avatar creation

Well I've been busy beavering away in 3Ds Max these last few days.

One of my fears has been that I've chosen something too easy, too simplistic. Other's are crafting full on figurines for their avatar. I initially thought about doing this, after hearing that Roma wanted something more on the Identity side. Sort of similar to the narrative module - Jools wanted a story telling, something of meaning, not just flashy tricks.

In premise glasses are a simple design - in reality though, I was struggling to get anything that resembled anything half decent.

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I don't want John Lennon glasses (circle lense and a line for the handles.) Alternatively, there is the complete flip side with people crafting beautiful glossy sunglasses on the internet and actually offering them up for sale!

I want something quite curvy, modern. Not a simple click a button and get the shape jobby. So, after reading Design For New Media, and thinking of the top down design approach, I broke the problem up into more manageable chunks.

And it is working!

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As can be seen, they are not finished yet, but I'm on my way.

I intend to use white for the rim and then shiny metallic on the arms. The lenses obviously will be reflective, mirrored, so I'll need to look into the glass effect for 3D Max.

I've cut up my title screens too to go onto the inside lenses, they are short (as are mostly all title screens!), but still interesting enough to warrant looking at them for more than a quick second. I can't decide whether to put a fuzzy sort of snow effect that you used to get on analogue tellys, and horizontal scanning bars in the background and fade the AVI in? Will have to have a play.

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Oh and before I go, I hear you ask about environment? Well I am really happy with it. It is bright, colourful, I'm pleased at how I've managed to duplicate the graphics from the original. And I didn't just copy and paste. I made all of them myself (apart from the Goompa, he's all Nintendo!)

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