Here is the final image that I did.  Seemed to work out ok, but I wish I had put a little more time into it.

I look forward to doing more competitions soon.  I enjoy the short time frames and the restrictions that are given for the piece to get done.

Really makes you think about the quickest and best ways to get something accomplished.

Just a little more on the model I have been working on.

More coming soon… Only 7 more days in the competition.

I have been working on this competiton piece so that I can have it ready by the end of the deadline.

Finished most of the crab, and decided that I was going to start working on the weapon.

Here is the crab.

Next is the cannon.  I am using a cuttlefish and its ink as the projectile for the urchin!

I figured that fish would use a human motif on their war vessles, so Neptune is the figure on the front.

More soon!

I am doing a little competition over at NZCGI, a site run by one of the tutors at Media Design School.. it sounded like loads of fun so I thought I would give it a shot… The theme is an animal with a weapon attached to it.  My first sketch is below.

I may still decide to do a high tech weapon, but I am also exploring the idea of making it a bit more piratey.

The coconut crab will be carrying this big canon, or high tech siege weapon and then a smaller fiddler crab will be the gunner on the back. I am hoping to do it in 3D and then it will be pretty easy to do either gun and just add it as an attachment.  Loads of fun!

Until Next Time!

I just added the Beast of Bray Road up to the Cryptolicious site. Work is busy still, not the slow down that I was hoping and expecting.

I guess I shouldn’t complain, I know of too many people out of work, I feel blessed to still have something to go to every day.

Work is also progressing slowly on my side projects, as Medaware has taken a huge amount of time to keep going and updated.  I am also working on our family blog PorterAdventures, but mainly only that for friends and family.

I know I haven’t been active with locomotives and that bothers me as well. Lots of good folks not getting a great product irritates me. I was very hopeful when working with the Cascade Game Foundry crew that we would be able to deliver some interesting products.  I was personally let down by not producing a product while I was with the team.  Motivation has been a huge problem since then. I have been doing little bits and pieces. 

This is an SD24 I have been trying to find reference for, but have failed miserably in finding good cab views.  I guess I can finish out the outside of it and then just work on the inside later.  When I was with Microsoft we would have just flown out to a railroad museum and taken the appropreiate pictures.  I was a little spoiled I guess.  Now I need to hunt this stuff down online as I am literally at least 12,000 miles away from a museum that would have that type of locomotive in it.

What I have done with this is to use the blueprint as a texture to make sure my geo is lining up with that actual features.  It’s also a good way to build things in place, seeing exactly where it’s supposed to go cause you have the blueprint right there to work off of.  Also it allows me to make sure my model is going to look good texture wize once I am done.. if I can see all the details, and it’s all fitting on the texture sheet, everything will be golden.

More later!

Finally had my latest class graduate and most of them are already employed. That is a good sign. One of their projects is a finalist in the Crowbar awards.
This has taken a huge amount of my time and energy. Additionally, I had been working full out on getting Medaware started. E-Commerce is not my forte.

I have done some personal art in the guise of teaching exercises, which has been great. Overall, though I haven’t been enormously active here, I have been extremely active overall.
More stuff coming up soon, now that I will have some time not grading until 9pm every night! Woo Hoo!

We have finally moved into our new place in Whangaparaoa and moved our PorterAdventures site over to WordPress from Blogspot.  The problems we were having with Blogspot was adding images and the amount of time it took to get anything accomplished on that site.  Go on over to that page to see the new house and our view.  Click the image below to go there.

In addition to the new place I have finished a Skunkape.  For those outside of the U.S. the Skunkape is like Bigfoot, but in the Florida swamps.  The are supposed to be slightly smaller than the Pacific Northwest cousin, but smelly like a skunk.  Skunks have a very (VERY) distinctive smell.  What is odd about anything smelling like a skunk in the Florida Everglades is that skunks wouldn’t be able to traverse the swamp easily as the water is anywhere from knee high to well above a grown persons head.  What is making that smell there… This is what some people think it is.

I will be adding him up to Cryptolicious soon.

Also, I am working on a project with an old friend and hopefully I will have stuff to show from that once it gets published.  Sorry for the spotty updates.  I am still working on building the new course.  It’s a bit more work than I had anticipated and completely different from what I am used to and what I have been doing for the last 15 years.  No worries, as the Kiwi say, “She’ll be right” soon enough.

Getting ready to move to the Whangaparaoa peninsula next week, so the packing is getting underway.  We are extremely excited to move over to such a beautiful area.I am a little concerned about the commute into work every day, but what’s another 30 minutes on the bus. 

About a month before we moved from the states, I started going to a driving range, trying to learn a bit about golf.  I was enjoying the driving, although, have a wicked slice.  I started to tame that a bit before we left and decided I wanted to be able to play a round of golf.  I looked up how many golf courses there were here in New Zealand and thought, that will be a goal.  I then looked at the golf club prices and decided, if I were going to get into playing, it wouldn’t be a cheap proposition.  However, before we left, I found great prices on complete sets of clubs at a second hand sports store.  I have been out to some of the reserves here (parks for the stateside people) where I have wiffle ball golf balls and I have been doing a bit of driving again.  The area we are moving has a two different courses. I am excited to try and play my very first round once we move out that way.

I am still working on some Cryptolicious stuff, and now a friend is asking me to help him on a game that he is working on.  You can see his other games here.

http://planetidiot.com/games/

The Crysis Wars level is not going right now, not enough time, but I will get back to it.  Working on this project will allow me to do some old school sprite art, which I haven’t done in quite a while.  Should be fun.

Will update soon with more stuff.  Keep posted.

Adding to my Cyptid collection, the mighty North American Thunderbird!

While this may be a cryptid everywhere else, in Aotearoa (NZ), Haast’s Eagle used to hunt the mighty moa.

I have a few more of these I want to do, the Chupacabra is in the works!

I have added two more shirts to Cryptolicious.  The Mothman and Sasquatch.

I have some more ideas I would like to do for these.  I am hoping that once I get a few of these in the pipe, that I can get after the level design stuff.

I have more stuff in the works.. keep on the look out.  I will do a better post soon.. Promise!