My Imagination Is Power

I don't really know who this is, but they decided to get the Spartan Keychain design I did (which, itself, is based on a Spartan icon used by Bungie). I also don't know why they didn't go with the sans-circle version, but to each their own.

Shiska says, "Tinman wins for most Halo art converted to tattoos!" (Which is two now, kinda.) I'm not sure about that, I'd guess that there are more people out there with tattoo's based on cover artwork, or the Halo logo.

I did a quick test, and it seemed to work ok. At least his model and texture show up. Now I need to see if I can get my own animation working in the game:

I'm going to try and get this guy running around in Unreal Tournament 2004.

Dean Trippe has started another one of the "redesign a superhero" memes (he's keeping a running list of all of them), and I decided to finally do one of my own:

Original Sketch:

I was going to ink it, but then realized I'm quite rusty at digital inking, and I don't have a good light table set up to ink it by hand easily. Maybe the next one.

I had done this sketch and drawing for the Don Wan (aka Kari) last year while I was working for Bungie. It's based on her Spartan colors and icon she used while playing Halo 2. I just spent a little while on it, I figured she'd like it as an online avatar or even just a desktop image.

Well, if any of us are going to get serious about making some sort of indie game/mod, I figure one of us should make a blog post about it. (There's something odd about writing a post about making an indie game in the office of one of the biggest game companies.) It would be best to pick something that runs on all of our systems, so we can all actually play what we're working on. Though recently it dawned on me that playing with the HDR support that will soon be integrated into Half-life 2 would be quite fun. I think the most interesting part would be to take a game and change the gameplay drastically enough that it doesn't feel like the same game we started with.

I ran across a post on kuro5hin that sets up some good guidlines. Where to go from there though?

What sort of options do we have for mac/pc compatible games (that allow modding)?

The only thing I'm going to insist on is that we include something special for good old Mr. Thompson.

Looks like some of my work has made it into a Microsoft Case Study on Bungie.net. MSDN Solution Architecture Center: Bungie.net Technical Case Study. Though it's pretty much just touting .Net, it's still cool to see some graphics I did stuck in there.

This last Wednesday, like every Wednesday, was the Halo Humpday Challenge. Each week Bungie challenges, or gets challenged to play some other group of players. In past weeks it has been Pioneer Audio, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and soldier's just back from Iraq. I've played in a few and it's been fun.

We started a tradition, after the second or third week, to have an icon next to the article which signified the Humpday Challenge. There's a fine tradition in the game where, if you've killed someone and want to rub it in their face, you stand over them and hit the crouch button repeatedly. The effect is essentially your player "humping" the corpse of your fallen foe. Very humiliating if it's happening to you. In the spirit of the Humpday Challenge, I've created various gif's of that act, to accompany the article. These have been met with the displeasure of the Microsoft Overlords, but we persist in publishing them, since it is only really a "victory dance".

So this last week, we played the guys from Penny Arcade. These guys are the most popular web comic out there, and a huge voice in the gaming industry. Unforunately, not very good at Halo. Frankie recapped the events fairly accurately. I immediately realized this required a new image using their characters, and Frankie had the perfect target: the Penny Arcade character named Fruit Fucker.

In their latest news post they've responded to our match-up.

We weren’t going to do a comic strip about the final outcome but then we saw their little animated gif of the master chief body humping the fruit fucker. That sort of insolent behavior could not go unpunished.

Pretty sweet that my art (if not my idea, using the Fruit Fucker was Frankie's) inspired them to do another comic.

Most Innovative Design: Bungie.net

"If you want to see the future of online game integration with a Website, www.Bungie.net easily takes the cake."

It's pretty cool to be a part of that. Hopefully I can keep it going.

I've been asked to do some of the Bungie frontpage news pictures these last couple weeks. They turned out suprisingly well, and I got some good response about them. The first occurances are between 12/3/04 and 12/9/04.

First is a confused grunt for Frankie's Weekly What's Update.

Next I did an aged grunt for an article on Geezer Gamers.

And by far everyone's favorite. The Halo Humpday Challenge. (He's just bending over to pick up ammo. Promise.)

Finally, a good majority of my work has been posted online, and possibly up to 300,000 people may have taken a look at it. There are screenshots of it up at IGN.com (another example)

The fanfest went over really well. I heard up to 1200 people showed up. It was quite the experience being part of it. And not only being there as a fan, but at someone who saw what it took to put it together (as I was one of the ones setting up 50 tvs and overseeing some of the games.) The fans weren't nearly as bad as I expected. Having been to PAX, I expected the worst. Luckily most of them looked bathed, and there were actually a couple people of the opposite sex that didn't look half bad.

I wasn't allowed on the midnight madness tour buses (liability issues with me being a contractor, and Alta getting kegs for the bus), but it ended up being a really fun night anyway.

Sometime soon I'm going to see if I can do something interesting with the RSS feed you can get with the Halo 2 games played. Perhaps something along the lines of this beautiful use of the technology.

Received assignment Friday evening (8/27), and it was ready to be sent off Saturday morning (8/28).

Completed in approximately 9 hours.

Tools: Maya, Photoshop, Imageready, and lots of rootbeer.

Ah ha! I have successfully taken a model from Maya and imported it into Unreal. Granted, the textures are very plain, and the model isn't optimized at all for the game, and the weighting is all wrong, but it works! Sweet. Now I just need to get a job doing that. Simple, right?

Inaugurating my Seattle artistic experience. Based on a completely tasteful postcard.

And just to continue the theme to its bitter end:

I did this a long long time ago, but its worth repeating.

(Feel free to use this for your little counters. I know I've hit probably 5 since I've been out here.)

Feel free to use them on your own weblogs as you wish...just save them to your own space.

Member profile - GFXartist.com - Over 16,000 pages of digital expression

Its yummy!

Well, since my last attempt fizzled out, I figured I'd try and start a new animation, one I may actually like working on.

Total time to create: ~4 hours.

I definitely need to update my site. There's a few months worth of illustration work, and a bit of 3d tinkering I've done that I really want to add. Hopefully in the next week or so I'll be able to get it up, but if you really want to see current work, drop me a line and I'll send out a packet.

I have done a few things in the Freedom Force gaming community. I have a simple skinning tutorial I did for Freedom Force. You can find it at either: Here or Here.

You can also see some models I modified to add special effects Here and Here. You can find them by my name "Andrew Davis". They are the ones with the names ending in _effects. I added the shine/glow/alpha effects to the model files supplied by Irrational.

I've also had a skin I created for Max Payne featured in an article in PC Gamer magazine. I'll try to get a scan of the article online asap. Hopefully you'll find it amusing.

It appears a still from my 3D Final Animation is being used as part of a flyer for the Savannah Film and Video Festival's SCAD Student Showcase Double Feature. You can see the cover here, and info about the show here.

Thanks for your interest.

My 3D Final has been posted in the Gallery of SCAD's Computer Art webpage. You can find the main page here. Hopefully I'll be rearranging the site soon, to reflect more of what I've been doing lately, and showcasing my portfolio work better. I also have a lot of good life drawing scetches and drawings to scan in and post as well.