I Painted a Box During Super Storm Sandy

Last summer I was at Too Many Games doing a Game Jam with QuadraTron that was being run by the Philadelphia IGDA.  You can play our game here.  Anyway, during one of our breaks I ventured out onto the conference floor to see what everyone had to sell, show and play.  I was really impressed by the number of people creating video game related art and creations.  One in particular was creating wooden boxes that you could open up and keep stuff in and she was painting them in different styles including the Super Mario coin box style shown above.  I was really inspired by her work, Midnight Treasure Creations on Etsy, and decided to do one of my own.  It is a tissue box that I picked up from Michael's Arts and Crafts store and painted.  It came in handy when super storm Sandy hit and the power was out for a couple days and I needed something to occupy my time.  I really enjoyed painting it and I hope to do some more physical painting in the future.

I Have a Twitch Stream

You can find a link to my stream channel here.  I stream projects that I'm working on from time to time that I'm able to show to people and I also make tutorial videos sometimes as well.  I usually stream later at night or early morning East Coast hours.  You can check out one of my tutorial videos above.  It is a basic introduction to 3D using Autodesk Maya.  If you like what you see or want to make sure you catch my next stream try following my channel on twitch or following me on twitter @robert_nally.  Every time I broadcast it gets posted to my twitter account automatically and if you follow me on twitch you can set yourself up to get an email every time I go live.  I hope everyone enjoys it and if there is anything you would like to see or have me go over in a tutorial you can shoot me a message at robert.nally@gmail.com or leave a comment in the section below.

Game I Worked On - Just Tactics

I created environment concept art, models and textures as well as assisted with character textures and effects for the game.  You can try out the game for free at www.justtactics.com.

Image for a Tattoo

I haven't posted in almost two years, but I have been busy and so I have a backlog of work to put up.  This is an image I did for a tattoo.

A Little Abstract Stuff

I was really inspired by the work and style of Nick Luchkiv, Erik Jansson, and Matt Laskowski, also known as fox-orian, and decided to try a bit of abstract art of my own, which I've been wanting to do for a while now.  I really enjoyed working on these and will definitely be working on some more graphic design, web design and abstract pieces in the future especially since I really like the idea of being more versatile and able to create more than just game art.

Teaching

For the past six weeks I've been alternating between teaching Maya and the Starcraft 2 editor at an ID Tech camp, the Villanova ID Gaming Academy to be exact, as the Lead Instructor.  Our director, Andrew DeScisciolo was kind enough to put together a demo reel of what the camp is all about.  It gives a quick example of what each program entails for the students' parents and then goes into some of the students' work for that session.  Each session is two weeks.  Above are two of the reels that we put together.  For the first one, I taught the Maya session and did the quick battle axe creation to give the parents an idea of what Maya is and how it works.  For the second one, I taught the StarCraft 2 Modding session.  The camp was an absolute blast and I'm really proud and impressed with how quickly the campers, ages 13-18, were able to pick up and understand the software as well as how motivated and dedicated they were.  The only unfortunate thing is that I don't really have any new work to show other than some completely random objects, characters and environments that I used to show the students' how to create things and use certain tools.

Here are the other awesome instructors that I worked with:

Sean O'Connor
Alex Kwan
Mike Leach

Letting Go of an Old Project

I revisited my old Brooklyn Banks scene after about a year; I wanted to add the edge detection shader that I've been playing around with, and loving, to see how it would affect the scene and I wanted to add environment fog to the scene, which I believe is new to UDK (within the year) to improve the atmospheric perspective.  I was thinking about going back and improving models, textures, normal maps, etc. since I feel like I've learned so much since I started this, but I think it is beyond fixing.  It was my first real game environment and I think that there is just too much to fix to make any significant improvements.  It kills me inside, but I know I have to do it and move on, make better projects and continue learning.  I did like how the environment fog and shader came out though and so I thought I would post a couple screen shots.