Tackling the 2D space, game on!

This summer I have realized why finns are considered such hardworking nation by stereotype. Our summer is usually so terrible, it’s best spent on the computer. Like last year, I actually got an entire game done in few months, because of that weather of ours. This year is actually a whole other story, because, holy crap, it’s actually not terrible out there….I am confused. You can pretty much look at my tan and calculate the wasted working potential…!

But, it has not been all sparkling and strawberries in the sun (I would by now be dead by the sunburns if I did that daily!). I have actually been tackling at something; before this,  I haven’t considered myself as much of an illustrator or further more, a concept artist. I was one of those kids who always made friends with the best drawing kid in the class, then compared what I had in the paper and what they had….. 99% of the time that resulted to a rage quit. You can probably imagine, that it did develop into quite the trauma…which I really even haven’t tried to properly untangle, not until this day.

But you know what, game on. Deep down I find drawing a fun activity, and in the last months, I have taken as much time as I can to develop my 2D side. If you are like me, I can’t recommend this website, ctrl+paint enough. The guy running that site is really clever at breaking difficult concepts down to more simple pieces…that and he has a really calming voice! =) I am about halfway through his tutorial library, and can already see a positive change. I’m not exclusively concentrating on characters or environment, but try to reach a good basic level on both. The ideal situation is to reach the level where I can do all my own concept art, which later will be turned into models. There is still distance to get there, but now I don’t have that feeling of hopelessness and fear of white paper anymore. Here is a simple practice project to “feast your eyes upon”. I’ll start adding actual concepts to the gallery, once I feel the quality is about right.

ps. Happy midsummer everyone! Remember, lake fish is no good for sushi, over and out. 😉

No more rage quits. It’s all about patience.

The day I made friends with Zbrush

Yikes. I guess the pact is sealed. Finally I had the chance to sit down and do some serious sculpting, and it really starts to look like I can deal with Zbrush and its logig and even enjoy what I’m doing.  I was supposed to study Zbrush further in the spring, but then we came up with the Hot Doggety!-concept and started quickly working on it to have it done in time for the Assembly festival. Now with more free time again on my hands, I have dedicated a major part of it to finally grab a firm hold of this software. So far I have gotten a good understanding of organic techniques, painting and basic retopologizing workflow. As the UI really starts to sink into memory, sculpting has become extremely addictive!

Here is for your amusement a quick render about my first bigger and more organized ztool. (You can check out the textured final render in the gallery section.)

Happy zbrushing everyone!

A quick Zbrush internal render before texturing

Hot Doggety gets featured by Blendernation!

A while back I uploaded my dachshund model to Sketchfab for portfolio purposes. I had no idea this would/could happen, but the awesome people at Sketchfab decided to honor my model first as a staff pick, and then it was also featured in Blendernation as part of Sketchfab blog, which introduces their favorite Blender-made models of the week. You can check the blog here.

Guys, I am incredibly flattered. This really made my monday, and made me realize how bad I want to finish the official appstore version of the game already. This is not really a new project post, but I just felt like I want to mention why am smiling right now. Pleasant monday to everybody out there!

Hot Doggety scores 2nd place in Assembly 2015 Gamedev!

What a weekend, wow.

I am proud to announce that Team Hot Doggety! has taken second place in the Assembly game dev. compo. As the results were in, it seemed it had been a battle between two titans: Running Beer by Kaljameri Games and Hot Doggety! by Team Mäyris (trans.: nickname for dachshund.) We were very moved by the spontaneous laughter of the Assembly crowd  when they saw dachsie and want to thank everyone for their support.

Team Mäyris (Jaakko Lindvall, Jenny Tirkkonen, Ville Mutka, Juuso Heikkilä & Heini Kärkkäinen) had an amazing weeked. Over and out.

Hot Doggety! – now competing at Assembly 2015 game. dev.

Yowza!

I am proud to announce that our little dachsie game has officially made it to the Assembly summer 2015 game dev. competition. You can check it out here.

We gave the game the english name of “Hot Doggety!” (in finnish he would be just “Mäyris”). If you happen to be visiting the event, come say hi to us! You can recognize us by the dachshund t-shirts we were stupid in enough to actually go ahead and print.

