A game of my own

I've designed, 'programmed' and built all the art assets for an infinite runner called "SpeedRun Neo Toyko", as a demonstration of what to aim for by students studying on the BA Games Design course at Brunel University, where I lecture.

The game was built in Clickteam Fusion 2.5, runs at 1080p (with retro-style scanlines) and is intended for PC, smartphone or tablet use. At the moment, it only available runs on Windows.

The video above is in appalling-quality Bloggervision. To see a high-quality version, visit my site.

Comic Book Art course

On the Comic Book Art short course (which I teach in the holidays, at Chelsea College in London), we had a group of girls from an animation school in Moscow. They were all good artists and inventive in their ideas, and the course was a lot of fun. At they end they gave me a memento:

My own office (to share)

I'm sharing an office with Doug, who as well as being a great chap is a video game theorist, researching themes in games and how games influence, and are influenced by, society.

Joining Brunel University

I'll soon be joining Brunel's Game Design BA / MA, as their lecturer in game asset production (graphics, basically). It's an exciting new challenge, and I look forward to seeing how I fit in to the course, which focusses on gameplay, as opposed to programming (or art, at least exclusively).

The campus has a nice vibe in the summer, too:

Mobile App development

I'm teaching another new course, this time in mobile app development. We're using a system called MobileNation, which is a little buggy, but if you use some ingenuity it's possible to get a respectable business app out of it (no games, though, unfortunately!).

As a class demo, I built an app for the college, a few screens of which I've included below. Shown on iOS.

Illustrator CS6 Training Courses

I've started teaching Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign CS6 1-day training courses, at introductory and intermediate level. I knocked up these in Illustrator as part of the training materials I gave the students, and liked the way they turned out.

2D Flash Games

I'm currently teaching another games course, this time based around the free cross-platform software Stencyl. This allows you to manage scenes, animations, collision detection and so on, as well as develop scripts called Behaviours to control how enemies react and so on.

The screens below are from a 2D shooter that I built as part of an in-class demo. Tiles made in Photoshop.

Games Technologies course - 'pixel art'

As part of an introductory course into Games Technologies, I've been teaching the students Adobe Illustrator. As part of a fun exercise in the last lesson, we produced bitmap style avatars for ourselves, limited to a very low 'resolution'. Mine is below!

E-Commerce Teaching

Updates have been a bit slow this year, as I've been teaching a whole pile of (new) courses. As well as the digital graphics / games development courses I tend to talk about on this blog, I've also got another hat teaching web development / e-commerce / eBay courses for people with small businesses.

As well as getting me up to speed on the current considerations, platforms and so on, it's been useful to approach website development from the point of view of different 'customer personae'. It's straightforward to assess a design based on what you think of it, but perhaps more instructive to put yourself in the place of a 'character' visiting the site, and see how it fares.

Hopefully I'll find the time to post more regularly, though with a flat move and upcoming summer courses, we'll see!

Character Design using Paths

As part of a level 3 Multimedia course, I've been teaching the students how to use the paths feature in Photoshop to produce clean artwork. It's slightly clunky compared to using Illustrator, but we are using PS for the unit. After scanning in the sketch, adjusting it and tracing over to produce the line art, we then used Multiply, Overlay and Adjustment layers to add the shading.

The demo character below is a futuristic version of the Wolf from Red Riding Hood, this time as a robot. He is designed to walk on two legs or four, depending on the situation. The large head on his chest can open up to swallow you whole! Click to enlarge.

Concept Art Class - Environments

I've been teaching a concept art class based around Adobe Photoshop, and it's been going pretty well. Some of the students have PS at home and have brought in some great work. I've even converted a few to Wacom tablets, and now most of the class have at least a Bamboo (which are really good for £50).

I recently did a tutorial about coming up with an environment from your imagination, blocking it in in greyscale before adding some colour. The pic below is the result; a futuristic re-interpretation of the forest from Red Riding Hood.

BTEC Digital Graphics

I'm teaching two units (out of four) on an IT BTEC - Games Development, and Digital Graphics. The overal theme of the course is video games, so for a tutorial in Adobe Illustrator I got the students to design a clan logo for an online FPS.

The demo below is for a team called "Frag Out", based on the military expression.

BTEC Games Development

Just started teaching on a BTEC IT - Games Development course at RACC in Richmond. I'm handling the half of the course relating to games design and digital graphics. The students seem enthusiastic about gaming, and we'll be covering a wide range of exercises using Photoshop and Illustrator CS5, and 3DS Max 2011.

In my other life as a keen seller on eBay, I'll also be teaching a bunch of courses related to buying and selling on everyone's favourite auction site.

Teaching

I'll be teaching the Comic Book Art summer course at Chelsea College soon. Should be good, and I'm looking forward to see what crazy stories the students will come up with! It's nice to get back to basics, just working with pens, pencils and paper, and concentrating on telling a tale.

I will also be teaching some introductory Mac courses at SCOLA, in Sutton.

Teaching: Comic Book Art course at Chelsea College

Just finished teaching the Comic Book Art short course at Chelsea College of Art & Design.

The course ran for five Saturdays, with the objective of creating 1-2 pages of comic book artwork by the end. The students worked really hard, and in many case produced much more work than was asked for. They all finished with inked up linework, with a few having time to add colour. They should all be at the stage where they can finish off their work (adding lettering and so on), without too much trouble.

As five weeks is not a lot of time, I didn't focus too much on improving their basic drawing skills, concentrating more on storytelling. I gave the students a framework from going from a blank page or loose ideas, to developing a story, thumbnailing it and drawing out the full-size panels. I also asked them to consider the layout of the page(s) as a whole, to make sure they flowed properly, and the pacing fitted with the story.

It was my first experience teaching (though I've taken many adult education classes), so I'm pleased it went well overall. The student artwork was great, and I'm currently putting together a mini anthology of their work for them.