June 14 was the date of my final exam, and that exam was computing which I'm pretty sure I've failed but that doesn't bother as it doesn't matter whether I've passed or failed seeing as I already have a place at Futureworks starting this September.

Now I've got a month of free time to sharpen up my skills in programming and art. I have to discipline myself though, and use this time wisely.

I'll write a bit more whenever I can.

You know what?

Screw this. I'll update when I want to. I've been trying to learn a lot about life drawing. I procrastinate too much.

C#

Well, I'm not going to bother writing all this out again as  I mistakenly posted this in the game log section. I'll make it short and snappy.

I've been learning C#, in preparation for my course at Futureworks University. So far, so good. It's similar to C++, another language I've been trying to teach myself, I had to put that on hold though. So much to do, so little time.

And this will count as my one thing a day.

Lithium batteries

I was browsing gizmag.com today and came across an interesting article on Lithium-air batteries. I guess I could count this as something I've learned today. At the time of writing this I'm still reading through it. A quick skim shows that these lithium-air batteries could provide energy densities (don't know what that is) up three times as more than a conventional lithium-ion battery.

Just something interesting that I'll probably read into a bit more.

A reminder

I must say, I'm ashamed that I already forgot about this whole 'one thing a day' I posted only a few days ago.

So, I'll try and remember from now on. One new thing I learned today;

I learned that 8 hours of sleep isn't actually necessary and that some people (and I have a feeling I'm one of them) require only 4 to 5 hours of sleep. Which is great. More time to do stuff, never really was fond of sleeping.

Excellent news!

I went to an interview at Futureworks University on Thursday about the Diploma in Gane Design and they pretty much accepted me. Which is completely awesome, I get to do a year of the diploma and if I pass I can have a go at the degree course. I am awfully happy, I showed them my portfolio during the interview and I think that helped me guarantee a place on the course.

So, from now until September I'll be finishing off Denbigh High School and building on all of my skills.

Huzzah!

One new thing everyday

I know I do learn something new almost everyday but I thought I'd say writing what it is that I found out today. I'll be doing this everyday from now on, for content and also just to practice touch-typing.

One thing I learned today: I found out about the HADOPI law which is now currently being enforced in France. It's a law to prevent, or lessen, piracy. That's a big, complicated topic and I'm not sure who I side with, if anyone.

University interview in a few days, I really must get a portfolio together. Very quickly.

So I caved in

And got a Twitter account. Which is here; http://twitter.com/NasserCdC

Mainly because a lot of the big game developers have Twitter accounts and it's good to follow them and see what hey're up to. They also provide some educational videos on game design, so that's a bonus.

A minor thing that ticked me off was the character limit when entering your full name. It's limited to 20 characters only. So I had to squish my name into the box which was slightly annoying.

Also, the character limit on each tweet is ridiculous. I know it's meant to be for small thoughts and whatnot but damn, watching the indicator on the top right going down was like watching a time bomb about to go off. Amusing but annoying.

Moving away from all that, I've started listening to gaming podcasts a lot. I just enjoy listening to people talk about a hobby that I enjoy greatly. And the discussions in some of these podcasts really delve into important sections of the industry, and hearing the differing opinions of the podcast crew is just a great way of gaining perspective on things. I've listened to the Joystiq podcast, 4 Guys 1 Up, and The Brainy Gamer. All great podcasts that go on for longer than an hour, which is great.

Now, I must remind myself to start writing my personal statement and do more art!

It may be overkill

But it's fucking awesome. That is three monitors in Eyefinity. Just got a second monitor for my birthday and I'll be setting it up later today. You can never have enough space.

Man, this would qualify as a "tweet". I should write something more...

Ah, my visit to De Montfort University. Last week (if my memory serves me right) I went to an open day at said University. I went to go see their game related courses. The two being "Game Art Design" and "Animation Design". Both seemed more catered to the creative side of things, which is expected but I was hoping to cover a broader base. And most of the things they teach there are things that can be developed individually without having to pony up £3000.

But I digress. Futureworks, a university in Manchester that I visited earlier was more to my liking. They seemed to lightly cover some programming as well as scripting. While also focusing a lot on the creative side of making games; drawing, modelling, texturing etc.

I still haven't applied to any of these yet, although I should before March. The thing is, I doubt I'd be able to achieve the required UCAS Tarrif points. On the other hand, if I have an exceptional portfolio I could be slot in to one of the courses without having to go through a foundation course.

Or I could just skip University all together, and hone my talents on my own. That would require a lot of perseverance, motivation, passion, dedication, and many other inspiring words.

Decisions, decisions...

Kiss me, you frog

Just got back from watching The Princess And The Frog at the cinema, so I thought it would be a good idea to write how I felt about it.

