Plants (R&D into plant production)

There's a blossom tree near where I live. It leans over the path, and has been dropping its blossom into the wind, as I walked past it today I realised how beautiful it was. So I returned later, camera in hand and snapped some images. I feel inspired to make an environment based around this tree, plus, I have unfinished business with blossom trees!

So here it is, time to make an environment. It's going to be oriental, a blossom tree with vivid red blossom dropping all over the place, a river, a bridge, etc. I'm going to make it with the intent of bringing it into the Unreal game engine, and have real time recordings of it. When all is said and done I hope to have a really wonderful scene with the sound of water and the dropping of blossom. Hopefully I can capture that wave of excitement that came over me today upon seeing it.

Today I did some tests with leaves and texturing them. Here's an example. The textures are photosourced by me. 


I'm not going to jump into production with this piece, it is where I seem to fall short the most. Diving into producing something that isn't fully planned out, thus leaving me to leave it incomplete. So I'll work out how I'm going to make everything, do some blockouts and experiments in Unreal Development Kit, and produce some concept pieces. 

I also have alterior motives with this, I think my reel isn't up to scratch. What little characters that are there just aren't up to level for the industry, besides; i'm hardly sure the film industry even appeals to me in the first place. I hardly get any replies from any job I apply for, and any replies I do get suggest I should work on my reel a little more. To be fair, it is a little too 'generalist'. So, environment jobs in games are a lot more widely available, from now on I need to follow my gut feeling, and follow my heart and dreams. I want to work in video games. Whilst Characters are still my main passion, and ultimately where I would like to be, I think I'd rather take the path that offers a lot more oppurtunity for now. So whether i have to tend bars or something whilst I develop a portfolio to help me achieve this, I will do it.  

This doesn't mean you won't see Camero and her Male and Eagle side kicks complete, I will be pushing progression on these as well. I most certainly want to see them complete in the future. I won't let them fall into the same fate as every other half finished piece before them. 

Life is too short to do what you hate.

4 comments:

tutorphil said...

Hey Jon - moved by the natural world, I see? Happens to me all the time. I've got a question for you; I recently had an email from a prospective student who contacted a first year student via their blog; they really liked what they saw on the blog etc., but then they must have googled the course and gone on the Facebook page you and Pol set up ages back. I've just looked back there myself (it's about the 4th link that comes up if you google CG Arts & Animation) and there's lots of really old discussions on here re. lack of life-drawing etc - and it doesn't seem to represent the course very fairly any more. I'm the last person to go all George Orwell about forums and opinions, but I wondered what your view might be on knocking out some of that old content; indeed, with the network of blogs etc, I wonder if the facebook page is even as important now? The facebook page has 'worried' this potential student, you see. That said, in my email, I was honest about the course's origins and suggested that the discussions on the forum justly reflected the weaknesses of the course 'as was', but that many of the issues raised had been addressed since. Do you think it might be time to retire it - or offer up a clean sheet on behalf of a very different course? I don't even know if it's possible - but, it would be helpful to me personally. Anyway - your thoughts and advice would be appreciated.

tutorphil said...

oh - and can you create a jump-off post from the group blog that links to your tutorial category on your blog - it would be nice to get some traffic going backwards and forwards...

Yolantele said...

check this out:
http://careers.framestore.com/

Jon Stewart said...

You are awesome Jola, means a lot. Thanks.

About Me

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I am a video game artist at Dovetail games, working on Train Simulator 2014, 2015 and an unannounced title. I also graduated from the CG Arts course at UCA in 2010 with a First Class. www.jonstewart.co.uk