Recently upgraded to Zbrush 4.0. Just a little messing around. No postproc done.

“A Boy and his Turtle”

Wanted to finish a project with my new intuos4 tablet to see if I liked it over my Cintiq 21UX.

Created with Photoshop CS5.

Comments are welcomed.

UPDATE  1: The studio is almost finished. Yay! However, one of the many problems you run into, when remodeling around the house, is running out of money. I have therefore depleted my remodeling funds for the moment.  I would say that its about 70% completed. The last remaining items really are just big items, that once they are purchased the room will be completed. Pictures will be posted.

UPDATE 2: I have been adding more content to my website every two weeks or so, if not every week. I have been working on redoing projects that were turned in for school that should have never been turned in or I should’ve at least received an F for them. I am now more pleased with the results of the ones I have redone/retouched.

www.papalati.com

The following items are posted as redone/retouched:

UNDER GRAPHIC DESIGN- Starving Artist Student Art Show, Product Packaging Assignment, No Smoking Advertisement, The Stamp Project, Resident Evil Apocolypse Poster Contest

ADDITIONAL CONTENT HAS BEEN ADDED TO: Concept Art, Graphic Design, and 3D Animation Stills.

I will post the difference in the redone content vs the originals in a future blog.

UPDATE 3: I have added another section to my website called SKETCHBOOK. The sketchbook page will consist of pages scanned directly out of my sketchbook with no “retouching”. I will try to scan in a couple of pages a month. As I find it hard for me to find time to sketch.

Stay Tuned.

There are two types of people that “create” websites. Developers and Designers. AND if you actually go out on to the job boards and look for jobs related to Web Design, you will most certainly find both words, developers and designers, listed as the title of the job. HOWEVER, I have come to find out that almost 98% of businesses/companies out there do not see a difference in these two words, and for the small percentage that do they fall into two more classes. One percent thinks that the two jobs can be done by ONE person, the developing and the designing. Then you have the other one percent that realize a designer is a designer. Plain and simple.

So what happens when you have a developer make a site? What happens when you have a developer/designer make a site? And, what happens when you have a designer make a site? One thing will happen with all three, some type of element or image will be created and posted out to a URL. However, the content will be completely different dependent on who developed/designed it.

Lets go with the first person, the developer. Ah yes the developer, he crafts code in his sleep, he eats javascript for breakfast, drinks a nice action-script for lunch, and whips up some tasty PHP or even some XML scripting if he is really feeling up for it that night for supper. Wow what a great website… WRONG! His/her website is BORING its all about the math and not about the aesthetic. Screw the looks its all about functionality. Man do his forms look awesome. Yippee.

Our second person is of course the ideal candidate for companies. The killer combination of developer/designer is the two for one trade that all companies hope to attain to keep not only their salary output down, but also a way to keep from creative boundaries being pushed for their content. That’s right folks this “artist” can not only code, but he/she can also whip up some nice flash animation for you, layout some sweet CSS, in the end making those fonts on your site look so AWESOME that you will want to gouge out your eyeballs in hopes of never exposing them to such AWESOMENESS again.

Last but not least, you have your web designer in the truest sense… designer. They use the split or design only interface in Dreamweaver, they think of what cool 2d cartoons they could create on the stage in Flash, and what a sweet looking interface they could imagine within the confines of Fireworks. Oh yummy indeed. Dream a little dream. These people also wish they could be like those people up above, but they can’t. There is the left side and the right side. Ever here someone say middle? Nope that’s a negativo. Unfortunately for me, I’m lumped in with the last of the three.

I’ve been working on “A” website for like seven years. It’s bad, I mean really bad. First it was going to be all Flash and 3D-like and it would have cool swooping menus coming in and going out and flipping around. Oh man it was going to be, wait for it…. Legendary; but alas, I suck at developing and therefore Adobe realized that I sucked and started to create more automated things like encoding video for me, and making it easier for me to do layouts instead of having to learn CSS in and out. Do I know CSS? Well, I understand the preliminary structure of it yes. But do I know the code? Nope. But I do alright with a little backward engineering.

You’re probably wondering by now what the hell this is all about, so I will tell you…

I have finally created a website I am truly happy with and you can check it out here.

This site contains most of the art that I have created over the last 10 years. Unfortunately for you, the viewer, MOST of it is old. Only a few pieces that encompass the site are new, but that is soon to change. In the coming weeks and months, I will start to post more new art; AND I will post the redo art that I mentioned in the previous blog (back to the drawing board).

