Itemania Now Available on iTunes!

Itemania actually came out on the appStore about 3 weeks ago, but I’ve been so busy attending to the game that I’ve forgotten to post about it here on my personal blog.

There have been a few reviews of the game, and so far they’ll all been really positive.   The game only costs $0.99, so if you’re looking for a cheap ($0.99!), fast, and fun game for the iPhone/iTouch, please check out Itemania!

Itemania on the appStore (yappler link for those who don’t have iTunes installed)

Game Reviews:
CasualGamerChick Review
Frapstr Review
Flytrap Games Review

Itemania!

My lack of consistent updates/art has been largely due to working on some group projects on the side…but, I can finally talk about what we’ve been working on now that we’ve finished our first indie game, Itemania!

Screen Shot 1

It’s a hidden object game aimed at casual audiences.  We’ve introduced a slight twist to the genre by creating full 3d levels where the player can rotate and zoom to find items.  Itemania should hopefully be available on the AppStore around July 31st or August 8!  To keep up to date, please feel free to connect with us through FaceBook and Twitter!

Links:

AniCombo
Itemania
Facebook
Twitter

Somehow I managed to nab a spot in the Top 75 3d Finalists!  I really wasn’t expecting this, so even if I don’t make it to Round 2, that’s ok!  I was able to count 11 (including myself) HXSD entries in the 3d Finalists list, but there may be a couple more that I missed!  Pretty good turnout for HXSD

Congratulations to everyone else who made it!

See the 3d Finalists Here

See the 2d Finalists Here

Beauty Shot

Presentation Shot

Concept Sheet

Construction Sheet

Texture Sheet

Somehow I managed to finish in time!  I was working right up until the very last second…as I’m sure many other artists were!  I had some difficulties submitting my final images, but everything turned out ok in the end.

I would have liked to have had an extra day or two to work on the presentation.  Everything was so rushed, especially the beauty shot!  Oh well…better luck next year, I suppose.

Big thanks to the great guys over at 8 Monkey Labs for releasing Marmoset to the public.  I don’t know what I would have done for rendering since it’s been so long since I’ve tried to render anything!  I recommend checking it out if you haven’t already!

Recently, I’ve been able to get back into doing production art at work again, but there’s something to be said about working in the MMO genre and focusing on armor “pieces” rather than the character as a whole.   It’s been a while since I’ve made an entire character, from concept to render, and doing so with current gen technology has revealed a few holes in my workflow.  I also realized that my skillets are still behind the technology curve…I think I know just about the bare minimum necessary to create a normal mapped character!  At the very least, I’m glad to have stuck with it until the very end because now I think I have a better idea as to how I can improve my weak areas.

Best of luck to all those who entered, and congrats to those who finished!

I haven’t uploaded any progress on my entry in a while, but here’s where I am at the moment.  There’s still a lot more work to do in the coming week, but I think I’m on track to finishing by next week (though another extension would be nice!).

Presentation Shot Test

Beauty Shot Test

Instrument Rough Model

I’ve been second guessing the overall design of my character, so I built a quick rig and posed her to see what kind of silhouettes I could get.  The rig was pretty sloppy, which made it difficult to pose her correctly (terrible deformations!) , but I think this was worth the time because now I have a better idea of what needs to be changed.

I started off building a guqin/guzheng hybrid, but it was looking really odd, so I decided to go back to a more conventional guqin.  I was thinking about adding some guzheng-ish frets though to make it look like she could play the instrument horizontally or vertically, but that also means I’ll have to add some finger picks too.

My goal is to start baking my maps this weekend!

I’m going to have to call this body/outfit “done,” even though it’s not, if I want to finish this thing on time….which I probably won’t   Her head positioning and neck are really bothering me, so I’ll be fixing that as well as some other proportional issues, but as far as detailing out the high res goes, this is pretty much it.

My entry probably isn’t the most exciting of WIPs (especially in comparison to a lot of the other killer work being done for this competition), but I think things will come together more once I get to the texturing/lighting stage. I’m planning on relying on other things aside from a heavy normal map, but we’ll see how well that goes in the end.

The sculpt  on her hair is just temporary geometry to make it easier to build the low poly alpha hair.

Lately I’ve been struggling with the design of her instrument.  It’s pretty hard to think of a cool pose with her sitting down playing a guqin, and having her play such an instrument vertically doesn’t make any sense, so I’ve been thinking of changing it to a guzheng, or perhaps some sort of guqin/guzheng hybrid.  I suppose I should do some pose sketches and decide then.  A guzheng might also give her a stronger presence, which may fit the theme of the contest better.

This isn’t the latest iteration, but I forgot to post this the other day.  Progress is going pretty slow, but at least concept wise, I think all that’s left is to re-design her instrument to make it a little more fantastic and unique looking.  I figured I would work out all the little details when I get further along with the model (though I can see this backfiring on me in many ways).  Still a long way to go!

I know I haven’t been posting much, but I’ve been pretty busy with other things.  I’ll be posting something about what’s been keeping me preoccupied for the past several months within the next few weeks.  In the meantime, here’s my Dominance War IV entry.  Hopefully I manage to finish it this year!

I decided to join the Chinese forum HXSD this time around instead of going with 3dTotal again. I was mainly attracted by the fact that their forum logo and colors fit the kind of character I wanted to make better than other forums. My Chinese is pretty bad, but fortunately the famous Fan Yang is kind enough to help me out with translating (even though she should be entering the competition too!). 谢谢您姐姐！

You can see my thread here, but you have to be registered and logged in in order to see any images.  I’ll be posting updates here as I have them

We’ve had a lot of snow this past week.  From what I’ve been told, the area hasn’t seen this much snow in the past 12 or 13 years.  Driving around here has been pretty dangerous since the Seattle area isn’t very well prepared for snow.