So, one of the big things about this movie that I won't touch on, because I really don't have a solid opinion on it, is the whole princess being of african-american descent. To be honest, it didn't really matter to me at all, it's not like I was going to see the movie because of that reason alone. The situation was similar to that of Obama being elected, except on a much smaller scale. I'll just stop there.

Anyway, the other factor that helped hype the movie up was its return to traditional 2D animation. And it really is great, Disney definitely hasn't lost its touch. The characters are extremely well animated, and that special Disney feel is still present. There is much to say about how great the animation, how engrossing the New Orleans backdrops are, how colourful and magical most of the scenes are, but really I wouldn't do it justice.

As for the story, I rather enjoyed it.It basically takes the classic "princess kisses frog" and adds some neat twists and unique characters, and some voodooism . It was enjoyable from start to finish, nothing revolutionary or out of this world just a neat, warm, well told story.

Well, that was my half-arsed review of The Princess And The Frog. My final thoughts, definitely a must watch if you're a fan of the traditional Disney movies. Or if you've got kids; they'd definitely enjoy a magical movie like this.

"Endorphins 11" progress

Well this movie that me and 10 other guys from the forums is coming along nicely. Although there has been a change in the members, certain members were replaced because of their lack of activity. Good news is most of the environments are done, and done extremely well. And we've got War Horse working on the script.

I've been assigned to getting the character models done, after I found out a way to export models straight from GTA4. It's great stuff, although a bit creepy. Here's a quick picture of the progress:

This was just a quick test in setting up the hands and head. All of it works properly and I personally think the hands are very convincing. Still some scaling needs to be done and the rest of the model finished. Makes it really easy though, one you've got the whole mesh to customize within Max. Although the models themselves when opened in Max are quite complex, I strip them down to the bare essentials, so to speak.

I do this simply by detaching and deleting certain surfaces from the mesh. Then I export the selected section as an .obj file. I then open up a standard character in Endorphin and start modifying him, by importing these .obj files onto certain parts of the characters body.

This tethers them to the root node of the specific section. So that when the hand moves, the .obj moves with it. Easy to understand and implement.  Yeah, so that's pretty much it.

Just installed my new 5870

XFX Radeon 5870 to be precise. Haven't gamed yet but damn, I can't wait to.

Will also be great when I'm using 3ds max and the like.

All thanks to my awesome parents and family. ATI Eyefinity here I come!

Space Ghost Coast to Coast

God damn, I never knew how amazing this show was back when I was like 10 years old, all of the jokes just flew over my head. But now I really can't stop laughing while watching episodes on Youtube. It really is hilarious stuff.

Part of what makes it so funny is the god-awful animation, ripped straight from the original 60's show, paired up with a great voice acting cast. This results in some really awkward but hysterical movements from Space ghost and the crew. There's also just so many absurd lines you can pull from a single episode that never get old.

This is a great episode;

And there are many, many more.

God I love this show.

There goes the big one

I'm a bit late but what the hell. My exam was at 9:00AM on Friday the 22nd of January. I felt I did alright but who knows, I'll have to wait until I get my results. Enough about school though, that shit is boring.

Eleven people from the Naturalmotion community are collaborating on a project called Endorphin's eleven. It's basically just Oceans Eleven but using Endorphin, a unique animation program; http://www.naturalmotion.com/index.htm

Anyway, I've made about two environments already that everyone really liked so I'm pleased about that.

What else is there to talk about? Ah yes, my 3D modelling. I've started working on my second prototype model using 3DS Max. It's quite hard though, getting the smooth shape I've drawn using photoshop. I should probably also start modelling more things such as everyday objects, maybe try to speed model them to increase my levels of productivity.

Web designing, there's another topic I like wasting my time learning about. There's a lot of cool things you can do with web pages. I intend, like I said earlier this month, to make my page look good. I like to think of this blog as a sort of testbed for developing my designing skills.

Ah well, as I said before; Forward!

Here comes the big one

Yeah, so the A level exams are here.

Thankfully, I've only got one "invitation" this year. It's an ICT exam. Shouldn't be too hard. It's really just remembering what it says on the damn curriculum.

Anyway, I sort of promised earlier that this site would look a bit more original and better. But I've been keeping my self busy with school and coursework. It seems as if I have so many hours in the day but can never manage to get what I want done. I really need to work a lot quicker.

I was linked to a rather awesome blog of a Mr.Ottley. http://ryanottley.com/archives/category/general/page/2

He's a comic book artist and his work is inspirational, to me at least. I've noticed he has something called a "draw night" every couple of days or so. Where basically he rounds up a bunch of his friends and they spend the night drawing anything. Sounds like a great idea to really get the creative aspect of yourself going.

I should probably adopt that technique, although my art is nowhere near his level, it would be great exercise for my imagination.

Now all I need are some real friends! Ha!

