A Quick Update

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 6:11 AM

As I talked about earlier in the week, we are closing in on the final goal for the Gilman pack of free urban models. I posted an new updated file today -- 19 files are now in full beautiful textured technicolor in multiple formats. More will be coming next week, as we're moving pretty fast now in anticipation for final release. The link to the file is over there in the sidebar. Also, great news for all you OGRE users. It looks like we have someone on the team who is going to go through and export files to .mesh format for us, stay tuned, more on that later.

Stay free.

~shs~

And Then There Were Nine

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 2:58 PM

I was going to hold on to this for a few days, until I had actually gotten together a new downloadable release file, but I am so excited that I just can't hold it in. We are coming so incredibly close to finishing the Gilman project that I had to let you all see what is coming. We are just nine textures away from completing this year-long journey and, looking back, it is feeling like quite an acheivement. Sure, next to a full time studio working on a large game, a few dozen environment models may seem small, but for a volunteer team spread across the world working in the tiny nooks and crannies of our lives it turns out to be a very unique and rare thing. I am, as always, thankful for the chance to work with all these great artists.

Feel free to post this image elsewhere if you would like. I should be able to have a new download ready this week with the models seen here.



Also, here is a link to a larger image.

Stay free.

~shs~

Thousander Club Update -- August 22

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 2:24 PM

Things are starting to ratchet up at my day job, but I still managed to get in a semi-decent week. The reins are starting to become looser. I also managed to pull three 6-hour sleep nights in a row over the weekend.

Casey Dunham's hours (8/4) -- 105
GBGames' hours (8/21) -- 171.5
GBGames' game ideas (8/21)-- 432
Scott's 1000 hours (8/21) -- 188
1000 models -- over 150 now -- I need to recount still

Watch for the continuing Total Artist Makeover on occasional Wednesdays.

Stay free.

~shs~

Monday Morning Polyhacker -- Aug. 21

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 10:20 AM

Welcome to a beautiful Monday morning (or afternoon or middle of the night depending on where you are). Here is a quick roundup of the latest and greatest from around the forums. It's an interesting mix these days -- on one hand we are steadily closing in on completing the Gilman project and on the other we have exploded out in all sorts of new directions. More on the new stuff over the coming months, but for now, here are more models and textures.

A new one from a new contributor, greyother:



Two new ones from stukkm:





And, finally, a bunch of newly textured Gilman models.










Stay free.

~shs~

Thousander Club Update -- August 14

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 12:12 PM

All right! I finally broke past the 10 hour barrier for the first time since the baby was born. Watch out! Things are getting rolling now.

Casey Dunham's hours (8/4) -- 105
GBGames' hours (8/14) -- 166.5
GBGames' game ideas (8/14)-- 432
Scott's 1000 hours (8/14) -- 181
1000 models -- over 150 now -- I need to recount still

Watch for the continuing Total Artist Makeover on occasional Wednesdays.

Stay free.

~shs~

Total Artist Makeover 1.1 -- Intro

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 12:16 PM

Something snapped. Something has changed in me. I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but it was sometime during the past year. Transitioning over to becoming a game artist has long been my passion, but due to various short term demands, which I will get to in detail at some point, my path has followed a somewhat different direction over the past ten years. I have been at this for, depending on how you look at it, 2 years or 5 years or 16 years, but the goal has always remained pretty clear.

Quite simply I want....

no, scratch that...

I need to be doing the thing I love to do as much as possible.

Right now, I manage squeeze my art time into the five minute little spaces of my life, which has led to some small success if The Low Poly Coop is any indication. But, it's not enough, and it hasn't been enough for a long time. Up to this point, I have taken a methodical, patient and planful approach to achieving this goal. Over this time, though, something has changed. I no longer just dream or wish or plan about making this transition. It has become such a deep, core-level need that I spend every minute I can working on my art. I have waited long enough. The time has come to kick it up. I am attacking this with focus and verve. I am determined that a year from now I will be where I want to be. And you all are going to get to watch me stumble and claw my towards the top of this mountain. Hopefully you will learn something from my journey. Maybe some of you will even join me someday. Hold on to your hats, here we go.

When Terry and I started this project we both, I think, had a strong impulse to educate at the same time as we create. Naturally, I can't stand up and say I am an expert at many things, so a big part of the imparting of wisdom that we do here is to allow you all to follow along as we learn and explore. You can learn from our triumphs, gaffes and mistakes and watch it all unfold as it happens.

As part of this goal Emily and I have started a new initiative of teaching how to turn your preoccupation into your occupation (which does not necessarily mean working for a game company, mind you). For my part I will doing something I have been meaning to do for a long time. I am going to take you all along with me as I complete the last leg of my transformation into a full time game artist.

For starters, I have narrowed down my plan of attack to five main areas. Since getting serious about this two years ago, I have managed to put a lot of pieces in place. I know how to model. I know how to texture. I can help a team reach a goal. I have real game art to show off. I have a resume (maybe a little too long) that does the work of making people look at my portfolio. But, still...

Still, there are some puzzle pieces missing. I think these are the things that have so far kept me from being able to take the next step. My skillset and portfolio may not be enough to get someone to hire me full time. My energy levels and time availability are not enough to allow me to build a solo business on the side. My finances are not solid enough to let me start at a true entry level job that will let me build my skills and reputation. They're all little pieces, but they do add up.

So, here is the plan of attack. I will be concentrating on five main areas of development -- most of what I need to accomplish will fit within these categories. I will be creating a separate thread for each one here in our forums so that you can follow along as I do this, and I will also be summarizing my experiences here on this page every Wednesday or two.

