Thursday 24 June 2010

Game Boyz - Sitcom

The concept for Game Boyz has been going on for quite some time. It actually began as a book I was writing about my time in the video games industry. I didn't really have a clear idea in my mind at the time as to what real direction I wanted to take it, so I left it alone for a while. It was after quite a turbulent period in my life that I chose to push forward with my acting career again. And this led to me having thoughts about turning the video game book into a script.








I got in touch with another actor, (someone I had previously only briefly chatted to online), about the idea of turning this idea I had into a script. Taking onboard the advice he gave me, a week later I had the first episode written. I sent him the first episode and he loved it. This actor was Stephen Brady, and he has been working on the sitcom with me ever since.









As well as Stephen,
a great team of people are building up, and I'm very happy with the crew that are onboard. Brad Askew, who was introduced to me through Stephen, has been a fantastic addition to the team,and Vanessa-May Dolphin, has what I hope people will find to be an exciting and fun role. Will chat about other cast and crew members in future blogs.







It's taken a lot of hard work getting to the stages where we are now. We are making this short film ourselves, which isn't one of the episodes from the full sitcom. This film is to introduce the characters and their relationship to each other. Ultimately we're making this film to secure the go ahead for the full first series of the sitcom, but also to try and retain as much of the original concept as possible, because some of the ideas and storyline are pretty wild.








I'll be covering a lot about the progress of GameBoyz in the future. These images are from the sitcom storyboard.










Here, is an early animated logo I made for Game Boyz.




Sunday 20 June 2010

Spaceship Design For A Film

This is a spaceship I designed and modelled, for the Doctor Who fan film, Besieged. Vanessa-May Dolphin, aka, Gifted Dolphin, worked on the animation editing, and gave me great input on the spaceship design. This first Image is how the spaceship appears in the film. I got a lot of inspiration for this spaceship design from the sci-fi artist Chris Foss. I have beed fascinated by Chris Foss's work since a very young age. I really like the design and the spaceship Serenity from the the tv show Firefly. It was Vanessa-May who introduced me to Firefly/Serenity.







This next image of the spaceship shows the base mesh model, with a simple plain material applied, so the mesh can be clearly shown. I like images of the base mesh on models. I really love how you can see all the details. I actually like these base mesh images more than the final images with the textures and materials applied.









Getting the materials and textures right, is what makes any 3d model look real. In this image I have been working on a dirty, worn metal material for the surface of the spaceship.
I love the spaceship designs from the early Star Wars movies. I think it's great the way the Rebel ships look beaten up. A lot of inspiration came from there also.







I didn't have a great deal of time to work on this, so the model isn't quite as detailed as I would have liked. In saying that, I admit I was enjoying working on this so much that I added some detail that isn't shown in the film, such as the rear hatch which can open and close, and the landing feet which can extend.
In this image I have applied the base textures. The four engines are the same model piece repeated, so that saved on some time. A lot of the various model parts are re-used around the whole model.





And here is a short clip of the final spaceship, flying through space.



If I am able to, I'll post some clips of the finished film Besieged. It's quite exciting seeing the spaceship in the final film