Anime, cosplay and jewelry

Been a busy couple of months here at Skyride Studios.  Some exciting new announcements:

First off, Anime.  Not sure how many of you watch or are interested in anime, but today we have locked down the final letter of intent for casting our video game.  Although we don't want to announce quite yet who we have until contracts are signed, we do have some of the biggest names in american anime voice acting.  (10 to be exact) and we can't wait to let everyone know who they are.

Secondly, cosplay.  Since our voice actors are from the anime world, we want to add some things to our video game that other companies have yet to do.  Cosplay.  We hired a fashion designer (the incredible Lisa Bryne) to put together a outfit based on our Lielah character:

And this is the result of a month of crafting, sewing and fittings:

We are proud of the efforts of everyone involved in making this concept art a reality.

And last but not least is jewelry.  If you notice in that last photo, the necklace being worn isn't just any run of the mill necklace.  It was custom made by Jenny Ming Tu.  It's a locket that opens up with a USB drive inside pre-loaded with a copy of the game.  Best part of all for people who aren't fond of necklaces?  It also has the ability to turn into a bracelet and will be available as a special boxset once the game is released.

Why are we doing all this you may ask?  We are testing out some of our marketing strategies before hand, so if you like what we are doing or have questions, feel free to email us at: will@skyridestudios.com and we'd love to hear your feedback.

Other than that, keep an eye out later this month for details about our cast members.  See you later, screen slavers.

Pics and clicks

Hey all, been busy as usual. Lots of interesting things happening on this front. So far a few set backs. Firstly, we've updated our game engine (still Cryengine 3) but since they restructured the innards, we are doing a rehaul on the level. Cleaning things up and making them look better than ever. I've managed to start the opening first level out in a forest during sunset and as you follow the trail over to a overlook, the sun starts to go down and by the time you reach the city at the bottom, it will be nighttime and the city will be thriving with people/stores/etc. Since they've upgraded the engine, that means more better features and beautiful scenery so here is a screenshot (untouched in photoshop or anything) of the lookout point where you will see the whole city at the start of the game:

As of now, the new engine supports flares (lighting and sun) which is awesome for us cause we will have plenty in the game (not as many as JJ Abrams or anything but subtle and mostly used in a color correction sort of way.......you'll see.)

Also our composer Luis has been hard at work still making some BEAUTIFUL music for the game.  Here is a new song and one you will hear a lot in different variations throughout the game.  It's the main characters theme song:



We are super excited and have a few surprises for 2014 so keep a eye out and we will keep working hard on our end.  Happy Holidays from all of us here at Skyride Studios and we hope you all will have a fantastic new year!

City of Rain Music

Recently my composer has finished mixing and master our first song which is a ambient track that will play when you are exploring around the city.  Here is a short video showing the pre-alpha visuals along with part of the song:

COR Music from City of Rain on Vimeo.

We are both continuing to work hard on the video game and I will have new updates before the end of the year.  Have a great 11/12/13!

City of Shame

Hey, how have you been?  Me?  Pretty good.  Getting a presentation put together to show some business clients and thought I'd give you a sneak peek at how my game is coming along.

I added some elements to part of the rundown side of the city and this is what I have so far:

I'm pretty excited about this.  The blue lights the man is standing under flicker and in the far right there is a candle light effect.  Obviously still a lot to add in but I've been enjoying it.  Ok, time to get back at it.  Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

City of Lights

Here are a few images from the status of the project.  I have probably about 4 more buildings to create before I can start getting into the design of the city and also work on the textures of the buildings.   Enjoy.

Quick update

As the title states, this is just a quick update on the progress of the city I've been modeling for the game.  Take a peek:

I've completed 4 streets of buildings and have about 2 more streets to complete.  The main street branches off into many alleyways with twists and turns and slowly bottlenecks as you get further to the outskirts leaving only certain openings for passage.  Since most of the exploring will probably take place around the main street, I fully plan on allowing the player to go anywhere in the city they want.  Only certain buildings will have explore-able interiors but there will be plenty to explore on the outside of the buildings as well.

