'Melody Dash' - A Game I Might Make Someday

I don't want to rule out the possibility of ever making this game, it was a lot of fun to design. However the chances of me actually doing it are unlikely because I'm fairly certain the university owns this work. And my soul.

So for my Concept Art and Marketing project in uni I decided to design two characters and create some fake screenshots for a game I named 'Melody Dash'.

The game was designed for 6-10 year old children using a musical theme. The main idea of the game was that players controlled a character based off a musical instrument, who would run and collect items down a race track which would make the background music play. If an item was missed then the music would stop and the goal is to play the entire song.

Bakery Pre-Production Work

As part of my major project in uni I decided to design, model and texture a bakery environment and a character to go in it.

Unlike my previous works I wanted this to be set in the modern day and be generally fun. I loved the idea of modelling and texturing a character who is working hard on something they care about, along with a variety of cakes and other baked goods, all with lots of bright colours and a fun atmosphere. This was also an excuse to draw lots of gingerbread men and doughnuts.

'The Saga of Darren Shan' Pre-Production Work

As part of my major project in uni I decided to design, model and texture a circus environment and a character to go in it, inspired by the horror novel series 'The Saga of Darren Shan'. The character I will be creating will be a teenage snake-boy called 'Evra Von', who performed at the circus known as the ‘Cirque Du Freak’ featured throughout the books.

I chose this because it is a novel I am very familiar with; I read it many times growing up from age eight and it never ceases to amaze me. Each time I have read the books I have become re-immersed into this fascinating world of strange creatures no matter my age. The circus camp area is used as a home-base for the main characters particularly in the first few books and I wanted to interpret this small part of the magical world shown throughout the books in my own work.

Tales of Hearts R

This review is also featured here:
http://www.cliconline.co.uk/en/news/review-tales-of-hearts-r/17612.html

Tales of Hearts R is a JRPG originally made for the Nintendo DS in Japan but has been remade (hence the ‘R’ in the title) for the Playstation Vita globally. The story follows Kor Meteor, a boy being trained by his grandpa to use a weapon powered by the strength of his heart and emotions, called a Soma. He meets the mysterious siblings named Kohaku and Hisui Hearts. Kohaku is attacked by a sorceress named Incarose and Kohaku’s spiria, the essence of her emotions, is damaged. This causes her spiria to fracture and scatter across the world, leaving her an emotionless shell. Kor teams up with Hisui and Kohaku to find the fragments of Kohaku’s spiria and restore her emotions one by one.

The game features a mixture of both anime and computer generated cutscenes with the 3D modelled game characters. This is because there were two versions of the original Japanese DS version, the “Anime Edition” and the “CG Movie Edition”. In the Vita remake, both types of cutscenes are used depending on the cutscene.

Adventures in Cosplay: Mabel Pines

So the weekend of the 8th and 9th of November 2014 was Cardiff Film and Comic Con so I decided to get creative and sew onto a jumper to create a jumper worn by a character called Mabel Pines on the Disney cartoon, Gravity Falls.

So lets see how the jumper turned out!

My Issues with Reboots and Superheroes

Rebooting old movies have now become a strong part of our media culture. It allows a new, often younger, audience to relive the stories that others have enjoyed but with the added bonus of better graphics and usually a much bigger budget.

My personal problem with this is simply, why? Why can’t people just appreciate the original for what it was? What’s the real point of rebooting movies? Yes, I understand that in some cases a reboot can only help it, whether it’s simply improving the story or just raising awareness to a franchise. For example, I only found out in the last few years that there was a live-action Spider-Man before Tobey Maguire in 2002. In 1977 we had Nicholas Hammond who actually did well enough to spawn a television series, The Amazing Spider-Man in 1978. But I know for a fact that the majority of my friends have heard of this. The majority of young people think of their first Spider-Man as being Tobey Maguire because those movies did so well as a reboot. Except the third movie. We don’t talk about that.

Table Top Racing

Table Top Racing is easily one of the best racing games I've played. There's something about a miniature car driving around over sized environments of sushi restaurants, kids toys and picnics that I quite like.