Great Companies

http://www.valvesoftware.com/

Co-founder Gabe Newell is one of the leading industry's visionaries that puts standards on innovation in gaming and software technology. Valve is a corporation that uses more bandwidth than some entire countries do and is considered to be the 4th largest bandwidth consumer in the world. They are known for their Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, and Portal game series and for their video game distribution software client, that has over 25 different applications on it,called Steam. They are always looking for highly productive and talented individuals to bring innovative ideas to the table. Their corporate business structure is a flat hierarchy horizontally across all departments.

 http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/

Blizzard Entertainment is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard and has created hit video game series Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft. They were originally did development work in the company's early operation days in game ports for other studios until in 1993 they were able to start developing their own software, acquire other companies, and grow in size to the mega giant corporation that they are today and one of the leading video game developers and publishers in the industry. The latest game that they've created and currently is being tested within closed doors is Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, which I was given an invite to yesterday night, that I would love to create innovative ideas for as a card designer and game tester on behalf of Blizzard Entertainment.

Equipment Speed Art Video & My Goals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo0Csj295_k&list=PLUMfEPEmkwz9iH1YMP6ki8xcoomY_cgk5&index=2

Although it's primarily a modern or sci-fi style art, the purpose behind how it was created is something that I need to learn. Being able to create fantasy weaponry on the fly in rough draft forms to help convey idea behind a possible piece of story lore around a certain piece of equipment a character might wear is important.

Since I plan on starting my own business that I will use to help fund the development of my first video game, which is a card game, I will need to be able to at least illustrate in an artistic way the ideas behind the a good portion of the cards as a development team is being hired and progress is being ramped up in full swinging motion. My short term goals at this point is to learn what I can and get the resources I need to learn outside of the classroom to help facilitate very polished up artwork for trading card game play mats that printed card game players purchase and use when they play those games.

Part of the short term goals with that is to be able to produce very high quality and original paintings that are printed on those mats for those card game players to buy. I figure that a couple years of that should provide me enough capital to expand rapidly in acquiring the necessary talent in getting the video game development team I want and need. Long term goals are basically expanding the company's product catalog as rapidly as possible and providing as many needed goods and services to meet targeted consumer needs. I don't necessarily want to become wealthy for no reason, but I certain want to design, develop, and distribute amazing gaming products to millions around the world and leave a lasting impression on the industry for the better good of future gamer generations.

Oct 8th Class work.. it was a lot of fun.

I'm a little late in getting this posted up but since I have the time today I wanted to make sure that it's posted on the blog. Tuesday's class we went over some different brushes and used the normal brush and mixer brush to draw a wadded up blanket. Although I didn't get done drawing the second version of the blanket, I did notice that the two brushes I was working with function very different from one another and the fact that I like the Charcoal Flat brush. It's very versatile in what it can do and is now my favorite brush to do sketch work with. Below is a list of the brushes and presets I picked out for that day's in class work.

Brush Preset: Natural Brushes

Brush: Charcoal 59 pixels

Preset: Dry Media
Brush:  Charcoal Flat

Preset: Wet Media Brushes
Brush: Rough Dry Brush

Preset:  Calligraphic Brushes
Brush: Oval 60 px

Preset: Faux Finish Brushes
Brush:  Texture Comb 1

When I tried using the Rough Dry Brush, it was sort of difficult to use it with the mixer brush because of the four settings you have to play with in order to get the correct texture or effect you're going for. I felt like I was spending more time adjusting brush settings with it than I was actually painting. I much rather mess around with pen pressure and opacity of the normal paint brush tool than constantly changing tool settings.

Concept Art: Healing Potion

http://obsidianentity.deviantart.com/art/healing-potion-333891714

I've been working on a card game for a very long time now and stuff like this healing potion is some of the kinds of stuff I want to be able to at least help create for my card game. If I'm able to at least get good enough to create rough drafts of my game's art, then it can lessen the work load of the concept artists and illustrators that I'll want to hire that could polish up the same piece I did or create a better version.

Concept art, landscapes, character and vehicle design are really the things I want to learn how to create really well to help convey an idea behind something before a lot of time is spent polishing it up. Currently I'm focusing on concept art for my card game and landscapes for the mats I want to sell. Being able to transform a white canvas into a wonderful landscape of some kind really sounds amazing.

This kind of stuff I also want to be able to make so that any kind of animation card art would be a possibility for the animation people that would be working on the game. Alternative artwork for non-animation as well as animation artwork would be kind of cool to include for one time purchases through an item shop within the game with real money and with game currency.