Gamedev Journey Entry #006
Well, hello there... it’s been like three weeks since my last post. I guess there is a lot to talk about. Much improvement indeed, maybe with better focus better results will come.
Today I took the day off from drawing or any other of my endeavors and just played some videogames and watched some tutorials. I guess it was necessary, It’s been too cold lately here in Santiago, It’s hard to get up early in this weather, that definitely has impacted my mood in these past few days. Nonetheless, let’s begin with some of my latest work, shall we.
So I picked up this book online which is great, “Keys to Drawing” by Bert Dodson. Incredible book, if you want to learn how to draw seriously I would definitely recommend this as a first approach to drawing. It emphasizes in the technical aspects of drawing what you see and not what you think you are seeing, for example, in reality the human mind tends to fill more information about what we are looking at - if we see an eye, we tend to simplify that in a drawing as a circle and a dot, but in reality there are many layers to that eye, there’s an eyelid, a round sphere covered by that eyelid, a pupil with many layers inside too, so it’s a far more complex thing than a simple circle and a dot. So instead of focusing on looking at a body part or anything for that matter as that thing itself, we have to focus on the lines and shapes that compose it, the curves, the outlines, the straight lines, etc. A hand drawing in a sketchbook is not an “hand” itself but a representation of it created by shapes and a variety of lines and/or colors, the human mind may see a hand but in reality these are means to create that picture so to speak.
Well anyway, I’m halfway down this book and there’s been a huge amount of improvement in my drawing skills, here are some examples:
A lot better from what I did before. Now please note that these images are still way off from the original references, they may look kind of “right” but there’s a lot of mistakes in these drawings.
I’m pretty happy with myself since this is the first time in my life that I’ve done some sort of realistic portraits, but that makes me just want to progress faster more than ever hahaha, there’s still a long road ahead (and I still hate these drawings though, I guess that’s inevitable for any artist).
So for Blender I bought this great course from CG Boost Academy called “Blender 2.8 Launch Pad”, highly recommended indeed. By far the most complete beginner course out there for Blender.
More info in the following link if you want to check it out: https://academy.cgboost.com/p/blender-2-8-launch-pad
Not much practical work has been done since I just started modeling the car that’s part of the course, I mostly delved in the technical aspects of the software, such as the main tools, interface fundamentals, etc. Just a few days ago I started the doing the cool stuff, here’s a picture of my progress so far:
It’s some kind of cyberpunk/futuristic flying Dodge Charger 1970.
By completing the course I’ll have made a fully animated shortfilm, which is amazing for me. There’s still lots to learn.
Gamedev/Godot/Programming Skills:
Now this is by far the most lacking area these past few weeks. I focused on reading the official documentation, which honestly it is very useful and I should keep reading it entirely, BUT, it leaves me with less time to play around with the software itself. So I went back with some of my basic Udemy courses from Gamedev.tv for Godot and got back into the 3D aspects of the engine. Moving slowly I’m afraid but I should be reviewing those aspects well enough to move on to my real project.
Well, to sum things up. This month I will focus entirely on studying and finishing these small projects, finishing all the exercises in “Keys to Drawing” and the “Blender Launch Pad” course, unfortunately the Godot thing is the one that I may leave behind for now and will return to it after I finish with these other things first.
It’s a long journey but I will make it through, I’m obsessed with it and to be honest I hate taking days off from work. Sometimes it’s necessary I guess but I always end up feeling so guilty at the end of the day. It’s just like when you miss a workout day (which happened today too, haha).
Also I wanted to add, I apologize if there are some mispelling errors or bad gramar. I do speak english quite fluently but I think I’ve been getting worse over the years :(. I’m in my 30s, I feel old haha.
Take care whoever reads this.
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