1. Health and Well-Being
I am out of shape in general (WAY out of shape) and beaten up from the "Year of Baby #3". I need to make a serious turnaround here if I am to have the energy to excite people to work with me, to have the stamina to conquer the mountain of work ahead, and to have the clarity of consciousness needed to maintain a balanced life with my family and within myself. This is long overdue.

2. Skills Upgrade
I love the tools I work with now (Blender in particular), but I know that I must learn the tools that employers and clients demand, it's as simple as that. I need to do some learning, and given my past experience, this should be the easiest and most enjoyable part of this process.

3. Presentation
My resume could always use some work. My portfolio could definitely use some work. And, probably the biggest challenge I face, I need to turn what could be perceived as my main disadvantage, my age, into a huge positive in other people's eyes.

4. Relevant Experience
The coop here has been my bread and butter on this. And, through the most physically demanding parts of this year, this has been a mainstay of consistent development for me. I will continue to push this as far as it can go, but I will also begin to expand out again as I find more time and energy in my schedule.

5. Finances
Higher education, three kids, and the second-most expensive place to live in the USA has left me with a huge burden to carry around and it has been locking me into my gilded cube at work for too long. Getting on top of this will open up my options and start me on the path to more freedom as an artist.

Well, that's it. I hope some of you will want to take this journey along with me. I would be sincerely touched if some of you help me build myself up as I tear myself down so that I can become a stronger person and a better artist. I would be thankful and humbled.

Let's see where this takes me. Shall we?

Stay free.

~shs~

Morning Polyhacker -- August 8

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 1:26 AM

Image Roundup
Finally catching up with the latest and greatest from around our forums. The variety of work coming out of the group is definitely growing along with the growth of the team and all of the different artistic personalities that come along with that. I find it really exciting -- I hope everyone continues to work on what they love.

A new model and texture from Nibbuls.


This is from The Umbrella Man's just-started pack of building structures.


Terry revived an old model for Yaniv to texture. We may be releasing this or we may just be doing this for fun.


From the armory, HanClinto's texture on Khaine's model.


New contributor stukkm stopped by to post this goodie.


Nibbuls picking away at our tavern pack -- I think he just made the defining texture for the set.


And a new one for me -- trying to bust through the remainder of the Gilman textures.


Ads Begone
I removed the ads from the sidebar. They never really seemed to fit the personality or goals of this project and, as our traffic has increased, the revenue from the ads has remained almost nonexistant. I felt that the only clicks we were getting anyways were from people who wanted to give us support. I put in a donations link so, if you would like to support our project and help us pay for our basic web hosting expenses, please feel free to throw in a dollar or two. As always, it is not required. In fact, there are other ways to help us that are far more valuable than sending money, such as spreading the word or sending us screenshots to post. But, hey, if you want to, go ahead -- it will directly help the community.

Stay free.

~shs~

Thousander Club Update -- August 7

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 10:32 AM

I know it's been a few weeks since I updated this, but I have still been keeping close track of my hours. So, here you go.

Casey Dunham's hours (8/4) -- 105
GBGames' hours (8/7) -- 161 (Almost caught up to me!)
GBGames' game ideas (8/7)-- 432
Scott's 1000 hours (8/7) -- 167
1000 models -- about 150 now -- I need to recount still

There's some exciting new stuff coming up here on this very page. Check back again soon.

Stay free.

~shs~

Happy Birthday!

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 2:01 PM

Birthdays All Around



Hey Everyone, we've hit a milestone around here! We turn one year old today.

When I first started publically posting progress on our projects our group was still very young. Since then, we've grown. Though we still have a ton of work left to do, we've grown surprisingly far beyond my early expectations. Here is a little excerpt from January:

"I surprised myself when I recently looked back and counted the amount of work I had done over the first few months on this project. To date, I have created over 35 models, some of which I have completed and released on the forums. My work, a lot still in the work-in-progress stage even, has been downloaded over 50 times now and I have gotten great feedback and encouragement from people whose work I greatly respect."

Since then, 35 models has become 150, 50 downloads has become 2000, a handful of visitors has become 1800 a month from over 60 different countries, and we are now a mere 18 textures away from having our first project completed. Probably the biggest change, though, is that all the references to "I" in the above quote now need to change to "We" as this is now a true community project and has already grown well beyond what Terry and I could have hoped for a year ago. Word is spreading and the encouragement of the indie development community, more than anything, is what excites us to continue to work our butts off. I've said it before and I'll say it again I am thankful for the opportunity to work with such great artists. Not bad for a project that is run entirely in the nooks and crannies of our busy lives.

Part of the fun of working on our project is that it is a wide open pioneering place. Anyone who contributes can carve out their own space within the walls of our community. Following on the heels of the open-content free model libraries I started up and spend the bulk of my time on, most of the artists in the coop have recently started up their own projects. So, while we are celebrating our one year birthday, I thought that this would be a good time to celebrate some other births around our group. Most are still just in the beginning stages but they all show a nice glow of health and hope for growth. Here are just a few, I'll write more about them in the future or maybe I can coerce each of these people to write a little something for here:

Genesis RTS. Nibbuls has started up a real time strategy project that is already, after a few short months, approaching its own first milestone. I'll be helping out on it as well once I finish up a few things.

Texture Coop. Yaniv has taken the lead-out on growing a library of raw and tileable textures that will be freely available in a way similar to our model libraries.

The Umbrella Man has just started up a project devoted to larger building-scale models.

HanClinto has started work on an isometric 2D game.

A group has resurrected an old character model and are examining the possibility of preparing a textured model that we can distribute.

Khaine has started up a lengthy end-to-end tutorial for creating models with game engines in mind that should greatly expand on the work he has done already.

Terry has a hatful of projects just waiting to bust out.

Also, it seems everyone who stops by and contributes occasionally or provides feedback on our work in progress has something or another cooking on the side.

In short, the future looks bright.

Stay free.

~shs~