Poker Mind Game

Our final project for Audio Visual Techniques.



Poker Mind Game

Portfolio - static webpage layout

We were asked to create a static webpage layout for out Website Creation and Management. I created one, but I'm not sure if I want to incorporate this into Joomla.



In the meantime I started doing a template for Joomla, looking the same way as my Wordpress one. It's in progress and I don't really know what to do with it..but anyway.



(Seems all this was not necessary as we are still trying to figure out what kind of project we should do to pass this class)

Progress Report no. 1

A week has passed and it is slowly the time to show my progress.

At first I wanted to come up with a composition I would use for my drawing and with that I wanted to concentrate more on the background of the image. All this idea came from an image of Drizzt Do'Urden and his leopard Guenhwyvar coming out of the underground to an eternally snow covered surface. And that is where I started or tried to start...


I realized that doing this is much more time consuming than I expected. Coming up with a composition is really hard for me but this hopefully gets better with each week^^. When I found out what I would like to draw I realized that doing it is much more difficult as well. The biggest problem though was with colors. I did not manage to come up with colors that would express what I want and in the end the Drizzt sketches look really horrible. After the two first drafts I decided to try a new one being completely different. On Saturday played in a Magic tournament and I came across a Frostwind Inwoker . I decided that I could draw a dragon, a huge bird or another big creature that can fly with a person riding it. I ended up with a dragon yesterday.

For the next week I will most probably try to come up with a composition I want so I could keep to it. I have no idea if I will manage it though. I expected to start working on the character or the animal in the image the next week but that won't be possible if I don't have the whole drawing drafted. Anyway yesterday night I also came across an old drawing of mine. I added a background to it. I know it's just some blurred trees and such but I realized few things while doing it. One thing is that I was never capable of doing something like this just by deciding "doing it". I drew the trees, used layers, opacity settings, blurred it even more and in the end it came to look quite good (in terms of my earlier attempts at backgrounds both simple and more sophisticated).



The reflection in her eyes should be different as the source of light is elsewhere but well...I will learn how to deal with this later or on the way. Good thing is that I realized this while looking at the picture. This wouldn't probably happen to me earlier.

First official entry

What is it that you propose to create?

One full art drawing. That would consist of an humanoid creature, animal creature and background.

What form will it take?

It would be one real or digital image. Most probably the first sketches and process would be done on paper. The final image would be digital.

What is the scope of the project?

What I had in mind originally is this. Each week I would do sketches based on 'topic' I would choose. Example would be Animals for week one. I would produce sketches of animals. This way I would continue till I would have sketches of 'items' I could put together and create one final piece that would be colored in the end of the project.

What I want to achieve now is something like this in composition. (it's an example - elf, leopard and some scenery. Does not need to have this composition but I want something that would force me to come up with a background of a bigger scope and more different elements to draw/paint)

What is your conceptual basis behind creating the piece?

Well, since my childhood I was fascinated by fantasy paintings and it was always my dream to manage to paint/draw something like this in the future. One of my dreams was having a full art piece submitted and accepted by Wizards of the Coast. I'm far away from that as I hardly can produce anything like a full art piece (in WotC terms) but this is the time I could try to produce one.

I will probably ran into many problems starting with composition, drawing human, animal and even the background. Choosing right colors and doing highlights and shadows is something that was always a mystery to me as well. Anyway this is my chance to try to work on one piece for a longer period of time and trying to finish it - so it would look finished. That is my goal.

Joomla

We can take Web Creation and Management classes at Prague College so I signed up for it. In the first class the students learned the basics of HTML, CSS and PHP. So basically they should be able to create styled static web pages.

In the second class we are supposed to be introduced to content management systems and more PHP scripting (it should come to that). So we will see where it leads us?

In the first few lessons we were taught how to set up xampp on our stations and how to install Joomla. Then we were taught how to use it, install new extension and how to manage it. My first set up Joomla looks like the one you can see on the screenshot.

WotC ArtBlog

Drawing challenges were coming to my mind quite often but I never got the topic. There are many things I would like to try but how to put everything together?

There is a new Magic: The Gathering expansion set. Sometimes with the set we can decide what type of illustration we want or try to draw/paint our own illustrations (as we get the description of the cards as well). The given description is only for a few cards (usually max. 3) and this happens once per 3 months (if it does).

During this night I remembered that some of the people I know from a forum are doing some art contests that are run by someone from WotC.

This person is Jon Schindehette, a Senior Art Director (for the game Dungeons and Dragons) from Wizards of the Coast. Each 14 days he usually comes up with a challenge people can follow and submit. The actual challenge is preparing a concept that could be used for SFX team to create a magic spell effect.

The description follows:

Level 9 Warlock Power

Feast of Souls
Souls trapped in the Nine Hells are hungry for life. Opening a temporary rift, you give them a taste of your foes' vitality.
Daily • Arcane, Cold, Implement, Psychic, Zone
Standard Action
Area burst 1 within 10 squares
Target each creature in burst
Attack Constitution vs will
Hit: 1d8 + Constitution modifier psychic damage, and the target is dazed (save ends).
Effect: The burst creates a zone of hungry spirits that lasts until the end of your next turn. The zone is difficult terrain. Each creature that enters the zone or starts its turn there takes 1d8 + your Constitution modifier cold damage. As a move action, you can move the zone 2 squares.
Sustain Minor: The zone persists

This kind of challenges is something I would like to follow, but it has some problems. I need to create something on a weekly basis and something that would be 'doable' for me. My drawing skills are not that good. But if I could come up with a drawing challenge for each week this would be something I would like to do. But we will see, I still have few days to decide^^. But coming up with the challenges might be a problem.

EDIT: Daarken is a god of digital painting O_O

Brainstorming no.1

Today we had our first class of Cultural Interpretation. We learned something about the first project that awaits us. That is the reason why this blog is being created.
We are supposed to create a personal project that is not bound by anything except our own limitations. The class is mostly devoted to the understanding and development of personal artistic style and that is what we will try to achieve in our first and 9 week ongoing project.

I started thinking about the topic for this project but can't come up with anything. It's the first day (few hours) so it's ok that I can't come up with anything.
I always come back to painting as there are some things I would like to learn to do.
And that is learning how to draw landscapes in proper perspective. I do Magic: The Gathering alters and that is where I would start and continue. I plan to do a series of textless lands to learn something about the perspective but it's time really time consuming and I might not have the time at all as I should spend my weekends in the game store I'll be owning in few weeks.

The second idea is - why not do a documentary movie about the game store? I know what I would want to take videos of and what to show in it. But this is something I can't plan and do on weekly basis. So this probably won't work either. (Since today we have a working website^_^)

There is one more thing I wanted to do in near future and that is work with some samples and my synthetizer to create some 'music'. No sense of rhythm does not help this and no experience whatsoever with all this might not help either.

Maybe a good night's sleep will help with brainstorming^_^. I need it. I haven't slept in a while.

That's all for the first unofficial post.