27-04-09 – University.over==true; / Yeah, I probably rap too much.

FRICKIN’ YESSSSS! It’s over! No more assignments for uni!

Well, except for the one I missed that I’ll have to re-do either next year or this summer. But I already did the work for that xD

This week entailed:

- Kicking my FYP’s ass (thanks to your help with testing!)
- Making a rap-tastic 3D assignment report!
- A lyrical YAWA sunday!
- Re-designing the back cover of the YAWA EP
- Ordering a sample copy of the YAWA EP in preparation for the main run!
- Deciding what I’m going to do with my life now I’ve finished edumacation =/
- Finding a Lolcat that made me lol for this week’s picture:

lol xD

BLAM. YEAH. Take THAT, university education.

My Final Year Project is now handed in! 13,000 words of pointless babble and a ridiculously difficult game xD We shall see how I do!

I actually completed it the day before the hand in! Unlike my friend Ogre who managed a record breaking hand in of 15 minutes *after* the deadline. Still got away with it, because the queue was so long! That guy re-defines last minute…

But yes, a big thanks to everyone that tested the game for me and emailed back the questionnaire. I’ve found out it’s WAY too hard, and also that on some browsers the music goes completely out of time. Unfortunately this is because flash is gay, and there is no way for me to correct this issue… so my game is fundamentally flawed. Frickin’ rubbish. I might have to completely change how the music system works if I am to release it to a bigger audience… maybe just having a song playing in the background and keeping the “place towers in time” thing, but removing the “pulse points affect the music” thing.

Only thing I have left to do is to demo it to my assessors, which I should be doing early May. Then nothing is left! Except that on line games assignment…

3D, yo!

After modelling and rigging my 3D character for my assignment, I found myself in uni on the hand in date with a texture for the model, a walk cycle (animating the character to walk for 10 seconds) and a 2,500 word report to make.

Boshing out the crappy texture and dodgy walk cycle in about 3 hours, I started working on my report. Shockingly enough, describing methods of animation that
a) You have no interest in and
b) You already descrbibed in the report last year
isn’t as entertaining as it sounds. So after about 1,500 words I decided to spice it up. Check it out:

———————–

The UV map applied to the texture was created by exporting, contorting and importing into Photoshop where I cut and cropped the reference images, finishing the touch with a brush and the smudge tool, moving the shades of beige and blue into the overlayed UV shapes initially displayed.

The final result was checked for faults by applying the .psd to the 3D body, the seamlessly flowing texture wasn’t yet there, so back in Photoshop I further worked the colours to the lines, applied better sharpening and finally saved and refreshed back in Maya 2008, looking at the result it turned out great.

———————–

Notice anything? Yeah, I rapped my assignment report. I’m also pretty proud of my evaluation:

———————–

The final result whilst not perfect, in retrospect, had several sections that were accurately implemented. The use of inverse kinematics was that which allowed for more realistic animation and the creation of linked joints and constrained points made the workflow fast. Although the texturing was less accurate than intended; in the end it was down to less UV sewing in the initial stages and messy blurring in the Photoshop phase of the texture creation.

———————–

I wonder if the assessor will notice? Maybe I’ll get extra marks for having a dope flow.

Outrunnin’ a bullet don’t get me bustin’ a sweat!

YAWA sunday was a fun day. Kieran, Jamie and I got our lyric on (Or rather, Kieran and I did and Jamie mourned the fact that he didn’t have his football manager game..) and layed them down over a few of the new tracks. Still not finished, but writing quality lyrics is a challenge. It’s the balance between keeping them interesting but not too obscure so they aren’t catchy, and keeping them memorable but not so obvious that they’re cheesy.

This generally ends up in me being able to use a lot of ironically egotistical rap, which I’m cool with.

We also layed down a few basslines for a new song “Zero Gravity” which is frickin’ heavy as hell. It’s like… Crunk/metal/dubstep/rave. And has the coolest, most egotistical lyrics I’ve written yet. You’ll feel awesome rapping along. I sure as hell do

Photoshop’d

I finally made something that Kieran, Zak and Jamie agree on. Phew! It’s pretty epic actually – I had to re-do part of the image entirely. I don’t want to put it on here yet, I’ll do that nearer the release of the EP itself, but I assure you it’s pretty apocalyptic.

And yes! I’ve also picked a company and have sent off the artwork so they can give me a sample copy of the EP. It apparently should be with me before the end of the week, so that’s exciting! The company is xpressduplication.co.uk – so far they’ve been really professional and have awesome customer service, so here’s hoping the final product is just as awesome!

I’d better get ordering those T-shirts too… I was thinking of cooking up a few more designs first It’d be ace to have a variety of T-shirts available with all different slogans… I have a few cool ideas that fit in with the YAWA “Giant robot” theme, and I think there should maybe be one with just the YAWA logo.

*Plans Future*

So yeah, now that university is, for all intents and purposes, over, I need to look ahead. My parents have been awesome and said they’ll support me for 10 months, while I work on trying to earn some money in a non-getting-a-real-job way. i.e. building my blog to the point where I can make a living from the advertisements/making a business from some other idea/freelance web design or whatever. If after that 10 months I still am nowhere near supporting myself, I will look for a normal job.

I really don’t want to do a normal job. I don’t want a boss… I want to *be* the boss. I want to build something creative up from nothing that I can be really proud of; getting other people involved and when I have the resources, work on changing the world.

But I suppose I should tidy my room first. A clean room for a clean start. In fact, I’ll make a list (back to the old school DaveBloggery right herre, yo!)

- Tidy my room
- Make a plan for the next 10 months
- Set up Outlook to reflect my plan
- Start working my ass off until I’m a millionaire or dead.

…Though I can’t see either of those happening in the next 10 months.

Next Week on Dave’s Blog…

So! I think the demo is actually the week after next, so the next week should be relatively uni-less. Maybe I’ll make a presentation for the demo but that’s about all. Most of this week will entail:

- Planning my life
- Blogging my ass off
- Chilling with the friends I’ve neglected during the recent intense FYP weeks
- A BBQ at Ogre’s place (he said there’d be one – I well hope so, BBQ = frickin’ sweet.)
- Scratch coming back! Yay! Interastuff abound I’m sure
- Replying to the messages I haven’t replied to in the past month or so >< I’ll sort it out!

So it’ll be a fresh start for me! My real life begins now I guess Sweet!

AND THE BLOGLY QUESTION: I’ve been writing a lot of new YAWA music lately and I always wonder what people would prefer to hear… do you prefer the hip hoppier songs(Starcadia), the poppier ones(Supernova), the heavier ones (Navigator) or the more eclectic crazy ones(At lightspeed)? Or even the slow one? (Acoustigator ^^)