Introductions and Ideas

Hello everyone. 1ST!!!! HA I always wanted to say that…now that I got that out of my system we can continue. My name is Phil Whitman and I am a student at the International Academy of Design and Technology for Game Design. I've been here for three years now and I'm somewhat close to graduation. I LOVE video games...everything about it. I play many genre's including FPS, MMORPG's, RPG's, Action, Adventure, Strategy, platformer, RTS, indie, etc. Along with being a student, I am a manager at a pizza place around where I live. I also recently just completed my internship at a multi-platform interactive design company in Michigan called Vectorform. My title there was Associate Game Producer and it was an amazing experience. The people at Vectorform are a great bunch and should receive some props! Everyone should do an internship at some point in their lives, you learn so much.

This is the first post to my awesometastic blog! This is a place where I’ll be posting school related things…like ideas, concerns, problems, concepts, drawings (no matter how bad), and renders/screenshots from my work. I welcome comments on any of the posts made here. This term I am in Modeling III which is character modeling focused, Business concepts and Team Project I which use different blogs which I will link to this one later on.

I am required to post a simple update on my workflow, milestones, problems, planning and implementation, and evaluations for the next ten weeks, but I will probably throw some cool stuff in here to spice it up a bit. Since this is week one out of ten the content will not be as fruitful as it will be later on this term. I assure you that this blog will get interesting, many problems come up especially with the topic of Character Modeling. Working with characters is not my strong suit, I would much rather work with any game engine or model assets/levels, BUT everyone must learn the basics of everything.

This week we are required choose an idea for our character based on the guide we were given. We have to pick a character based in DnD or the Forgotten Realms world. This gives us a huge HUGE opportunity to make something awesome, from Dwarves to Orcs. Almost anything is possible with this project. The first thing I thought of when we got our assignments was Drizzt. I am currently reading the R.A. Salvatore “Drizzt” series of books and I’m totally fascinated with the Drow(dark elf) society. If I happened to model Drizzt, I feel like I would be putting his name to shame with my horrid character modeling skills. Instead, I choose to do a drow male warlock. A fiend of a dark elf that practices dark magic that wears a robe and wields normally a staff, or a dagger with an orb in the other hand.

I wish we had enough time to model every single race and class combination within the Forgotten Realms. Fantasy is one of my favorite genres out there. Stay tuned to this blog to see some…lets say interesting work that hopefully turns into something good!

-Axsor (Phil W)