immediately think 'night time.' Our eyes adjust to limited light a lot better than real or CG cameras do so you have to kind of mimic that. When I did my Crow image, I only used a little blue for the bounce light and used an extremely hot streetlight-type light for the contrast. I did something between these two for the ill-fated Noz & Schrak (nee Grakk). Don't be afraid to crank the intensity of your rim light(s) up well past 100%. I just realized when I looked for that image on my site that almost all of the stuff I've worked on have been at night or have a primarily dark pallette. Never noticed that before. Maybe it's because I have a dark soul.

The penguin from Wallace and Grommit! Very nice.

Congratulations, Daniel! Well done.

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. The toon render looks great. The CitH image is awesome too. I don't remember seeing that before. The fact that people thought it was hand-drawn is quite a compliment.

If you have transparency and/or reflections, it's obviously going to pick up the background color. Either change the BG color in the camera or build a set for it to reflect. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the problem.

Very nice film! Great ending. He should have taken the blue pill.

Congrats! Well deserved!

Beautiful work!

Magnificent image. I thought it was a CG/real life composite at first. As for animation, you could use a hybrid solution like they did in "Bunny." Use radiosity to render the image maps of the room and then composite the character. You would have to fake the bounce lights and shadows. Not impossible with light lists.

Welcome back to the Babbage Patch!