Simple Lighter Animation

Simple Lighter Animation

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Naughty Dog Memories

Naughty Dog had a huge influance on me as a gamer and an artist.

First let me introduce my self, am Zaid M Jawad Al-Shaheed born in 1987, Baghdad city, Iraq

the first game I came across was Crash Bandicoot, everyone loved this game but for me it didn't interest me that much, played it but wasn't a big fan like other friends of mine, but always liked the introduction when it screams NAUGHTY DOG! CREACTION!, that was awesome and of course the AKU AKU mask was so freaking cool!

but now I will take about the game that has a huge impact on me and introduced me to what am doing now ( trying to be a game designer and game artist )

It was march 20th 2003, I was in senior high ( 8th grade ) I came back home from school and my elder brother came from the market saying he brought a new game that just came in the market, and it was Jak&Dexter, he told me take it easy with the game and don't finish it quickly.

so I started the game around 3PM in the afternoon and I was thinking if I should do my home work or start playing, so of course the game was about the run and I decided to have a look see since I was excited to see what this new game is with the cool two characters on the cover.

the moment that game started I forgot about homework! and it just pulled me in, after 3 hours of game play my mother asked me if I did my home work and I told her I didn't, so she yelled at me and told me to start studying!

I was about to turn off the game after a couple of shouts from my mother but than! here comes the siren! the air strike siren! mean war has start and that means no school tomorrow! OUH GOD YES! I did not care about war is going to happen, what will happen to us! all I cared about was Jak and Dexter, I kept on playing and playing and I didn't sleep that day, since my whole family was awake worried.

 I was playing and just didn't care of what is happening around me, until next morning I finished it! in one go, non stop! I loved every minute of it and enjoy its exploration and challenges, a game that will stick with me forever, a game that distracted me from possible death! XD

you wonder why it changed my life? I will tell you why!

I can't remember exactly the date, but it was around 12 years ago? or 11? not sure, but San Anderas GTA was already out, why do I remember, cause it was a gameinformer with GTA SA cover, that Magazine techniqually had a huge impact on where I am and what am doing now.

flipping through it's pages and I came across this piece of art by Bob Rafei, the character designer of Jak and Dextor, it just captured me, and it was the time am like I wanna draw this!

I checked through his advice regarding character design and it was simple yet super important points to design a visually expressive character design.

and when I started to draw, most of my male characters had that pose and still draw that pose LOL! I still have that magazine but it is not with me now, I would have scanned that article. 

If I didn't know Jak Dexter I wouldn't have known Bob Rafei, and I wouldn't have been an artist :)

Thank you Naught Dog for Shaping my life! 

Peace! 

Animating Animatics

just doing some work for project jables creed and wanted to share a peek

Dota 2 workshop

SO! two nights ago a friend convinced me to try a DOTA 2 workshop item creation, and I was thinking what to create and how, I don't know anything about the whole subject and never played the game before, but I had a friend who kept doing fan art of Juggernut and it just stayed there in the back of my head, so i did read his profile and information from Dota 2 Requirement and I was like hi! that would be fun! a Major's mask Legend of Zelda cross over with Dota 2! 

so I redesigned the mask.

next step was doing the actual work and in my 1st try it went horrible, no planing no break down I just jumpped straight into it and everything went wrong specially since i was burned out that day finishing another model.

so next day (yesterday) I was out on Baguio Parade ( which was AWESOME! ) and when I was there, and walking in my head i was breaking down how will i model that darn mask, and unwrap it with such low poly of 400 tris! am super new to the lowpoly.

so I got back sat on my desk and started! took me around 20 mins to model the face and 1 hour to texture paint the mask and the result is the redone! I was so happy with it and satisfied beyond imagination with the result, specially since everything was done inside blender.

so than I found out in the guide I have to go through normal mapping and do the masks textures and that was my 1st issue! I dont want to use other softwares or photoshop! 

so I searched online and asked a friend of mine ( the juggernut fan ) and he said try xnormal 

and that opensource bad ass was a calling! it was the best! and it is FREEEEEEEEEE! so after downloading the xnormal and converting the texture map to normal map and doing the masks finally I imported it to DOTA 2 and by GOD! I was so happy that I almost cried watching that mask in action! I hope Steam will accept and won't reject the model ( copy rights stuff ).

the experince was useful, informative and satisfying as heaven! I have got a lot of information that I have never knew about and learned tons of stuff! if you are jumping into the world of lowpoly? trying to learn, this is the best thing you can do, it is better than any school course for game modeling.

DOTA 2 workshop can teach you everything you need about character modeling for gaming.

I hope that was informative, Have a good day!  

ps: helpful video ( Dota 2 workshop with Blender )

                         ( texture painting tutorial with blender )