See you at Assembly!

Dog training -graphicist style

Spidey knows how I feel

Hey! Has everyone had a nice summer so far? Sure looks like it  from all those sunny, paradise-like images my Facebook is flooded with. But: I do not envy you people -I have been busy on working something very cool, which I am really close now of showing. Aseembly summer 2015 is approaching, and our dachshund game is nearly complete. 90% of animations are done, 50% of sound effects, only few items require extra coding still. A gorgeous UI by a friend of mine only waits to be implemented. Soon our little imaginary pet is fully trained and good to go. It has been cool to see how people around us got excited about our idea and wanted to team with us: We have besides me handling the 3D and the programmer doing the code, a dedicated UI-artist and a sound designer and even a voice actor and a composer who did a special track for a part of the game, for which anything readymade just didn’t get the job done. I have been mostly lately busy with animation, tons of it. At first, my cursing probably could be heard all across the neighborhood, because there were so many things new to me and it was frustrating to pick up nearly all the possible animation tools to get that final feeling of special “finery” short videogame animations has to have…….But like ripping off a bandaid, it only hurted for a while. I guess it is not so bad when you get used to it, and know most of the tricks in the book….don’t really find myself cursing all that loud anymore, and could consider it would alright to do a run cycle here and a jump there in my future job, and would not lose sleep over it.

But, I still wish not to show off any footage, although I could. Why? Because I want you to come to Assembly and see for yourself! 3D artist should not lift her own tail, but I dare to say; this game of ours became a sparkly little thing. If you can’t check it out at Assembly, it will be soon after available on Google play store, and windows store is a possibility too. Ios is bit of a mystery, because I have understood  from the programmer that the tools to make an Ios-build cannot be accessed for free. Maybe it’s not even about the money, but the feeling that we are not as welcome.

Anyway, keep taking those vacation pics, I keep animating and smelling bad- and I would not change it for anything! =)

The dachshund project: Let’s take the dog for a walk!

Heyy, look at that sunshine: weather is nice and warm, what are we doing? Why, it’s time to take the dog for a walk ,of course!  So Mr. Dachshund is finally rigged. His rig is a dirty hack of Blenders Rigify-biped, brutally forced into a quadrupedal pose by removing and adding bones and reversing the knee poletargets for correct bending. Blender’s animation tools were also new to me , so that took some practice too to get it right. The lights or the scene are a quick setup, and only for testing purposes. -But look at him go, looking dandy mr. Dachshund!

Dachshund: walk cycle from Jenny Tirkkonen on Vimeo.

(Ps. You might notice there is a cut in the dog. It has something to do with what we are going to use him for in the game. If you hit the right trail of thoughts, you might now know what will happen in the game!)

Spring is here and Mr. Dachshund wants to say hi

So, there is a small chance that I promised you guys some realistic sculpting and…it might have turned into an animal related mobile game featuring  a cartoon dog, thanks to a late night conversation with my best programmer buddy. Umn, whoops.  But then again, when a creative idea strikes, it tends to steal your mind! So everyone, meet Mr Dachshund. I am not comfortable telling what kind of character he will be, because it will be funnier to see him in action. Still, I thought it would be cool to share a sneak peek of the small fella. I am also doing a rare deed and sharing a sketch of him. Besides drawing frequently has really helped me to understand the 2D space and nature of character design, I’m still shy sharing illustrations publicly, although this won’t be a permanent state of things. Rome just was not build in day.

What is happening next: I’m planning to keep the look really cartoony, but we will research the possibility to use a normal map, although it probably will still be too expensive for the cellphone technology. Maybe some toying around with the ao to get a good basis for the texturing process, and then negotiate with the programmer should the light be baked into the diffuse. Also maybe optimise the model slightly, just to be on the safe side. We both are not super experienced with these things, but definitely eager, and believe, that this is what counts. So stay tuned, once you see what we are gonna do with this fella, you are sure to have a good laugh!

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Phase 1: basic geometry in place

A quick sketch of what I’m after.

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