Another busy week for all of us, and we spent some times setting up the game play for LexiConquest. We also decided to cu one of our characters, Cthulhu, which was my responsibility to model and rig. I spent some time researching about rigging a complex character like Cthulhu, that we can always add to the project once we finish our main characters. I’ve been working on the other character, Robin Hood, since Friday, and I have the basic geometry of the character done, and soon I will start to add details to him. I think the modeling of Robin Hood will be done by the end of the following week.

Website update:

I spent the entire last week doing research about Drupal, and I am amazed by the power, flexibility, and customization of this CMS. I found many good online sources in addition to the documentations available on Drupal.org for themeing Drupal 6.X. Making a theme for Drupal is quite different than for other famous content management systems such as Joomla and Wordpress. There are some basic things that a developer should to know, such as modules and blocks, before making a theme from scratch or modifing a theme. So I spent sometimes learning the concept, and anatomy of drupal, and the modules that are necessary to know for themeing Drupal. Now I feel very confident to start on coding the site, but the next step after this would be designing three templates for the website. I try to tackle this after finishing my character.

More to come…

This week we have all started modeling our respected characters. We did decide to cut Cthulu out of the mix for now based on the complexity of rigging him. We are retaining all the research we have on him so we can add him in if we have time. We have planned out the actual play that will take place in the guided game experience and edited some of the cards and what they do during that time. We plan on having the user play a ten turn tutorial, resulting ultimately in their victory.  We have also started thinking about sound design and what kind of music and effects we might want. Lauren and Mike are both taking Audio Production this term and have access to the Music Industry room and some extra sound equipment, so we want to hopefully get sounds done near the end of this term. We also did a breakdown of work, which we have concerns about that we will mention Tuesday. The breakdown is as follows: Ben 20% (started both his character models), Mike 20% (Started work on King Arthur and the Library), Lauren (Started preliminary sculpting of Tiny Tim), Jason 15% (Finished up research for programming, started the Tripod), Hessam 15% (finished up Drupal research, started Robin Hood), Tracy 10% (Being brought up to speed and integrated into the team).

This week I spent a large amount of time doing research on ZBrush and it’s ability to create animation-ready models without any initial “help” from standard modeling programs (like Maya, for example) After some searching and going through a number of YouTube videos, I discovered that ZBrush version 3.1 had the ability to retopologize sculpted models.

After confirming that it could be done I began sculpting the model for Tiny Tim. He needs some refining, as well as his gloves/boots/hair; hopefully that will be done next week.

I also started sketching out some layout ideas for the Character, Lexicon and Device cards. On the side, I sketched the front and side views of Robin Hood so that Hessam could begin modeling him.

Robin Hood model base

Tiny Tim (early stages)

Tiny Tim (early stages2)

Basic card layout sketches

Well we have all been busy this week doing this and that, and this is what I have been doing:

I spent some time reorganizing the Gantt chart to make it more readable. As of right now Tracy has not been added we are still bringing her up to speed (More on that in the group post). I have also spent some time as we all have working on fleshing out our character details as well as a Device card. I have also been doing some physical work. I worked on a couple assets for the Library. So far I have created five variety of book, all based on the two that can be seen below. I also created the door for the Library, it is supposed to feel futuristic, I have heard some talk of it looking like a Stargate from the TV show. In that case the door might need some rethinking. I also spent a couple hours working on King Arthur’s legendary sword Excalibur. It is based on Medieval English swords. The texture is what will really turn the sword into Excalibur. I am doing some more research on descriptions of the sword to base the texture on.

A bit of an early post this week, due to my short departure tomorrow. I’m heading to Vegas for a few days where I fully intend on gambling my way into millions and leaving behind Drexel and senior project. Kidding of course…

Anyway…

is underway. Early stages, of course, but underway nonetheless. We’ve updated our Gantt chart to more realistic levels, bumping my allotted time to a much cozier 8 weeks for two models. I tend to bounce between the two at random intervals, poking at one when I get bored of the other, meaning that the Tin Woodsman and Billy Pilgrim are being completed simultaneously. It’s hard to really put a percentage on progress but for this entire chunk (that is, modeling two characters), I’d put myself at around 15-20% completed.

Hey all,
In search for a better color theme for the website that delivers the mood and concept of our project even better, I tweaked the theme for PPJ website a little. Here is a snapshot of the previous color theme:

The actual website of the project will be based on the current color theme of the PPJ website, and three different templates will be provided shortly. Any suggestion or comments would be appreciated.