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!