I'm very excited to continue on and once I get a playable Alpha version of the game up and running, I'll have sign ups on the skyride studios website so people can enter to play and test out the alpha for me, giving feedback and so on.

Well, that's all for now.

Shop til you drop!

So today my goal was to create a rough draft version of a store for my video game (along with my ongoing mission of completing my collision proxies for my buildings.)

So without further ado, I present to you:

The Garden of Weeden.  Haha!!!

Just wanted to play around more with the lighting and see how it all looked together.  Obviously the store still looks a bit empty so I'll have to keep playing around with it, but you get the general idea.

Well, until next time!

-Will
www.skyridestudios.com

Dark city alleyway

So I've been playing around with some props lately, trying to put detail into the city and get it ready for characters.  The first area I decided to play around with was one of the alleyways between two buildings.  After some fun production design and lighting, here's a first pass on what it looks like:

Obviously there is still a lot of work to do but I am pretty happy with the result.  Next I will decorate a shop in one of the buildings and see how that turns out.

Later crazies.

Lost a day...kinda

So today my goal was to learn how to make all my props and custom buildings physical.

Not like that you pervs.....

Basically put, all my buildings at the moment are like ghosts.  You can walk right through them without a problem.  You can even shoot a missile at them and watch as it blows up the hill behind them.  (Ignore the creepily professional floating house in the background)

Soooo I watched a tutorial on how to make it so that they are solid objects that you can collide into and shoot at.  After watching the video I said "Simple."  I should've known better.

Here is a link in case you want to try it out:   https://vimeo.com/35828945

Just kidding.  Here's the real link:  http://eat3d.com/free/cryengine_3dsmax

For some reason, now matter what I did, I couldn't get the Proxies (which make the building solid) working on my level.  Even after all the steps I took and followed to the note, my buildings still remained walk-through-able.

When I went into the test level (the level that comes with the game engine) and put my buildings in there, they worked just as they were suppose to.  I thought for sure I had accidently clicked or didn't click the wrong/right setting but after hours of looking around I couldn't find much.  I thought "Well, maybe it's a bug on my level.  I guess I'll just have to make a new one."  But even when I had started to make my new City of Rain level I quickly tested the building again and it worked.  I said "F&%^ THIS!" and went back into my old level.  I remembered reading something about how the tree's in the level were messing up another guys proxies so I deleted all the tree's and guess what....now the buildings work and take damage:

I'm just glad I didn't have to start all over on another level because if I added back those tree's without knowing they were the cause of the problem, I'd probably run outside and punch a midget.

So all in all I lost a day to this little project.  The of many I assume.....

City Complete

So yesterday I just finished texturing my last building for the main road.  Here are pics of the 13 remaining buildings:

I can't begin to describe how awesome it is to have my default character run around town.  All the small squares in the front of the buildings will be shops along with street vendors, shoppers, gangs, strip clubs, casinos, etc.

My next step is to start adding props and people into the city, so first I will start laying down roads, trees, streetlights, vendor carts, etc.  Then after that, I'll take a small break to learn Autodesk Mudbox so I can start creating my own people to inhabit into the city.

In total there are 25 buildings that I made from scratch and textured.  I total, from learning the programs til now, this has taken me ~3 months to achieve.  (5 if you include the time I had to take off to pay the bills)

I'm expecting characters to take me another 2-3 to complete with props taking about 1-2 months in addition.

That leaves me with 4 months to complete animation and recording of the video for release in November to be pitched at the American Film Market.

So far I'm on track as long as my day job doesn't eat up too much free time this year.

4 down. 13 to go.

Hey.  So I've been slaving away working on these buildings still.  I found a new better way to texture them using UVW Unwrap which allows me to put the textures into photoshop and add multiple ones over others to help blend them better instead of just looking like a repeating pattern.  Downside is, it takes a lot longer to do so my process hasn't sped up like I'd hoped.  As a treat, here are the new 4 buildings I've done:

I'm still gonna try to finish them all by then end of the month, but I might be a week off because of work.  Still going strong though and can't wait to be done with these and onto bigger and better learning experiences.