So, go check out all my old art and really sad animation work from college, and be sure to check out some of the new awesome stuff on my Works in Progress page and Concept Art page.

Now almost four years later and to my dismay I have not been in the best position to use them. After graduating I needed to find a job quickly in order to salvage my marriage, at the time. I was good at computers so I thought I could get a job doing just that. Unfortunately, I found out that employers required at least a MCP or A+ Certification; so I turned around and was back in class at Ivy Tech in the fall getting my A+ Certification. I finished the 16 week course, and got my certification by Comptia.

Three weeks later my ex asked for a divorce.

In February of 2007, after 23 years, I moved back to Cincinnati hoping that the bigger city would provide me with the opportunity I had been looking for, a fresh start and a new design job. Unfortunately a few things were working against me: 1. not knowing anyone in this big city other than my brother, and 2. having been tossed to the side by my cousin (who by the way had a design job at a local TV station). However, the one thing that hurt me the most I had done to myself… The entire time I was in school I didn’t focus like I should have, it was the first time I had friends, it was the first time I enjoyed school, it was the first time I could put my (supposed) talents to use.

So did I? Did I put those talents to use? The answer is short and simple… No, no I didn’t.

Instead of working on an actual portfolio combining all of the different types of classes I was taking (typography, graphic design, photography, color theory, the list goes on and on, hell I even skipped the class on Studio Max) I focused on one thing and one thing alone… Maya. That’s all I lived and breathed was Maya, hell I even named my dog Maya. I spent a better part of four years screwing around with Maya. Yes, I said screwing around (this is starting to turn out to be sort of a confession, although I’m not meaning for it to be). I would taste a little bit of modeling here, not like it and move on to animation, then not liking the results of that test I would move on to a new idea. Not once finishing anything. Even my teacher at the time Micheal Moore said, “Dude you gotta finish something, you have to stop starting something and then just abandoning it for the next great idea that comes to mind. How do you ever expect to succeed in a studio if you can’t even finish one project from start to end?” Oh the wisdom of MGM, how I should have heeded it, but because I knew a little bit more than the other students it went to my head. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, hell I know more than he does. Right, that’s why MGM works two jobs: Coordinator at the Creative Center at ISU, and he still teaches Animation and Web Design at Ivy Tech. And where am I working? I’m fixing computers for a company that doesn’t give wage increases, sick days, or cost of living increases; and I’ve been here for three years.

You’re probably wondering when I’m going to start making sense, especially regarding the title of this post. Hang in there, I’m getting to it.

So anyway, after ignoring all my other classes thus turning in mediocre work at best, I had nothing to show potential employers what I did in college. Hell I didn’t even want to show them, it’s embarrassing, but alas I did it to myself. So what can I show them, well I can show them character designs and walk cycles and really crappy first attempts at using IK and FK systems. Yeah, I’m sure that wins them over every time. Well, as you can tell it hasn’t, since I still work here. Obviously at this point in time in my life, if I want a job in the design field I need to get cracking, right?

There are three possibilities  for me:

1. Work over the next 10 months to learn Studio Max and Mudbox, keep learning Zbrush, and keep refreshing myself on Maya. Come up with a kick-ass demo using my character designs for basis. Then try to convince my wife to move to ANOTHER city so that I can find a game/film design job.

2. Study up on the current design trends in photography, graphic design, color theory, and typography. Build up a portfolio based upon that work. Then try to pursue a graphic design job in the immediate area, allowing my wife to stay at her job she has had for the last five years.

3. Go back to school (yes I know, it sounds awesome doesn’t it) finish a bachelor program and then a master’s program and wind up teaching design at a local school or college.

Ah the choices, how fun. Of course my first choice would be number one; but that’s a no brainer. Number two is more for a colleague of mine, he loves designing posters and brochures. Me? Eh… not so much. But hey it let’s my wife keep her job. Although as of late she has been saying (as well as I have) that a warmer climate does sound rather tempting. We’ve talked about a couple of places of interest: Austin and Atlanta. For me Austin, simply because of the amount of activity that exists down there for someone in my field of work. Even being able to go into a studio and being a tester at $9/hr is at least being in the field. I don’t even have my foot on the sidewalk to the front of the place where the door is; my foot is down the block and around the corner, stuck in some gum that someone spat out on the sidewalk, and I can’t move.

