Entries Tagged 'Other' ↓

The last three weeks my team for IAT 233 Spatial Design worked on creating a contemporary building in Gastown with a showroom for Vitra and an office space for Area/Code. We started by creating folding architecture and with the idea of bringing a game to the street like Area/Code does. It eventually involved to include the idea of visual surprise, which is similar to Steven Holl’s concept of parallax, and finally integrating the Net ‘n’ Nest concept of the office by Vitra. Below are some renders of the building using Cinema 4D. Not quite finished but not bad considering we only had a few days to work on the design and model.

Recently I went down to Seattle to understand space at an urban scale for my spatial design class. We toured the city looking at changes between neighbourhoods and abandoned publis spaces. The Olympic Sculpture Park, Pike Place, Seattle Public Library, and Knoll’s new showroom were some of the places we visited. While there we had to come up with a design for a derelict site under and near the Alaskan Way Viaduct. This was a three day design charette and most of us didn’t get any sleep the second night. I worked with 11 other people on the project. Half of them I’ve never worked with before.

Our theme was originally “continous dynamic space” which means to create a space where there is always something going on in different lighting, weather, and seasonal conditions. Ultimately the idea was too ambitious to do in such a short time but we were able to think of some smaller ideas which do this. One such example is the movable square tables which we hope people will push together and move to different locations or even make a stage out of them.

We had one week to refine the concept and I spent a great deal making a 3D model and designing as I went along. The facades beside the pedestrian street is where I spent most of my time. Two other people helped me with the model so this is not all my work. It is the most complicated 3D model I’ve ever worked on. We weren’t able to model everything we wanted to.

A ramp leading up to the Viaduct.

The facades on the top were individually designed or modelled after the existing facade.

I’m taking another animation course this fall and my team finished our animatic last week before we headed off to a design charette in Seattle.

I’ve been working hard on the weekly projects for  IAT 233 Spatial Design. Each week a massive assignment is due that any sane university professor would give at least 3 weeks to do. I’ve created book covers using constructivist design principles, magazine spreads, researched architects and built scale models. This week is a 3D model of St. Ignatius Chapel located in Seattle. Thankfully almost everyone on my team knows 3D modeling. However, the plans we have are not consistent and almost every wall is curved in some way.

I feel that I’m learning material that would normally take years of experience or schooling to learn. I’ve developed a better design process which is affecting how I do everything. So even though I’m spending over 10 hours a day on this one course, it is the best course I’ve ever taken. It’s hard to believe I’m only half way done this semester as it feels I did two semesters worth of work.

I better get back to work now.

As promised here is my final animation for CMPT 466 Computer Animation I took this summer at my university. You may notice some of the shots don’t have shadows or vector blur enabled due to rendering time constraints but overall I’m proud of it. I worked with 4 friends on this project. My part of the animation can be seen starting with the smoke coming out of the bottom of the machine until the ball bounces and stops at the tennis machine. I also worked on the lighting and post-processing.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I69BRu3gFnQ

My Xbox 360 I received as a gift back in 2006 which I’ve hardly played decided to red ring just under two months ago. Thankfully Microsoft covers such a problem for up to three years. I called July 6th and they said they would send me a shipping label because only Americans can print them out so I waited and waited. July 28th I called again and they said they would cancel my current repair and issue me a new one. Fast forward to today, August 14th, I still have not received my shipping label so I called again. Turns out that second repair was never actually placed. Then I was informed that actually Canadians can print out their shipping label which… would have been so much easier to do! Great let’s do that! Or wait their computers were updating so I have to call back tomorrow so they can place the order. It’s unlikely I’ll receive my repaired Xbox 360 before I start my next school semester.

I’m working on an animation in Blender due in a week. I thought I’d post some of the animation my group has done so far. My animation can be seen starting with the tennis machine shooting balls till the end of the clip. We’re focusing on animating right now and will adjust the textures and lighting next.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr7yX4gIF9s

This summer I am taking IAT 102 Graphics, IAT 202 New Media Images, and CMPT 466 Computer Animation. This is my first semester at the Surrey campus taking courses. I spent some time looking over all the resources available in the library. It certainly reminds me of the Information Resource Centre at EA when I worked there. I don’t think many people really appreciate the resources available for students which includes hardware, software, training DVDs, books, journals, sound effect libraries etc. With that said — I need to start taking advantage of them more.

The first week of class was a nightmare because the Surrey computer labs did not have any of the software we needed for studio labs installed. All we could do is sit there and watch our TA fiddle with it for over an hour. I’m slowly getting used to Adobe InDesign now and have a magazine two page spread redesign due in a few days. Time for my perfectionist skills to kick in!

In just a couple hours I will be attending the Game Career Seminar (GCS) at the first ever GDC in Canada. I was planning to buy the main conference pass but I decided not to because sessions were mostly directed at upper management. The GCS has some interesting sessions directed at someone like myself trying to get in the gaming industry. I am particularly interested in Jamie Cheng’s talk titled Go Indie or Go Home.

I think it’s about time I registered my own domain name and got a proper host. I have had several blogs and websites in the past, usually hosted on my own machine. Recently my ISP’s upload rates have been terrible so I figured it was time. I plan to use this website to share my thoughts on game design, programming, and anything else that comes to mind.