Building Buildings

Hello again.  I thought I'd take a small break and show some pictures of the buildings I've done so far along with close up shots of the detains that I've been putting into them.  I found with all the detail I am trying to add, each building takes a day to texture.  Also I've been slacking a little on the texturing because in a few days, I'm going to be publishing a book I wrote and had to go back through it again to make sure it's all ready to go.  Once it's online, I'll make a post about it here, even though it's not game related.  It will be published for Apple ipads and iphones, Amazon Kindles and PDF form for computers.

But enough about that for right now, on to the good stuff.  Here is wide shot of each building with a close up shot of the texturing it below:

So, there you have it, the first 7 buildings.

Keep an eye out for my book post coming soon!

Buildings Are Boring

I've been working my butt off trying to finish these buildings, however my progress is going at snails pace even though I've been putting a lot of long days into the process.  Here is a sneak peek:

I have 6 buildings finished and 19 more to go.  The one above took me all day to texture.  It only has roughly 23 different textures on the single building but the process is grueling.


1.  I search for a texture I like either in my texture library or online.
2.  I then bring it into photoshop and resize it, color correct it and if need be blend the edges and save it.
3.  I then have to re-tweak the image for again for highlights and save that as a separate file.
4.  Then I apply it in 3DS Max and work on the way it fits onto the building by pushing and pulling it around, (Giggity)
5.  And then I repeat that over and over 23 times and then I have one building done...........this is going to take me longer than I expected.  I'm exhausted after just explaining it.

I'm gonna go take a break.  Later crazies.

I'm bbbaaaacccckkkkkk

Hello all. Hope your holiday season was as relaxing as mine.  Ok, enough small talk.  Here's what's up:

This week I'm going to be working on texturing all the buildings I've made in the past two months.  The picture above is a small example of one I did today.  I'm hoping that the process gets more streamlined the more hours I work on it and that I get 5-8 buildings done a day towards the end of this coming week.  

Once that's all said and done, I'm going to start working on characters and motion capture (aka "mocap") while trying to implement lighting/prop/signs into the street. (that should only take a few months).  

After that it's on to animation, recording, editing and then posting the final product video.  

Sure, it doesn't sound like too much, but I'm expecting to hit my deadline of june/july.  I can't wait to show you all the finished product I have in my head that is slowly coming together.  

Well, just wanted to give you all a little late holiday present.  Until next time!

Buildings are done!

Well, done being modeled that is.  Here is a early x-mas present for all you naughty boys and girls:

(Sorry about the shaky video....it's not my fault...but it is....)

So now that all 25 of those hand crafted beauties are made the next step is to add textures to them such as brick, stone, wood, etc to make them not look like clay anymore.

I'm going to be out of commission for a bit cause of my day job, but I'm hoping to have these all textured by the end of Dec.  I'll try to give another update in a few weeks.

P.S.  To all my foreign viewers (people outside the USA), thanks for keeping up on the blog. I hope you've been enjoying it.  Feel free to contact me through email with questions/concerns or just to chat at:  will@skyridestudios.com

100% sure I've completed 50%

What's that?  I haven't posted for 2 weeks and you miss me.  Don't worry loyal minions, I haven't strangled myself quite yet.

In the past two weeks I've been getting calls for my day job while also modeling buildings.  Here's what I got so far:

A good start to a awesome city.  Here's some more to wet your whistle:

I even took some night time shots with temporary lights.  Don't say I never gave you nothin':

Even though these buildings are in the level now, all of them still need to be textured and tweaked to look juuuuussssstttt right.  I should be done with modeling these by the end of the month.  By the first of the year they all should be textured with signs (hopefully) and a lot of the assets starting to be placed around.

So was it worth the wait? Yeah, I know it was.  You're welcome.