Sunday, March 4, 2012

Sunday Update

Since I've redone my blog I don't really want it to go the way of my last blog, which stopped being about art or games, which is what I want to keep this blog really focused on. I want this to be a place to focus on my art, and over at my tumblr you can see the stuff that gets me excited. This place also has to serve a repository for my older works, so expect to see that on Sundays too, in addition to just talking about art process and finding your way.

So here's my news: I've got a still unannounced next game for Gameloft that is going to be out probably in May. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, kind of pretty too. I'm heading to SXSW in a couple of weeks to see some awesome music and spend some time with my buddy Evan a though he's probably going to be swamped with final preparations on Starhawk . Then it's another 2 weeks until PAX East.

So this was a crazy week for new product announcements. My wallet is still broken in half from trips and buying CS5.5 so this is going to be an interesting few months. The Wacom Intuos5 is now out and looks amazing. I think I'll probably try and get another few months out of my Intuos4. It's hard to believe I had mine for over 3 years already. 

Next and perhaps even more significant for me is Luxology has released Modo 6.01. Modo has become my modelling and texturing tool of choice over the last year. I have a deep rooted hatred of 3DS Max which is fundamentally worse than Blender but costs $4000 a seat. Now that Modo does this, I don't think I'll need open up Autodesk stuff again. Now I just convince work to change the pipeline. 

A final thought on Modo 6.01, They have really blown me away the capabilities of their animation system. It's not really "character" system so much as a deformation engine, you can watch this demonstration and really see just how amazing this new set of tools is. I can't more more happy! 

Oh and zBrush 4 R3 came out. What a week!

The last big thing for me this week, PS Vita. I'm very impressed with hardware. The screen, the button feel, the front and back camera, the touch, the ergonomics and the styling are all incredible. For me this is as good as hand held gaming can get. My only gripe, as good as the Sony Hardware team has done delivering the future the marketing teams and interaction teams have really created a less than impressive UI. It feels like a hokey hodgepodge of Wii and iOS, it doesn't feel like a Sony product and it doesn't have a nice consistency of interaction. It feels like three feuding UI camps each got their stake on all of the different chucks of this and couldn't really get a definitive cohesive set of features. Honestly Crossbar with Touch would have been much nicer, this feels like a bad joke.

I don't want to end my thoughts on Vita as a big downer, the handheld is PERFECT for games, an amazing controller in its own right, and already has a killer game (Uncharted) with more coming (MGS Collection, Gravity Rush). It's the best platform for portable gaming I've ever seen. Of course this is probably going to be overshadowed in a week by the info on the iPad3. But if you follow me on twitter (@SharpenedPixel) you probably know how I feel about it already.



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