GDC 2013

So this week was GDC and I'm happy that I got a chance to go and talk to a lot of industry professionals. Lucky for me this wasn't my first time at GDC, and I learned a thing or two from last year.

To start, last year I didn't have a tablet or a way other than my laptop to show my portfolio. But the wifi at GDC get overloaded within hours and its almost impossible to get a signal and speed. Last year my uncles gave me an iPad for my birthday, so I got my portfolio images saved on my iPad and was able to show my work this time around.

Next, my business cards were in better shape. Last year I made some at the last minute and they didn't turn out that great. I feel that the design that I worked on this year are more presentable and professional.

Also, thanks to the help of my friend Ash, she helped me put together a better resume that says "hey, I'm an artist!" and not just one that I put together in Word using a template. I really like the way it turned out, and it just goes to show that I'm getting better as time goes by.

The one thing that was a let down was that the career pavilion was tiny this time around, last time it was at least half the size of the expo. This time it was so small, that they put the expo and the career pavilion in the same place.

The big companies still made an appearance, but Blizzard was noticeably missing as well as other big studios. Riot Games was there, and I tried to talk from Riot as I could. Specifically, I got to talk to the Lead Environment Artist at Riot, and got him to look at my portfolio. The critique that he gave me was brutal, but that's a goot thing! Only when people tell you where you are lacking, do you truly become aware and work towards improving yourself.

I talked to other big studios, but none were as memorable as the ones that I had with Riot. I hope to go again next year and be able to impress him with my work and have him tell me what I should work on next.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

New Water Droplet

So today I was tasked with creating a better looking water droplet than what we have in the game at the moment. Here is a quick render:

I'm not sure, but I think that the water droplets that we have in the game at the moment are just spheres with some texture attached. I tried to make the droplet interesting and tried to use a darker shade of blue that what we have in the game.

Also, I created that texture following a water texture tutorial I found online and I think it turned out good.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Riot Games Summer Internship

As I'm sitting writing this blog entry, it has been about 15 minutes since I submitted my application to the Riot Games summer internship as an art intern. I have to say this is one of the most nerve-wracking moments in my life. Now that I've submitted my application, I feel better and leave everything in the hands of destiny.

I don't usually write/talk about job applications that I've submitted because I feel like I'm going to jinx it, but this application is special. Not that I don't want to work for any of the other companies that I've applied for, it just that as I submitted this application I started to think back on when I started to play LoL. Its been about a year and a half, and I remember that the first champion I ever played was Riven. She had just been release a week or so before I started playing, because when I first started was the week that she was free to play. 

I remember that even though I didn't know what I was doing most of the time, I really enjoyed playing as riven because I felt like I was contributing to the fight since she is a melee champion that has to get into the middle of things if she wants to do anything in a team fight. After the week was over, I had to look for another champion that fit my play style. I remember trying out Katarina a few times but it just didn't feel the same. Even though Katarina also has to get in close for her ult, it felt weird and after a few matches I decided that if I was going to keep playing I was going to play someone that I like and was at least good at. So I took out my credit card and bought Riot Points to buy Riven. This was the first time that I had spent real money on a free to play game, before then I didn't think that free to play games were worthy of spending actual money. 

After that I kept playing mostly as Riven for a long time, occasionally playing new character when they became available to play for free. After a while the best thing happened, a new champion was going to get released that could turn into a dragon! I have this thing for dragons, so I immediately decided that I was going to buy Shyvana as soon as she was available and would only play as Shyvana for as long as I could. At first it took me a while to learn how to play her, but I eventually became proficient with her and I kicked butt. 

Now a days, I've learned how to play quite a few champions, but my best champions are the ones that are able to take a few hits and still be ok. My best champions are as follow:

Top Lane:

• Darius
• Vi
• Shyvana
• Riven
• Fiora

Mid Lane:

• Ahri
• Diana
• Annie
• Syndra
• Zyra

Jungle:

• Amumu
• Rengar

ADC:

• Ashe
• Miss Fortune

Support:

• Volibear
• Zyra
• Leona

I have different proficiency levels with all the champions that I've listed, and some I haven't played in a while but I'm sure that I could pick them back up with almost no trouble. I own about 1/3 of the champions, and there are some that I've never touched or some that I tried a couple of times but they didn't fit my play style. One important thing that I have to point out, is that out all the five positions, ADC and Support are by far my worse positions to play.

ADC depends on farming and a good support player, and Support is too passive and I feel like I'm not doing much half the time. I prefer to stay on Top or Mid Lane where I'm constantly going back and forth with the other players. And I'm still new at jungling, I have to learn someone new since Amumu gets banned all the time and for some reason I tend to fall flat on my face with Rengar. 

Anyways, now that I've spent a long time writing this blog entry, I'm starting to get sleepy since this entry took longer than expected.  I was talking to my wife and mom at the same time, so they both kind of distracted me. Now I go to sleep, and hope for the best on my application to Riot Game.

Thanks for reading, and see you in the Field of Justice!

-FushiNoRyuu

New Business Card

So I've been working on a new business card design the last few days, and this is what I've come up with:

I've decided that the dragon tribal that I made for my shield model is going to part of my "brand". The reason why I say this, is that a while ago one of my friends here at the U was talking to us about how we need to brand ourselves and own it. Since I really like dragons and its also part of my email, I decided to make it part of who I am.

I think that I may still need to do some adjustments, but for now this is what I have. Thanks for reading!

Final Project Concept Art

For my hard surface modeling class, we had to come up with an idea for a final project where we would have to create a hard surface model. We have to create a high poly model of what ever we decide to make, so I've decided to create a high poly environment of a spaceship, similar to the ones found in Mass Effect or Star Ocean. Here is my concept sketches based on some reference images that I found and liked the shapes that they had.

This next week will be spring break, so I will spend much of my time getting ready for GDC. But I hope that I will at least have a chance to start blocking out the environment since we are suppose to have to show some progress when we go back to class next week.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Circle Sprite Sheet

So I have a lot to catch up on for my blog, but I decided that I should start to blog when I get the chance and stop putting it off until I'm caught up with everything that needs to be up here.

Anyways, for the game, we needed a simple sprite sheet of a ring filling up and since it wasn't going to take very long I decided to do it today. I did the circle using Photoshop and then saved out the separate images and used this program I found called Sprite Sheet Packer to make one map out of my image sequence.

I'm happy with how easy that program was to use, since I spent all morning long trying to use Pixen on a mac and it was driving me nuts.

Here is the simple sprite sheet that I made:

That's all for now, thanks for readying!