You Can't Please Everybody...

I'm living my life live yours

I don't even like rapping fast, but that's how the world come to me

Talk to me sideways brotha that's your ass

Slow it down, this that stuff that'll make you call your momma

Say hey I'm sorry for begging for all them clothes you couldn't afford

And this the type of stuff that'll make you call your rap partner

And say I'm sorry I'm awkward, my fault for messin' up the tours

I hated all the attention so I ran from it

Screw it if we did, but I hope we ain't lose no fans from it

I'm a grown-ass kid, you know ain't never cared about no damn money

Why do we try so hard to be stars, just to dodge comments?

What it ain’t, what it is interweb? It's everybody's favorite concept artist David Houston signing in once again. So the quarter is over *whew!* I hope all my fellow SCADies made it out unscathed...myself included! I had a rough go with 3 studio classes on my plate and believe me I didn’t catch any mercy. It’s tough, especially combined with some personal issues I’ve been dealing with all quarter. I really felt the heat. So to anybody who felt I didn’t bring it enough this time (both group mates and instructors), I’m sorry. I did the best that I could, and that’s all you can ever ask of anybody.  You just have to remember to keep your motor running, and keep digging. Shake it off and get back in there next quarter. But let's all worry about that when the grades come out; right now pat your selves on the back for getting after it all quarter!  So before I enjoy a well-earned rest (but not too long, senior studio goes beyond the quarters, son!), I got just a little bit of concept art to share.

 

What we have here is my final child for the quarter. El Nina Del Agua, or the water child in Amurican...*ahem*.  As usual, the bullet children need to be easily recognizable by the player, so I wanted something that really popped when you saw it. Angelica said she wanted a fish bowl/ water jar in some capacity for our water runt. So I had my jump off point. I kept that in mind when looking into her design, I took different kinds of aquatic creatures and lure into consideration as I tried to figure out what would be a cool way to display our water child. I initially thought of maybe giving the water child some sort of fading water transparency, where she would flip into liquid state and fall into a jug like some sort of water sprite. But then I started to worry that that effect may be too out of scope for what we had going for the game. One has to take scope and resources into consideration when designing, so I quickly threw that idea out the window.

I then got to examining mythology, and I thought about the water barer Aquarius from the zodiac. It seemed perfect, so I began thumbing through different illustrations of Aquarius’ representation.  I found one image of a very airy and wispy wave, and got inspired. I thought maybe it would be cool if the water child rode around on a wave. So I took that into account as if she was supplying herself transportation by directly manipulating water from her jar (thus integrating in Angelica’s idea). Since she was surfing, I went into thinking that maybe she could use a nice rebellious hair style, so I kind of took a little punk flavor and spiked it a little bit.  Aquarius is considered a masculine sign (possibly on the account that traditionally Aquarius is depicted as a male), so I wanted to keep it short and kind of shaved in the back. As with the other unique children, she has wave earrings to give her a nice finishing touch.

Well kiddies, that’s it for me for a while. The Bala squad and I are going to keep working hard on some stuff, so that there will be plenty of neat things to show and talk about in the future. I’ll do my best not to disappoint. So in case I don’t hear from you,  Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Chirstmas, and a Happy New Year!

Wishing you wealth, health, and insight! See you all in 2014!

When 16, err 30, ain't enough...

I feel right at home y'all, sitting right at home all,

Kelly green with envy while I'm jelly beans descending

Into the palm of a child, looks up at mama and smile

With such a devilish grin, like "where the hell have you been?”

She yelling that selling’s a sin, well so is telling young men

That selling is a sin, if you don’t offer new ways to win

A dolphin gon shake his fin, regardless if he gets in

Or out of water, most important thing for him is to swim

And Flipper didn’t hold his nose, so why shall I hold my tongue?

Once again it is I, David Houston, back once more with another entry into the blog-o-sphere! SO I hope everybody is out there taking care of themselves as the weather and the academic calendar turns cold! 9 weeks down, one to go kiddies. I know it’s tough and everybody is tired, but you got to keep going and do what you do best! We’re all artist, and we’ve all succeeded before in tight spots (mark of the SCAD student!), so there’s no reason to think you won’t again! I know, I know, here goes Dave with that rah-rah stuff again. But what can I say, I’m a positive guy so I try to share that energy with everybody. Keep working hard everyone.  

As usual, team Bala has been in the lab tough cooking up all kinds of tasty game morsels for the end of the quarter playable, and things are looking pretty good. Me? I’m still carrying out the status quo for concepts and I’ve got a few snippets to share with everybody this evening! I’ve been working on the children some more.

Now, in case anyone forgot from last time, we basically established that there are two sets of kids; generic brats and bullet brats. Narratively speaking, children are servants to the boss witch of the area, DW (dream witch) collects the little candy muncher to lure said Boss out.  Generics are plain, look pretty much the same and are to be collected by Dreamy Witch. Bullet children have a unique look and supply DW with new bullets. Last week, I went into showing off the wind child, this week I have the shield kid and the generic kid. Lest start with the generic child first.

Not much to really say about this little dude, he’s generic! That’s kind of the definition of the word…you know…basic *shrug*. Now, there is a challenge that is in common with all the children, and that is establishing a dynamic behavior. We decided as a group that they probably shouldn’t just be sitting there on the stage like yard posts. So I’ve been trying to come up with actions that make the children readily identifiable. I also want them to make sense, after all, why would a child just be sitting in the middle of nowhere? In the case of generic kid I gave him a ball that he’s tossing around. So I guess that what generic kids are doing is playing. (Now that I think about it, that makes DW seem really creepy being how she snatches kids while they are out playing…yeah…-_-;) 

 

The shield child is seen doing a handstand on the turtle shell for three reasons. One is the group decided on a shell as the symbol for our shield power up. We didn’t want to simply give the child some type of shield since we figured that would be too typical. Also since it kind of manifest itself on DW as a magic circle, ward type thingy we didn’t want it to be so 1 to 1 and give the child the same thing. Two, symbolically a handstand is a display of strength. Since turtle shells are looked at as structurally powerful objects, I thought it was fitting if the master of the shield was also strong too. And finally, I just thought it looked cool! I placed runes on the shield to still make it appear as a magical item. I gave her matching earrings that are in the vein of her power( much like I did with wind child). It’s a theme I think I will use on all of the unique children. I also tried to make her appear mildly tomboyish, seeing as how she represents a tough and pushy type power (at least that’s how I see shields!).

On a side note, I’ve managed over 30 general concepts to this point! I say general because those are the ones that I have drawn in some capacity or another via rough sketches to fully fleshed out concept designs. I’m pretty proud of that considering we’ve only really been working on this project officially for around 7 weeks. I’m pretty excited about it, and I only hope I can keep working hard and carry my weight! Well onward people, see you next time!