So, now it has been announced officially I can let on that for the last year I have been a level monkey (yup, that is what we call ourselves) on Sniper Elite 4 Italia - or Morally Bankrupt Shoot 'em in the Head 4: Italia as I like to call it.
I have been working on the final level with two other artists; Wiggz is lead and Andrea is texture and materials genius. Apparently I still cannot show any images of my work "in case you get poached" - like that is gonna happen... I am not being down on myself or my skills its just that I have also been working with a very talented VFX house called Gelato FX based in Manchester who have been using the Asura game engine for sequences in the upcoming "Greatest Raids Series 2" telly series that is going out around Christmas I think on the National Geographic Channel.
Series one had the CG bits done by Antimatter Games in Cornwall using an old game engine, for series 2 they wanted a new effects house and an engine that was a little bit more up to date...
I have worked in TV graphics in the past but spent the last 15 years in games. It was intriguing to find how much the technique and tech of VFX and Games has diverged even though they use the same basic tools.
Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Monday, 4 July 2016
Some giggles
As you may know, I sometimes have issues with dear old Maya. Our T.D. at work knows this and sent me this mime...
It is so funny because it is true... ;-)
It is so funny because it is true... ;-)
Here is the link http://cgmemes.blogspot.co.uk/
And my favourite
Tuesday, 5 April 2016
Fourth paperback book cover
Good News Everyone (as Professor Farnsworth of Futurama would say).
I now have four cover designs in print.
"The Women of the English Civil War" by Margaret Cooper Evans is now available in paperback.
Margaret was photographed over 3 hours in four different 17th Century guises, I then used Photoshop to combine the best images, scale, colour balance and add sunlight and shadows to the two images that were taken when the sky went out. The shadow is faked in Photoshop and the background is a photograph of a painting of the Great Fire of London that can be found in the Museum of London.
There are 40 images inside. Most are photographs taken by myself or the author. I then touched them up and made them print ready.
For those interested there are the three covers for Abbadon called
"Century of the Soldier" and "Monarchies of God" by Paul Kearney. I also created the elements for "Uprising: Heirs of the Demon King" by Sarah Cawkwell (though a designer at Abbadon put them together in a better arrangement than I did, so kudos to them!)
Just realised. I didn't blog about that cover, so here it is.
I now have four cover designs in print.
"The Women of the English Civil War" by Margaret Cooper Evans is now available in paperback.
Margaret was photographed over 3 hours in four different 17th Century guises, I then used Photoshop to combine the best images, scale, colour balance and add sunlight and shadows to the two images that were taken when the sky went out. The shadow is faked in Photoshop and the background is a photograph of a painting of the Great Fire of London that can be found in the Museum of London.
There are 40 images inside. Most are photographs taken by myself or the author. I then touched them up and made them print ready.
For those interested there are the three covers for Abbadon called
"Century of the Soldier" and "Monarchies of God" by Paul Kearney. I also created the elements for "Uprising: Heirs of the Demon King" by Sarah Cawkwell (though a designer at Abbadon put them together in a better arrangement than I did, so kudos to them!)
Just realised. I didn't blog about that cover, so here it is.
The crown is a computer graphic made in 3DS Max. The flag was originally created by Abbadon and given to me to make a high res version then I put it on a latice and used a cloth simulation and wind effector to get the ripples (that can barely be seen)
Monday, 4 April 2016
Halloween in Overdown: The fifth Hilary Long book cover
Halloween in Overdown (Part 1)
We took a range of photographs at Charlecote House a month before Easter. There was a range of brilliant squashes and pumpkins in the garden shop and it is one of those that makes the background.
There was quite a bit of re-touching and copying of pumpkin elements from some of the other photos.
On a separate image of a skull (cribbed off the internet) I drew over it to make an evil skull. This was then copied over the pumpkin and the blending mode changed so that it darkened and made it look like the pumpkin had been carved but not lit from the inside.
Since the character this represents smokes a cigar, the last element is a c.g. cigar and smoke effect done in 3DS Max with the smoke being comped from a photograph.