I’ve been working in Zbrush now for around four months, complicated program to say the least, but hey I learned how to get around in Maya so I should be good. Things are starting to pay off, but working full time and then coming home and trying to spend quality time with the wife and remodeling and everything else that goes with life, has really limited my interaction with my art and the software. I’m not drawing as much as I thought I would be, and not using the Mac Pro I bought last June as much as I should be.  I’m looking to get a Macbook Pro so I can at least bring that with me to work, as I do not like art on the company provided laptop, as I do not know when or if it will be taken away. When you have a contract with a company you never know when you will show up the next day and your badge doesn’t work.

Now I will start to get down to the nitty gritty…

Around six months ago I interviewed for a multimedia design position at a rather well-known company in the Cincinnati area. As you can see I obviously didn’t get the job. Unfortunately for me I didn’t learn from the previous multimedia job I interviewed for at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, so this one got to be my wake up call about a great many things regarding my so-called work. Here is what I learned…

1. ALWAYS BRING A WAY FOR YOU TO SHOW YOUR WORK!!!!

2. Don’t count on the interviewers to have looked at your work prior to the interview even though they requested to look at it on your website prior to the interview. Doesn’t mean they will actually have time to do that.

3. Do not design your portfolio website where even YOU cannot show your work in a professional way.

4. Idiot, take stuff down off of your website that has nothing to do with your work.

5. Do not have your blog be the first thing a potential employer sees when they go to your site.

6. Show work that pertains to the job your applying for, in other words do not show character designs from Zbrush if you are applying for a job that requires you to use Maya to design a product.

7. Bring a laptop to the interview, and make sure that you have it ready to go. Also make sure to have a local copy of your work, because the network may be down or the don’t have a connection ready for you.

8. How many times have you been told and didn’t listen to the fact: SHOW YOUR BEST WORK FIRST!

9. Don’t wear a tie with color. (This could be a fact, but that was a damn good tie.)

10. Do not, under any circumstances greet a interviewer that you already know personally with the line, “Hey buddy, how ya doing?” Just Pure Stupidity.

The other part of me not getting the job is the fact that my work was just not up to snuff. Multimedia job means M-U-L-T-I  media. So in other words, you need to have some animation examples. Not tell them you don’t have any; or the least you could do is be more descriptive and use precise wording when asked to explain the projects you worked on. All the interviewer kept asking for was animation examples. It was almost like he was saying, “You have an animation degree yet you have nothing to show us to prove that you actually earned this degree.” He had every right to do that; it’s not like they’re going to hire me and take a chance that I COULD actually do something. So next time, have animation examples ready and make sure they are good quality.

Now that you have seen for yourself, (at least with my words describing the event) that I am going to have to get down, dig in, and do some REAL WORK.

I have only completed three 3D projects in my life, and they can be viewed on my website. Here is the link. Trust me I’ve had a lot more projects that I just plain quit for various reasons: boredom, impatient, new idea was better, and usually it was depression over how long it was taking. Depression is usually what kills my motivation above anything else. I had no clue how to start over or where to begin so I tried a few things. Whether it was simple stuff like weapon designing for games or trying to get involved with contests or forums; I always ended up depressed about just one thing… if I do this, will I be good enough?

But failing is not trying at all.

So here we go…

I needed a starting point to get the gears rolling again, and I’ve found it. Over the next 10 months I will be completing by first demo reel, hoping to have it polished and ready by next GDC. However, in order to do this I’m going back to the drawing board. What I mean by this is, I’m going back to where I left off. I am going to start with the first project I didn’t finish and go from there. Each project will be completed from start to finish, even if I completed it to a point, I will start over. All projects will be documented showing the steps that I have taken to complete them. I will be doing all the projects that I have started all the way back in school and rework them.

I’m tired of turning in crap. I’m tired of being embarrassed with the work I show people.

No more.

[Update: The Apple Store has reopened its web doors to apparently reveal that it has only updated Aperature 3. How nice.]

The release is imminent, any time now Apple will be releasing a refresh to their Macbook Pro line. It’s been talked about since last fall the possibility of Apple getting first “dibs” on the new Arrandale processors by Intel; and today looks to be the day that we all get a taste of what Steve jobs spoke about at his town hall meeting he had 2 weeks ago.

As of right now the first report came from macrumors.com with their report on a benchmark submitted to Geekbench reporting i7 Macbook Pros. Yesterday another post started circulating with a screenshot from a supposed bestbuy computer showing inventory in the store for Apple Laptops as being deleted, thus preventing ordering of any new Apple made laptops from their store. This has happened in the past, right before a new product release. Also being carried along with the screenshot rumor was the rumor that this usually happens a day or two in advance of a product release; thus leading us up to today…

I awoke this morning with hopes and dreams to see new laptops on apple.com, but low and behold… nothing. Then I clicked on the store link and bam… “We are updating the store for you and will be back shortly.” Yipeeeeee!

