Future Product Ideas

Hi Everyone,

As work on the weapons pack continues to progress I've been starting to think on what else I'd like to do. First off, I want to continue to increase my personal art skills (concept drawing, 3D modeling, 2D texturing, etc).

3D Modeling

My 3D modeling is pretty good, I've learned how to do quite a bit on my own (and through tutorials). I can make very good looking curves in Low Poly, and while I might be a little too liberal in the amount of poly's, it still looks rather good. I'll want to work on becoming more poly efficient in my modeling. This will increase my speed as well as the quality of work that I produce. Dave will probably want me to make stuff that doesn't have such pain in the ass angles too (for texturing). He calls them a pain, I call them a challenge

Concept Drawing

My 2D drawing skills are okay... nothing to write home about. I've really neglected this facet of my art life for a long time. I have to find a good figure/life drawing class in Vancouver that I can drop in on. I have a few options, but they might not work with my work schedule. This will allow me to maybe do less "model as I go" and allow me to use my own reference drawings to create complex models (such as characters).

2D Texturing

This is another thing thats going to take me a while. Not only do I have to learn Photoshop (or GIMP), but I have to have a good amount of knowledge on how to create good looking textures (be it skin or materials). This would allow drop some of the pressure on Dave and free him up to do more things that he'd like to do.

Next Gen stuff

Things like Normal Mapping, Specular Mapping, Detail Mapping, etc. None of these thing are really new, but they're new to me. And as more indie game engines support these features, I'll have to be creating models that use them. You have to keep upgrading your skill sets or you'll end up going no where.

Personal Art Projects

While working on the weapons pack I was thinking on ways to show it off. Screenshots of individual or group items is good, but I thought it would be also cool to have a kind of showroom that we could use to display the weapons in a way that make them look like they were in game. If we were to focus on one engine (like TGE or TGEA) then being able to show our products in that environment would be beneficial. What would be needed would be to have a well modeled and textured character, a well made room (Hall, Temple, Bar, etc.), and the weapons/armor.

Personally I'd love to have multiple supporting (yet different) packs to sell. A weapons pack, an armor pack, a character pack, and a building pack. All along similar theme's. This would save us time in the long run as we could make items that have been designed to work with one character build. The customer wouldn't need to resize any of the weapons or armor (beyond some minor adjustments for personal perspective) and we would be able to create more packs that followed along the same lines (but maybe had a different style or motif).

We'll see what the future holds.

Introductions

Hello my name is Corbett and this is my personal blog. I want a place where I can talk about different things that relate to my business, my art, and whatever I wish to share. I also want to use this space to show off any new art that I create, be it 3D models, textures, concept/life/figure drawing, and anything else that I can think of. You might be wondering why I called this blog

Golem Builder, and I guess it might sound more grammatically accurate to call it The Golem Builder. I might even change the name (if I can figure out how), or add in a new description. But as for Golem Builder, well my company is called Golem Graphics, and while my first blog was under that name, I have decided to shift it to become a business blog. This will be my primary spot to update, as almost anything can go here but the business blog will be less formal and more professional. In some ways I don't want to do that, I don't really like the idea of having to care about what I say, making sure everything has some positive spin on it. And, if I was the only owner of Golem Graphics I would do whatever I wanted, but I'm not. I have a partner (David Mac) and I'm not going to risk someone else's effort and time by saying something that could harm the business. So, after some chatting, I decided to shift its purpose.

Now hopefully you've clicked on the various links and helped increase my hit cout (thank you!), and if you haven't yet... not big deal :D I'll give you a description of what Golem Graphics is and I'll be putting in another post of what I want to do over the next while concerning my business and myself.

Golem Graphics is a business that's focused on 3D modeling, texturing, and animating for game developement companies. Basically we make items, buildings, vehicles, and characters for video and computer games. Right now we're more focused on the indie game community as we're both got our start there. Neither Dave nor I have any formal training, we both learn as we go. Recently Dave acquired Z-Brush, a handy little program that lets you basically paint in 3D. He wants to use it to create detailed textures for future products.