We took a range of photographs at Charlecote House a month before Easter. There was a range of brilliant squashes and pumpkins in the garden shop and it is one of those that makes the background.
There was quite a bit of re-touching and copying of pumpkin elements from some of the other photos.
On a separate image of a skull (cribbed off the internet) I drew over it to make an evil skull. This was then copied over the pumpkin and the blending mode changed so that it darkened and made it look like the pumpkin had been carved but not lit from the inside.
Since the character this represents smokes a cigar, the last element is a c.g. cigar and smoke effect done in 3DS Max with the smoke being comped from a photograph.
Sunday, 1 November 2015
Movember time again!
So I had this great Dick Dastardly / Laughing Cavalier type moustache and then Movember rolls round again and I had to shave it off (yah boo sucks!)
Anyhoo, here is an animated gif of the disappearing 'tache...
If you would like to donate I will promise not to send this animated gif to your work email account (see, I told you it was a Dick Dastardly tache !)
If you don't know what Movember is all about, shame on you! It is kind of like the male version of the womens "Race for Life" but with much less effort and a lot less pink.
Here is my Mo page
http://mobro.co/andrewthechapevans
Here is the Movember info page
https://uk.movember.com/about/foundation
Anyhoo, here is an animated gif of the disappearing 'tache...
If you would like to donate I will promise not to send this animated gif to your work email account (see, I told you it was a Dick Dastardly tache !)
If you don't know what Movember is all about, shame on you! It is kind of like the male version of the womens "Race for Life" but with much less effort and a lot less pink.
Here is my Mo page
http://mobro.co/andrewthechapevans
Here is the Movember info page
https://uk.movember.com/about/foundation
Friday, 21 August 2015
Women in the English Civil War Book Cover
Very
happy with how my latest commission came out. It took a half day photo shoot
of the author in four different guises and many different poses. The best one
of each was then carefully cut out, exposures and white balance corrected, then
highlights were painted on the two that were taken when the sun was behind the
clouds. Can you tell which ones they were?
Then
they were sized and arranged, the shadow created and then places on the
background which is a photograph of a painting in the Museum of London that is
actually of the Great Fire of London, but I think it suits the “world in flames”
feel of the English Civil War.
The
book is called “The Women of the English Civil War” it is by Margaret Cooper
Evans, and will be on Amazon soon as both a Kindle e-book and a real life
paperback .
Links here
Margaret's Amazon Author page is
If you want to find out more about the author you can read her blog here
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Evolution of a character
A quick update to the Evil Genius Online thread (I really must get on and do that page!)
Here is Jet Chan. He was a character in the original game so I took the original mesh and skeleton and optimised the heck out of it. He actually ended up on a much simpler skeleton to the one on the left, but I'll go into that later. This was used in our Flash / Flare3D game.
We then needed 2D artwork for the menus where he interacts with you, the game user. To do this I made a whole new high resolution mesh, put him on a very complex skeleton with facial animation rig and ten twist bones per forearm etc. He was then put into twenty plus poses for approval by the powers that be. The top five were then given to a very talented paintover artist we used to have here called Randolph. He produced the finished image (on the right). This was done for the eight main characters. Some had only three paintovers. Penny, however, had ten images done this way.
Click the image for a larger version.
Here is Jet Chan. He was a character in the original game so I took the original mesh and skeleton and optimised the heck out of it. He actually ended up on a much simpler skeleton to the one on the left, but I'll go into that later. This was used in our Flash / Flare3D game.
We then needed 2D artwork for the menus where he interacts with you, the game user. To do this I made a whole new high resolution mesh, put him on a very complex skeleton with facial animation rig and ten twist bones per forearm etc. He was then put into twenty plus poses for approval by the powers that be. The top five were then given to a very talented paintover artist we used to have here called Randolph. He produced the finished image (on the right). This was done for the eight main characters. Some had only three paintovers. Penny, however, had ten images done this way.
Click the image for a larger version.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)