A whole new year, and the final one at that.

   A great start to the new year and I'm so glad to be back. Over the summer I have tried to do my share of work, but it hasn't always gone as planned, but now I'm ready to roll with the workload and earn myself a grade to be proud of.
   One Week in and we have been given our assignments for the next 10 weeks. Three three week projects, with a week of polishing at the end. As this years all about focusing on our aspirations as artists, we've been giving a series of briefs to choose from in a specific setup.

   Through the past 2 years I've been mainly focused on environment art and props/vehicles. I love the exploration that video games now deliver to the players, and I want to be a part of that in the future. We have been told that 3 have to be completed, in any order and the choice is up to us. But we have been highly recommended to do one of each art style as that shows off our skills to potential employers better.
   As of now I have started the partially stylized environment brief named "What's on the other side of the gate?" with this picture shown.

   The brief states that we can use this picture, but to mainly focus on the shape of it and work form there. The brief also says possible themes to explore, and suggests "Portal to another dimension" basically meaning we can do whatever we want with this brief. To me that's too wide of a brief, and I've decided to go with the gate in the picture and work form there.
   The architecture in the background highly suggests a Chinese or Japanese theme, and over the summer one of the projects I considered putting forward was a Japanese hot springs, so that's where this project is heading. I didn't want to much design work or to spend too much time on thinking up the perfect theme, so I pretty quickly set my sights on this as a project. A timeline of processes was quickly built and I set to work.
   All the projects I do now before my FMP will have steps in place to help me make it as good as I can make it. With this project I have already worked more into Zbrush and improved my knowledge of rock making and baking. Just one of the processes I hope to implement into the work leading up to our final project.

Rocks!!!

   At the end of each week we are talked too, as a group, on what we've been up too. We're given feedback and then we get back to work. This week I received some great crit and suggestions from Mike about what I was doing. Including things like, my levels 4 times the size it should be for a project like this and I should have a basic map out and concept for what I want to do. That way I know what I should, and shouldn't be modeling. Along with things like making a mood board outlining things I want to implement.

Basic layout

Elements I want to implement.

   Overall its a great start to the year, even with the 11 hour days. More hard work next week and I'll keep you posted.