Every now and then, I get to make a speech.

And man… do I love it.

That’s not sarcasm, btw.

Don’t get me wrong, in grade school I never enjoyed going up in front of the class and giving a presentation on my science experiment with AA batteries, or my book report on Robin Hood. I rarely showed any emotion besides irritation, and I gruffly answered questions at the end.

But going up in front of people and talking about art and graphics technology?

Well… that’s different.

That’s way different.

To imagine something, be it a character, environment, or object… and then to create it from nothing… fuck, I mean… that’s magic.

That’s magic of the highest order.

There will always be those who wish to impose labels on us, who need to do so to understand and quantify our expertise and the spectrum of work in which we contribute. Personally, I’ve always felt somewhat constrained by titles, as they typically imply a very narrow spectrum of work and/or oversight.

In my case, my expertise is in 3D Graphics.

GREEN KNIGHT has been a challenge unlike anything I’ve taken on before. It’s also pushed me into areas within which I’ve never worked, or even thought of working.

To meet the vision I had for the game would involve creating a lot of content, very quickly, and capitalizing on technological advances with which I had, at the time, very little experience.

At this stage, I can only think of an analogy with which to compare it’s progress.

Have you ever had a tricky dessert recipe that you were slightly hesitant to try? Perhaps, before starting, you thought to yourself: “I’m not sure about this, but fuck it, I’ll give it a whirl and if worst comes to worst I’ll at least get to lick some batter.”

It’s something like that. Pretty damned close.

And in this case, the metaphorical ‘batter’ has been a trove of concept art work that contributed to fully formed 3d models, characters and environments.

It’s been such a fun ride, I must say.

I’m glad that what came out of the oven is proving tasty and delicious, and not a smoking ruin melted to the pan.

The artwork seen above is an early, half finished concept sketch for GREEN KNIGHT, created when I was still coming to grips with the scale of the project, the characters, and the overall aesthetic.

A lot’s changed.

And a lot has improved.

Yesterday evening I started incorporating volumetric lighting into a test scene to see how it performed. While it did make my heart swell and glow cherry-red with pride to see in action, the performance trade off left something to be desired.

I’ll have to work on that.

Today I noticed LinkedIn updated the user showcase section, where you’ve always been able to post images and content of your choosing. In years past, it’s been rather shitt-ily implemented, with only very low-res images being displayed despite the quality of those you uploaded. Now, though, they’ve overhauled it, and it’s rather nice.

For some reason, though, it immediately reminded me of the days of MySpace.

Fuck that was ages ago.

Time flies, as they say.

I still have screenshots, which I stumbled on recently, of my old MySpace profile from that distant fucking era. Even then, I suspected I would look back on them and inwardly cringe.

…I was right!