Lowpoly Littlebigplanet

After all this, I forgot to post it here.

This is my mockup of how LittleBigPlanet could look like if it was on a portable console like the PSP. That would make me buy one.


Total triangle count for the scene is 3172 and I used 4 point lights.

The only thing I added to the Maya screengrabs is the gradient frame in each picture.

lowpoly sackboy

After a while without posting models, here is the last one. It's my version of Sackboy, the main character in MediaMolecule's first game, "LittleBigPlanet". The way it's made makes it easy to just drop a texture underneath the stitches and AO and it works with just some minor tweaks.




Edit: As a fellow polycounter suggested, here are some screenshots with lights and some poses.

Sackboy is real!

I was wondering through the interwebs and I found a post in the MediaMolecule blahg that made me smile. Apparently the mother of one of the artists knitted Sackboy, the "main character" from their upcoming game, LittleBigPlanet.

Here's the original one:

And here's the one made by the courageous mom, Silvia!



The game looks promising too!

Balloon Bliss

At last "Balloon Bliss" was released.

It represents the first step of an independent videogame development team called Vortix Games into the casual game industry. I feel proud to have followed at least part of their journey until they got here. This motivates me and is yet another proof that good planning and motivation will get you where you want to go.

BigFishGames' website info on the game:

"Imagine that you are looking at a balloon rising slowly into the bright blue sky. As you focus your eyes on it, it pops, and slowly you start to feel your feet rising off the ground. Your toes tip up, if only by an inch. Amazed by this recent discovery, your gaze rests on another balloon, and again you start to lift towards the clouds. Suddenly you are flying and discovering the scintillating joy of Balloon Bliss. Curl your fingers around the strings of these bright balloons--feel as if you're actually flying in this gravity-defying Match 3 puzzler.

• Legendary storyline.
• Artistic Match 3
• 2 amazing game modes
• Joyful simulation"

link here.

Go Vortix!

Pacman stuff

I am not the biggest Pacman fan but lately I have come across a vast amount of pacman stuff. Today I bring you the best so far!

Cheese Pacman


Guitar Pacman


What the skeleton of Pacman would look like.


Awesome Christmas tree.

And now imagine if they had used the original name. Thank the testers for noticing the obvious pun. "Puck Man" with those letters and the long nose...the future of videogames would have been ruined right from the start.

Ninjabear

Those who know me know I have a lot of people I look up to. One of these guys is Tiago Sousa, aka Ninjabear. In a country with only a few people making games and even fewer in big companies outside Portugal this guy was handpicked by a team that was being formed in Germany! They wanted the best of each craft and they saw a demo he developed, Illuminatu. Impressed, they contacted him and he went to Crytek.

Sometime later in 2004 Farcry was released, one of the games with the best timing to reach the market I can recall. It came out right before those year's heavyweight FPSs, Half-Life 2 and Doom and was the first "next-gen" FPS at the time.

Now Crysis is out and it's probably the best looking game out there at the moment. It looks so good the four main guys who did the effects were nominated for this year's VES awards. Guess who was on that list? You're right.

Well the results came out yesterday and Halo 3 (not Crysis) won.

For me Tiago was the great winner of the night. It's rare for a portuguese guy to be working in games and I can't recall the last time one of "us" was nominated for an award in this field. He is setting an awesome example for all of us and he's proof people whould be doing what they like to do in order to achieve better results.

Notebook over, third pen approaching the same fate

(Art by fellow deviantArt member Transfuse)

Finally we got to poly week. Now I am learning what I really wanted to learn in terms of modeling.

Now that I'm in the U.K. I remembered I can buy some games for my Gamecube on ebay.co.uk and pay less for the postage charges. This is what I have been doing the last few days. Bidding and comparing prices. If all goes well I will have all the major Gamecube games during the next month. (the very top of the charts and some original -cheap- ones)

Today the I got the first one and it rocks. It hasn't got any scratches and really looks new. It's Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I started playing the first one this weekend and I can't believe this got right past me when it was released. It is without a doubt one of the most beautiful, most intelligent and certainly one of the best games I have ever played. It really pulls you in.

I hadn't become this hooked in a game for a while. Neither had I cursed one while playing (save for Resident Evil 4). After it got extinct the Gamecube started to amaze me and I am loving everything it has offered me so far.

Some more delicious cakes

I once wrote a post about a videogame wedding from one of the Blizzard's guys but here are some more videogame delicacies I found lying around the internet. There's crazy people everywhere, but this is wonderful. Interesting-looking food is nice once in a while. I know I just said that but I think if I ate a slice of any of these I would feel like I was destroying a work of art.

A delicious work of art.


This one is a NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). Remotes and all.


If I identify this you'll probably feel insulted, so I won't.


Really cool Super Mario Mario Bros one.


Wind Waker cake featuring Zelda Gashapons on top. No, they are not eatable.


Detail on Tetra and Link gashapons.

Incredible Fallout "Bloody Mess" cake.

I have a few more crazy fanatic things about gaming in my hard drive, hang around if you want to see them. I just felt like breathing some fresh air into this blog.

Nintendo 64 kid

There is a slight chance you guys haven't seen this video so I'll give you the link here.

It's basically a kid who gets a N64 for Christmas and then starts going wild about it. Saying it is the best gift ever for him isn't enough for him. He has to shout, shake his fist to the heavens and even start a drum solo on the box.

I never had one.

This New Year's Eve I was with a bunch of guys who used to play it back then and they played Mario Kart and Goldeneye. I felt like a kid again watching them play, but the way their eyes shone as one of them found the cartridge of Goldeneye and showed it to them without a word made me absolutely sure this is the path I want to take.

Man, this video is just awesome.

Videogame Wedding

And now for something completely different.

Sometimes I think of myself as a geek but things like these make me feel like a noob. One of the guys from Blizzard got married a while ago and he had a videogame-themed marriage. It's not a Blizzard-videogame themed one, the photos indicate a more Nintendo-themed approach.

The wedding's entrance music was The Legend of Zelda main theme and the party music was the Super Mario Bros one. The tables were named after videogame consoles, according to their actual timeline. The head table was called "Press Start to Begin"...and just look at the cake!

I wish I could have been there!

Full article and more photos here.

The coolest tattoo I've ever seen

Wow. WOW. A few years ago I was a fan of tattoos and even wanted to have one done, but I have a phobia for needles and really couldn't find something I would not regret having on my skin for the rest of my life.

I kind of lost interest but today I spend the day sick at home and decided to finish The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker on the Gamecube. After that I went to look for some pictures of concept art of even screenshots to further study its wonderful graphics and I found THIS.

I have no words to describe it other than "The coolest tattoo I've ever seen".

Here is a photoshop mockup of what it will look like when colored:



Further info here.