Lucky Number 2D6

Once more unto the paintshop, part 4

Got the first pass at the line work for head and face done. Unfortunately, while it looks pretty good in the editor, once it's on the car the scaling messes up a lot of the detail, especially around the nose:

I'll have to give it a revision, thickening some of the lines and simplifying some of the shapes so that they remain visible at 'on car' size. Once that's done, it'll be time to get to work on the shading for the whole figure.

Once more unto the paintshop, part 3

Been managing to fit in the odd hour or two in the Forza 3 paintshop, which combined with my slow pace means that there's still a way to go on my first design. On the plus side, I am getting faster as I get used to the new control layout, and I'm starting to get a better feel for how much detail will actually come through at 'usable' size. (One of the main reasons it takes me so long to get anything done is that I'm a bit obsessive about detail, and often spend lots of time on things that don't actually show up very well when the design is shrunk down to fit on a car.)

I got most of the black line work on the main figure finished first, along with the basic detail for the belt and trunks. The 'place markers' for the left-hand side of the cape and the neck are just to get the relative positions right - I'll work more on those later:

This evening I took a first pass at the chest emblem, which wasn't quite as tricky as I expected, but took more layers than I'd like. After looking at the pics, it seems I'm going to need to thicken up the black outlines, and I may change some of the proportions at the same time to make the central 'S' stronger - the lines are a little thin on this version:

Once I've mucked about with the emblem a little more, it'll be time to tackle the head and all-important face.

Doing bonfire night right

After something like five years in Brighton, I finally made it over to Lewes for Bonfire Night yesterday, and it was definitely an experience. I knew that it was supposed to be a big deal, but didn't quite grasp how much time and effort the inhabitants of this usually sleepy little town throw into a night of pyrotechnic mayhem, or quite how many people would be packing the streets (and this was supposedly a 'quiet' year).

Of course, what with low light conditions, constant jostling and ever-increasing state of inebriation, hardly any of the dozens of snaps I took with my phone camera actually amounted to anything beyond indistinct blurs of flame against black backgrounds, but I am glad that this one came out - the juxtaposition struck me as immensely amusing at the time...

Here's one of the only other shots that came out quite well, although it didn't really pick up the haze of smoke that by this time had settling over all the main streets of the town centre from the near-constant torch-lit processions and countless firecrackers that they strew along their routes...

Thanks to Sam for hosting the evening, and the people of Lewes for unleashing their pyromania in such memorable fashion.

Once more unto the paintshop, part 2

Busy day with job hunting and related activities, but found some time this afternoon to finish the outline of the rest of the figure, apart from the head and cloak - the former because faces are so important to get right that I wanted to get back into practise with the rest first, the latter because you only get 1,000 layers and I want to see how many everything else takes before deciding how detailed the cloak will be:

It was then a fairly simple matter to fill in the block colour for most of the figure, and delete the pale green outline that I'd been using as a guide. I'm not entirely convinced about the blue I've chosen as a base, but I didn't want to get bogged down in choosing just the right shade. It can be changed later if necessary, and this way I can get started on the details and shading tomorrow. Once that's done, I'll get the trunks and belt (which should be simple) and the chest emblem (which I suspect will be a nightmare) done before moving on to the head and cape:

Fans of 'sequential art' will probably be able to make a fairly good guess at the identity of the superhero in question now the blue's gone in, if the pose alone hadn't given it away...

Once more unto the paintshop (updated)

Forza 3's immense shininess has tempted me back into the 'paintshop' area, where I ended up spending most of my time in Forza 2 (instead of, you know, actually racing cars).

I've decided to get to work on something I always intended to do in Forza 2 but never found the time, inspired by the awesome artwork on Ed McGuinness. This is a multi-image project that should end up with at least three related livery designs, so it should keep me busy for a while.

As it's been a while since I did anything like this, I thought I'd catalogue the process. I have no idea if it'll be of any interest to anyone, but if nothing else, it might help me keep everything straight and maybe spot where I could do something better or more efficiently.

(You can't take photos in the vinyl editor in Forza 3. As I haven't decided what cars I'm going to use for the finished designs yet, I'm just slapping things onto the side of a Lexus that I've painted white in order to take these shots.)

Having picked the image I want to start with, the first step is to roughly block out the overall shape of the image. I tend to use a pale colour that won't be used in the finished design, to make it easy to remove later on. The lines are to help me when resizing parts of the image in the editor:

Once that's complete, it's time to start working on the outline of the image proper. In the past I've found it easier to complete the outline of the whole image before going to work on filling it in, but as it's been a while and this is a (re)learning experience, I've decided to spend a little time focussing on the fist which forms the single largest part of the figure. Here's the finished outline:

The next step is to copy the previous layers, recolour them to something flesh-like, then shift and shrink them to create the outline of the fist. Then I can just fill in the rest with a few more shapes before working on the detail:

First version of the detail work on the fist:

Final (well, at least for now) version of the fist, with some simple shading and some of the smaller lines removed for neatness:

More pics will follow as the rest of the figure takes shape...