I had a dream and an idea

And a scary one at that, but not scary as in "monsters" or "ghosts" but a much more realistic fear. It was a dream where the culmination of all my lies that I've told in my waking life came right back round and bit me in the arse.

There was one specific part that got to me though, I was in what seemed like a waiting room with screens hanging off the walls displaying golden lines of text. I looked up at one of them, the one situated above and behind the head of a secretary sitting at a desk. On it I saw what seemed like a list, upon closer inspection I realised it was a lost of all the things I had illegally downloaded off the internet.

Now I know that may seem funny, and not really scary at all but for some reason it had a profound effect on me. I sort of had that hollow feeling of dread, where you know something bad  is about to happen but you're powerless to stop it. And then there was all the business to with all our family becoming financially bankrupt but I don't think I'll delve into it anymore.

It was a weird dream, as for the idea, well that's very much unrelated but I'll save it for another post as I know I'll go overboard trying to explain it.

Best snow day. Ever

So, school was closed again today. And I also saved my brother's life my from the cold clutches of freezing water.

Here's some copypasta from a forum I post on:

So the whole incident lasted about 10 seconds but boy it felt a lot longer than that. Me and my brother were standing on our frozen pond which was directly in the gaze of the sun and was slowly melting. Cracks were propagating from the edges, separating the sheet of ice into small, fragile segments. My little brother started hopping on the edge of one of these sheets and I jokingly stepped onto it too. That's when it gave way.

I grabbed my brother, half submerged in the freezing water, by the shoulder and pulled him up and out. My weight on the ice I was standing on was too much and I felt my self sliding quickly into the cold, murky water. I still had some of my footing left so I pushed on and threw myself on to the next sheet, pulling my brother along with me. We were almost at the bank, I would not be a victim of this pond I told myself and pushed on to final sheet of ice. I hauled my brother onto the haven that was the bank, just as the ice below me cracked and splintered. I crawled onto the bank, legs battered and bruised, all smelly and cold, but victorious. 


So yes, this made my day. Probably the most fun I've had in weeks. I'll probably post evidence of the cracked pond if I can get the camera working properly. 

It's complicated

I always tend to make things more hard for myself by either over-complicating a simple solution or over-simplifying a tough one.

This happened again today as I was working on my prototype lamp model (which I'll be posting in the art section). I was figuring out a way in which I could model the part which connects the arm to the base. I thought and thought and then I finally settled on using splines.

Big mistake. These things will give you wondrous results if you know how to use them, what with the ability to have full control over every curve and corner of the object, but put them in unexperienced hands (my hands) and that's when shit hits the fan. I spent at least two hours just trying to wrap my head around how to use the damn options in the sidebar!

After three hours of toying around and many sighs and expletives from yours truly, I finally settled on using a standard sphere, chopping it in half using a boolean operation and applying an edit poly modifier. End result; just what I wanted.

I shall not give up on splines though, because they are an extremely powerful tool.

In other news, it snowed heavily today and school was closed. Finally, I can get some proper education!

In other other news, the site is coming together nicely. I've set up two extra pages that I've linked too (tabs at the top). And I'm happy with the result so far, planning on getting some background pictures in as well using my above average photoshop skills.

Toodle-doo!

I really do love technology

It's just so fascinating reading about all the latest advancements in technology, and all the effort and imagination that went into the design of said technology. Computing hardware is what grips me the most though, even though I don't quite understand what is going on, reading about it all just astounds me. I spend hours just browsing sites such as arstechnica looking for articles on the latest innovations in computer hardware and tech in general. And I also spend a lot of time on that site reading up on science articles. 

They both interest me greatly, in fact one of the things I always used to say when I was a kid was, "I want to be a scientist when I grow up!". It was a dream of mine, but now you'll find that I aspire to be work in the games industry, be it an artist, animator, or 3D modeler, I hope to some day make it in.

Anyway just a random rant, no real flow to it but whatever, I felt I needed to write something. Now to get back to working on this site.

Redecorating

I know this makes for an awfully mundane post but I've finally discovered how to get tabbed pages on this site, thanks to a google search and a very helpful person I found during that search who posted the code.

Anyway, I'll be working on redesigning it these coming days. I won't try and be too ambitious with it and go for a complete overhaul, although that would make a fun project I don't think I'll have the time right now. Like I said earlier maybe just an Art section, and a Games section. 

Shouldn't be too bad as I know my HTML pretty good, and then I've got the gigantic resource called the internet at my fingertips. And here we... go.

Happy New Year!

Standard happy new year post.

Time to start afresh, got a whole other year ahead of us. I must use this time wisely, as should others.

First mission, editing the html on this site and starting a "game log" section where I keep all records of games I've played. And an Art section where I'll post all my work. Maybe even a review section.

Forward!