Aphrael Red Update!

Greetings and salutations! Today I want to show two of the props I have developed for Aphrael. The first is a handgun that she will be able to pull out and use and the second is her primary weapon, a crimson energy sword. Here's what they look like:

Aphrael's pistol.

Aphrael's sword.

I am quite happy with how they are turning out. I am not done with them yet as you can see with the normal map artifacts on the pistol. I will need to paint those out with Photoshop.

The props aren't the only thing I have to show. I have updated some of the textures for Aphrael and I need a few more meshes to complete. In addition, I now have a rudimentary rig set up so I can test movement, camera location, and some controls as well.

Aphrael in the studio environment I built.

Aphrael in the actual level environment.

Ah yes, I forgot about the water. I created a new custom water material after watching a few tutorials online. It took a bit and I think it still needs work. It's just a pond so I need to tone down the waves a little bit since it's not that windy in the level. There's wind, but not enough to generate that much turbulence on the water's surface.

Another issue I am having and some people noticed this is that when the level is running, Aphrael seems a little out of place in the environment. What I mean that she doesn't seem to blend into the game. It's almost like she is rendering in front of blue screen, but more obvious. I don't know if that is because I am not done with the textures yet or not. I will have to look more into this. I'm also still struggling with the post-processing settings. I am not for certain how to adjust these or turn them off during actual game play. I need to do more research.

Anyway, I'll try to post more often, but my schedule is about to get really hairy. I am entering my final semester next week and I have only ten weeks left to get all of this done for the portfolio show. I also need to order business cards, get another character done, have the plans for the booth set up and ready to go, etc. It's about to get crazy so hopefully I can survive and finish!

Logo Change!

Greetings and salutations! Today I will show the first in a series of updates. That first is the new logo. For comparison, look at the images below:

Old logo.

New logo.

I like the new logo much better. One of the things that was bugging me about the old logo was that there was no contrast between the shades of red. Another problem I had was that it is not ideal for printing purposes which I found out the hard way. Finally, I still felt it was too warm a red. I remember one of my instructors complaining how an even earlier logo needed some blue in it. I had been struggling with that for months and it finally clicked in my head while I was playing around with some colors that I can make the red more of a berry red than a tomato red. In addition, I simplified the crystal motif and made them solid squares instead so it can be printed with ease.

So now that the logo has been updated, the next thing I will show in my next blog post is an update on my level for Prism. Stay tuned!

Updating

Greetings and salutations! I sincerely apologize, I have not had a chance to update the blog in like forever because of being swamped by schoolwork and whatnot. However, I have a little bit of extra time that I can use to provide some updates. These need to be done as well since I am still in the process of finalizing my online presence right now. However, note that in the coming week I will be posting some updates on the work I've been doing for Prism and some changes to my brand. So please stick around because I will be providing some updates and new posts in the next few days.

As an assurance, I want to announce that I have just joined Behance, Adobe's professional online portfolio website. I am now using Behance instead of Deviant Art which I think will be better because of it's more professional environment. I have also updated my Linkedin a bit so check both out. My Behance page is www.behance.net/RedVermillion and my LinkedIn profile page is www.linkedin.com/in/jktarwater. Thanks everyone and stay tuned for the next update!