Oops-a-daisy

Been a bit quiet around here lately, as I've been busy with job applications - like buses, you wait ages for an opportunity, then three come along at once.

It's a similar story with games. After a few months with precious little new or interesting, the last couple of weeks have seen me finally get around to Empire: Total War (thanks to a special deal on Steam) and now both Forza 3 and Borderlands are clamouring for my time, just when I don't have nearly as much to spare. Grumble, mutter, sigh.

Suffice it to say for now that all three are shaping up to be great fun, and I'll try to scribble down some more detailed thoughts about them soon. In the meantime, here's my new desktop background, courtesy of Ali and Forza 3's photo mode...
 

Go see Zombieland

On first hearing about it, I have to admit that I expected it to be nothing more than a pale American imitation of Shaun Of The Dead, but I was wrong - Zombieland is a damn funny movie in its own right. It may not be the world's first 'rom-zom-com', but it neatly sidesteps the long, lurching shadow of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's masterpiece to become one of the only new films I've seen this year that I actually hope gets a sequel.

At some point I'll probably go on and on about what's so good about it, but for now, just go see it for yourself.

New season: More shows

Although the initial rush is over, the varying schedules of the different networks means that the new US TV season continues to roll out new and returning shows. Here's a quick run-down of the ones I've managed to catch...

Blockbusters revisited: Star Trek

Sadly, as much as I enjoyed it in the cinema, J J Abrams' rebooted Star Trek didn't really hold up nearly so well the second time around. Instead of allowing me to notice more things that I liked, knowing what was going to happen just allowed the problems to become more and more glaring.

A lot of these problems are fairly minor things that only a science fiction geek would even stop to consider (the revolving barrels on the phasers started to bug me for a number of reasons, for example) and several would probably only bother fans of the original show or are a matter of personal taste (the reduction of Scotty to little more than ineffective comic relief being a personal bugbear), but there are some more serious issues as well. What really started to spoil things for me was the story structure.

Pretty much the whole second half of the movie relies on the fact that not only does young Spock uncharacteristically choose to maroon Kirk on a nearby planet instead of just throwing him in the brig (surely a far more logical option), he also 'just happens' to drop Kirk off within walking distance of the original universe Spock. Hanging a major plot development on a pure coincidence has been seen as poor storytelling since at least 18 BC, when Horace's Ars Poetica instructed poets that they should never resort to a 'deus ex machina', and what was true for the ancient Greeks remains just as true today. Throw in the fact that both the antagonist's motivation for committing genocide and his approach to doing so become less convincing (especially as the reason for the whole reboot) the more you actually think about them, and the whole thing starts to fall apart fairly quickly.

My biggest concern, though, is that the movie lacks most of the core values and ideals that make Star Trek what it is - or at least, what it was. The characters face no significant moral, ethical or philosophical challenges in the course of the whole film, there aren't any particularly interesting science fiction ideas, and the lack of Trek's clearly stated humanist values becomes more and more apparent as the action sequences - gripping though they may be - rush by.

It's perhaps a testament to Abram's skill as a director - as well as the generally excellent casting and effects work - that I was only vaguely aware of most of these concerns the first time I saw Star Trek, when I was as swept up in the spectacle and carried along by the pacing as most of the professional critics seem to have been, and in that sense the movie definitely works as a 'summer blockbuster'. But a big, dumb roller-coaster ride is all that it really is - once you start to scratch the slick and glossy surface, it rapidly becomes apparent that there's precious little underneath. 

New season: Returning Shows

As well as many new US TV shows, last week saw the return of several that I enjoy, including House, The Mentalist, Castle, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Heroes and Dollhouse.

I haven't had a chance to watch Dollhouse yet, although after the literally mind-blowing DVD-only episode 'Epitaph One', I'm really looking forward to seeing it. Heroes will have to wait until I finish Season 3 (I know it's supposed to get a lot better once the fourth 'chapter' starts, but I got stuck ploughing through 'Villains' and still haven't got round to finishing it). But how were the others?

(Oh, before I forget, I should point out that the following may contain 'spoilers' about previous seasons of the shows in question. I honestly don't think that anything I say is going to ruin anyone's enjoyment - I think all are worth watching to one degree or another, whether you know how they're going to end or not - but if you really, really don't want to hear what happened in the last season of 'Show X' because you haven't got around to watching it yet, it's probably best to read with care.)