The dark ages

The history of computer games stretches further back than what you might think, if you’re talking about games in general then that can go all the way back to the Egyptian times with the first recorded board game “Senet” this game has been dated between 1550-1069 BC! Now that’s really old. But we aren’t going to talk about old men and their sticks and stones! We are here to talk about COMPUTERS!

Technically the first computer was made by a man named Charles Babbage! This guy was a mathematician, inventor and a philosopher. He designed the Difference engine in 1822! The first programmable computer. The difference engine was able to calculate polynomials with a numerical method called the difference method. The machine was created to calculate mathematical problems, I’m not great with maths so I’m just going to quote this from wiki!

“In mathematics, a polynomial is anexpression consisting of variables and constant coefficients that involves only the operations of addition, subtraction,multiplication, and positive integerexponents. An example of a polynomial of a single variable, x, is x2 − 4x + 7, which is a quadratic.”
So long story short, it’s an accurate and powerful calculator for its time.

Week 2-Wednesday 4/9/13

Week 2 of my course has made me more happy and confident that this course it the right one for me, as I have started to get to grips with drawing things I don’t normally want to draw, like the archway. Before I started the course I was told that drawing everything and anything is a god idea and that drawing from life and not pictures is very different but I failed to believe that. Now that I’ve been drawing for around 50 hrs. I see what my friends and tutors were trying to say. In 3D I was set a project of making a Darlik from Doctor Who, I wasn’t too excited about the project but I was very confident in the fact that I could easily make is within 2hrs. When it finally came to making it I was proven wrong as I was struggling with the mesh and poly counts! As this week presented me with challenges I that I was happy to do I found out that it was allot harder than I thought it would be. Getting into the swing of life drawing again has been great but at times frustrating, as I used to attend a private class every week which gave me allot of confidence in drawing!

Week 3-Wednesday 11/9/13

This week was hand in day for my Darlik! I’m not going to lie, I was looking forward to it because I thought I was stronger than everyone else when it came to 3Ds max. So I was expecting for everyone’s Darlik to be broken and badly made. Shortly I was proven wrong, it looked like everyone was fine with modelling. In visual studies we were set “2 Point perspective drawing” as our week project. I wanted to rip my hair out for this one as we started to draw the inside of the queens building… I just couldn’t get my head around that building as there was angles flying everywhere! I was actually really looking forward to it as I am interested in architecture and am normally pretty good the perspective. We didn’t get set a project this week but we looked into texturing and how to properly texture a complicated object using UV unwrap. It seemed complicated at first but I soon got to grips with it and enjoys bringing an object some realism. 

Challenged!

Welcome to the part of the internet that isn't full of porn or funny cats, but instead its me talking about things that don't really matter in society but only in my head, things such as what am i trying to get out of life, friends, work and education. So i guess this is where i should introduce my self? My name is Johannes Coetzee but my friends all call me Martin as its short for my middle name (marthinus). Yea i know its confusing, blame my sister and the fact that im from South Africa. I am basicly writing this blog for a few reasons, the main one being that i have been asked to write one for the course that i am studying at De Monfort university, but ill get into that later. The other reasons are that i have always wanted to just type away and try my best to share my thoughts and experiences, even though i'm really bad at my English as you can probably tell by now so i apologise for any spelling. The only problem is that i am just like everyone else, i'm bit lazy! so when it came to my tutors asking me to write this i said sure! ill right it tomorrow but as you can guess many tomorrows later im finally sitting down the write about stuff and video games and stuff and art and stuff.

So before i bore everyone i should probably start with the stuff that matters. I study Computer Games Art Design at DMU, the reason for this is that i enjoy games and how they work, most of the time im more interested in how the polygons work and how objects act with others but even more so i cant get my head round how fast the industry has moved on in graphical terms! there are some games out their that look almost real and unbelievable good, as many critics would say "jaw dropping". so instead of being a coding monkey or a animator i choose to do art! The picture i choose to show is a screen shot of Battlefield 4 thats being release by Dice in 2013, I really respect the team behind this game and its franchise, as you can tell they spend allot of time polishing the game for its community and i would love to end up working for them even though its a high goal to aim for but that's what you need when you want to achieve something.

When i started the course i was so happy to be apart of the university and the course, i was really confident that i could easily make it through the three years but... then people on the course started uploading some of thier art that they have done in the past and it really put a downer on my confidence :( I started thinking i wasn't good enough for the course and the fact that the lectures were trying to scare us with "last year only 80% made it through...so good luck" yea that really didn't help -.- thanks Michael. On the first Monday of drawing i was nerves to see everyone else's drawing and seeing how they cope with it all, and i can happily say that by the end of the day i was allot more confident in my drawing! :D The best part was that, when i came to Thursday when we were working on 3Dsmax i was probably the happiest kid in the room as i had worked with the program allot in collage so i felt that the tables had turned! 

But any way enough about my sad story off the week! so far i really really enjoy this course and i would be more than heart broken if i was to not succeed but im sure that wont happen.