"It's just great fun"

I thought it would be well worth a post to mention that a game I worked on earlier this year "Monopoly" has hit the shelves and is getting some great reviews. Best amongst them is an outstanding 91% score and Gold Award in Official Nintendo Magazine for the version on Wii. I was the lead world artist on the project overseeing both the environments and the lighting and have to say am Incredibly proud of the work and level of quality achieved the team. Talented people of EA I salute you. I have also updated my website with plenty of images from the game including all the environments and lighting that I personally produced.

Lee.

Mules Gold teaser poster

Finally it’s here! After all the work done during the weekends and evenings it feels great to finally submit our first finished image. After working within the confines that games often place on you it’s been good to work on an image with no restrictions. It’s been a real joint effort; character work by me, lighting and texturing by Lee with us both pitching in on modeling the environment. Please check the sidebar for links to our respective websites.
Neil & Lee.

Wire Frame and AO Pass

Almost there now. After starting six months ago we’re finally on the home stretch. All the modeling is completed so we felt it worth posting this up before all the lighting and texturing is finished. Our intention for this image was always to try and minimize the amount of Photoshop trickery needed at the end. As a result we modeled everything that is visible in the scene; this would then help when we came to using the environment in an animated scene. Both of the characters were remodeled from earlier versions to give them more detail in the clothing.
Lee & Neil.

The Day Jobs!!

It’s time we posted something about our day jobs. ZUBO is a project that I have been working on as lead animator for the last year was recently announced and is due to out later in the year. Lee also worked on the game as lighting lead although has since moved onto another project. It’s a Nintendo DS only title aimed at young kids involving small characters called Zubos who you befriend in the various levels, there is also a musical beat matching element as well. It’s been a good project to be on as an animator as there have been lots of Tex Avery style short animated scenes that have needed to be created. The art style is very engaging; let’s hope it’s a hit.

Neil.

Reference, reference, reference!!

Its been an unforgiveably long time since our last post but that's not because we've been lazy. We've both been grafting very hard on elements for our short film project; Mule's Gold. To paraphrase animation legend John Lasseter - Reference is king!! In preparing the saloon environment we did a load of research to get a rich authentic feel. I screen grabbed loads of westerns and we studied them carefully.
A special mention must go to The Quick and the Dead. The set dressing and detail in this film were outstanding. Sam Raimi and co. we salute you.
Neil.

Mules Gold - The Last Straw Saloon

As I have not updated the Blog in a while here is a render of the Saloon that features in our short film Mules Gold. This image represents the bare bones of the building, but should go some way to illustrate the look and feel I am trying to achieve with the texturing surfacing and lighting. I am currently working on our huge list of props that we intend to use as set dressing so check back soon for more updates.
Lee.