My only hopes regarding this refresh besides a quad-core option is a new video card. With these new Arrandale processors it should allow Apple to use either ATI or Nvidia as their graphics choice, they could even use a intel based gpu, if wanting to keep costs down. So I’m sure in the next few hours we will see what they have in store for us.

Don’t disappoint us again Apple – i.e. iPad.

In 1999 the Sega Dreamcast was released. I treasure this console till this very day as my favorite; it does not hold this title for not only being my first console that I purchased solely with money I earned from working, but also for being the most creative to date. (Of course this is all opinion here folks so bare with me and hold the slanderous bashing to the end.)

I can remember my first Quantic Dream game… awe Omikron. Omikron was the very first open word game in 3D that I can truly remember. I’m sure there were others, but this particular title really struck a cord with me.  Unfortunately it was one title that was truly ahead of it’s time. If only I had played it on the PC would I have more or less tolerated the controls and probably made it further than I did. The followup title for Quantic was Fahrenheit  (or as it was referred to in the US as Indigo Prophecy, from this point forward I will refer to it as IP for my NA readers). IP was the game to bring “Choose Your Own Adventure” to the console market. The graphics were very nice for the time, and the story was quite good as well. The only thing that I can remember that negatively about the title was the QTE, aka Quick Time Events. Everyone that I know to this very day, hates, and I mean hates QTEs. They’re aggravating and frustrating, from the days of Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace to Shenmue and even today’s God of War series. Quick Time Events can be very cumbersome. Anyway, enough ranting… back to IP. So with it’s great story and thriller themed ideas of playing the killer and the investigators at the same time, it made for some quality entertainment.

And now Quantic Dream has Heavy Rain.

Production on Heavy Rain began in February of 2006 and later that year a tech demo was released at E3 showcasing what Quantic had in store for the public. Skip ahead four years into the future and the general public, and I mean general as in the folks that can’t make it to E3 every year, finally gets their hands on Heavy Rain (referred to from now on as HR).

The demo consists of three scenarios in total:

1. The tutorial, which has you playing a private investigator Scott Shelby, who starts out with him sitting in his parked car in front of a city alley. The objective of the scenario is to get the user familiar with the controls and options. End result is getting to the other end of the alley.

2. This scenario finds you as Private Detective Shelby again tracking down a female by the name of Lauren Winter. It is a full scenario and you get a chance to try out the new QTE in this Quantic title. I won’t go into detail as I do not wish to give any details of the story away for those waiting to purchase it on release day.

3. The last one has you playing an FBI profiler Norman Jayden, (Not a fan of the name nor the voice. Seriously Norman? I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t the origami killer himself. Couldn’t resist. Sorry.) In this scene you get  to try out the ARI system, which is a pair of glasses and a glove that is on your right hand allowing you to control a virtual system that connects to the FBI database and feeds you realtime information in the field. At this point in time it would appear that you cannot interact with the evidence beyond standing over it and giving the appropriate gesture with the right stick on the controller.

The overall impact of the game is indeed a true interactive novel. That is what it is and is intended to be. David Cage, the creator, has stated over and over that his full intentions are to give the audience an emotional interactive experience like no other. Although I could not attain this while playing the demo I did feel for Detective Shelby during certain situations. (Again I will not state them here although I’m sure other sites will go into full detail.) I played through the Shelby scenario multiple times, trying different methods and asking and answering different questions and answers, each time not feeling I was getting the same response. This is a good thing. Only once or twice did I get the exact same line, which usually happened when the scenario was just beginning or ending. This is how Choose your own Adventure should really work.

The controller scheme feels familiar to me, which is good if you’re a fan of Quantic’s work. The graphics are beautiful although I did feel that this was only due to limited interaction of the player and the game world. If you were free to run at a full pace, I am sure that the engine could not keep up the frame rate. Particle effects were a nice touch as well; after all a title called Heavy Rain with terribly rendered rain would be a huge eyesore for the audience. Speaking of that I did like the subtle nuances, such as when I was Agent Jayden. I went to walk through a puddle and the character stopped and looked down and lifted his foot out of the water. It would seem as if he pondered why I just made him walk into the small pond in front of him. If only they added him looking at the camera and saying, “Really? Was it not big enough for you to see it to avoid it? Come on!” That would’ve been classic.

As of this writing and completing the demo; I am enthusiastically looking forward to picking up Heavy Rain when it hits retailers February 23.

Go Quantic!