Sketches of the teleport door and pad

Here we have two sketches... But not just any old sketches oh no oh no oh no... These are sketches of something that is in my book (yes that book!). These are sketches of a Blobbit repaired 'Matter No Splatter' transportation device. Usually these devices appear unbroken but sadly this one wasn't so lucky. But all is not lost as our hero Blarold Blobbit has made good using some wood, a couple of metal shoes and a rivet gun.Wowsers!  Will it work? Hmmm that's a good question... Only one way to find out and that's to see it in action in Blobbit iDash. Yay!!
(Now I must go and finish texturing it in Blender, chie de chie my luvvies!!)
Elenin = Nibiru

Oh joy of Joy Division...Texture Paint is jolly good.

I have discovered that the 'Texture Paint' mode of Blender 2.5 is indeed rather awesome!! I've been playing with seams and one of the most frustrating things I've experienced is shading up a nice texture only to find that one of the seams doesn't quite look right. But all is not lost, oh no!!  You see there's this rather nifty (not heard that word for a whole,'nifty' not 'rather') that lets lazy oiks like me paint directly onto the the model! Now it's no Photoshop or Gimp but it does have a smooth and smear mode which is fine and dandy for smudging out those bleedin' angular 'stand out like a sore thumb' joins!! YAY but no hay!!
Look no wires I'm flying!!

Cuppa tea now to celebrate my new best buddie in Blender 2.5..

Seams... but no Mrs Slocombe..

As a relative of newbie who is still learning the ropes with all this 3D modelling, texturing and animating malarkey (yes I'm so 2D I even have a travelator in my home instead of stairs), I have discovered that in order to make a UV Map fit like a glove without an obvious stretch or skew the right approach to unwrapping is required; to avoid pixel tomfoolery anyway.

Now just last week and a year I was getting a bit ahead of meself and thought I had it in the bag. 'Ahhhh' I said to meself as it become quite apparent that the art of unwrapping is indeed an art in itself (on a small scale, not that I'm comparing it to drawing and modelling, that would be like comparing decent choccy to that cheap muck you get off of Romford Market sometimes. Maya Gold for me all the way!). I digest...Careful thought on where to place those seams is important if a nice clean texture layout is required. Which it is otherwise what's the point...Yarse.. (Getting the hang of this me is...).. This is the concept sketch of something I'm 3D'ing at the moment....will post the final doo-dah once it's done..

This has been the ramblings of a solitude moi under-dubbed with a slice of WaveStar "Mind Journey" working from my space pod in near Earth orbit.. Si


Elenin = Nibiru I reckon...

Blobbit T-Shirts are now on sale!!!

It's that time again, that time when dreams of running a fashion empire start knocking at the door. Yes I've uploaded a couple of Blobbit related designs to my shop (Cool Blobbit Shirts)
I'll upload some pics as soon as I get a moment spare...   

 

>>>Cool Blobbit Shirts<<<

Knock knock

Who's there?

Updates are coming... (soon'ish after some sangria and Ron Trinidad)

I often feel obliged to write something here when there's nothing to write other than endless meandering dribbles of uninteresting facts about this and that. Today however I decided I would write something, so here's some text... oh hang on a mo.... I've already finished....Oops...

Here's a pointless sketch about arrows..

The wit that follows will astound, amaze and have you scratching something in bewilderment, hopefully your head but anywhere else is fine...(hang on again.. erm you really should have that looked at don't you know.. eww looks kind of... infected..doors over there... yep see ya...(phew)) 

 

I should remind you , yes you with the wild eyes, iPhone, you phone, we phone, who phone Blobbit is still going strong it's just on hold until Mark and I finish our contract jobs. Then it's manic dev time again.. yay taday tomorrow and last week!

What?? HD art for iPad?? Oh.....Erm... right then..

I've been rather busy of  late creating, converting and tweaking various art assets for inclusion into Blobbit iPush. Some via Unity as rescaled sprites, others taking the form of  new 2D & 3D art, not bad! One thing I didn't really want to do just yet is take on the seemingly mammoth task of up-scaling the original game art to iPad and HD resolutions. Arghhhhhhh!!!

Ok well perhaps that's a bit of an overreaction but with a looming deadline for the iPhone version on the horizon and time at present being very precious for me a bit of thinking was called for.  Ponder, ponder...

Here's a tree from the Sand Sludge Bog level, or to quote from me book, a G'Wahlah'lahlah tree. This version is from the original Web game and was drawn in ProMotion a few years back in good ol' retrotastic pixelvision.

Now then, how do I get that scaled up from 25 or so pixels to something that is probably going to push 60 to 100+ without loosing definition and quality? Scale - No. Apply some fancy filters - No. Vector art the sucker - Yes!!


So after a short fiddle with me Wacom pen and a few reference pixels I think I've sussed it.

Not only does the new version look clean and crisp it is also totally resolution independent meaning I could use it on the iPhone version too if need be. Niiiice!!!

(Shadow edge is pants, I know) lol

A little test anim to pass the time today

I've been experiencing a few problems importing some anims into Unity from Blender recently and decided to take some time out from the hair pulling with this being the result.

Bit flakey around the edges but not bad methinks! Now I know how to use the 'node' editor in Blender the possibilities are quite staggering . A few tweaks here and adjustments there will yield some quite nice results I reckon.


The more I use Blender the more I love it!!

Box Droid Concept Prototype 001 Sketch

Late 2006 I started designing the sprites for Blobbit Push  and one of the characters I came up with was a small droid known as a Box Droid which later became a series of droids all based around the same box like design.

With the new game in development and the totally separate but loosely linked book on the back burner I wanted to create some proper art for the Blobbit characters. There are various reasons for doing this but the main reason unquestionably is I just want to see these characters visualised how I imagine them rather than as 48x48 pixel sprites. Of course having proper images also helps to create 3D versions and will also do wonders for marketing the game(s) later on.

Anyway here's the initial pencil sketch I did of the Prototype Box Droid with which all other Box Droids were based upon. I suppose you could say this one pre-dates the sprite version seen in the games. Initially drawn on Saturday afternoon over a cup of tea or two, proceeded by the finished illustrated version Monday. Cheers me dears! -Stoo-

Design & Images (C) Copyright Stoo Cambridge 2006,2010

Is there anybody out there?

I was just thinking as I look into my Blobbit stars, 'is there anybody out there?'  Then it dawned on me, what I need is some space junk and some stuff to plonk in the background.

Background - check

Twinkle stars - check

Big Moon - check
Stuff - Yes 

That's that then.

Do I use the 2D illustrations mapped to quads or do I recreate the drawings in 3D with the drawings mapped onto the newly created objects?  Hmmmmm.... Maybe a mixture of both I think.

Ramble, ramble, mumble, mumble...