Easter Break: Digi-painting & CoD.

I thought I'd do a quick write up of what I've done during the Easter break as I've put some good, quality time into practising digital painting and I think I'm beginning to make progress. I also managed to jump back onto the Xbox One, where I played Call of Duty: Ghosts and... I actually... enjoyed it but more on than later, first the important stuff!

Drawing & Digital Painting

Whenever I have a spare hour I normally just like to grab a pencil and some paper and do some Bridgman studies, below are a couple of sheets that I've done during this holiday. I find something really enjoyable about doing these sort of studies and its a much better way to spend an hour instead of staring at the TV.

During this break I wanted to spend some time just playing with Photoshop as a painting program and that is exactly what I've done. I messed about with the brushes and tried to get a rhythm going while working, and most importantly done it all in colour. To help with all this I watched plenty of Feng Zhu videos.

I thought I'd keep the reference image next to them so you can see what I have been working with. I done all these without any line drawing and jumping straight in with colour, I really threw myself out of my comfort zone. The time limit on these are around 2 hours, but as I improved I wanted to spend more time on them.

I still think my choice of colours can be bolder and I'd also say my values could be pushed in certain areas, as I still feel my painting lack a certain punch.

When I completed the top 2 images of this set I could notice an improvement over the first few I done and because of this I was enthused to do more, so I did!

I still know that these image are far from perfect but if I can keep us this sort of pace and enthusiasm I'm sure I'll reach my ideal skill level. My next step is to begin looking into the old master's, hopefully these will be more beneficial to me than simple photographs.

Xbox One: Updated Impressions

Being back home I managed to play some Xbox One, where I was greeted with huge updated for everything I tried to play. Considering I completed Dead Rising 3 I didn't play that this time but I did play everything else, including Call of Duty *gasps*. The one thing I have missed is the controller, I had completely forgot how nice it feels, anyway, onto the games!

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

I got really into ACIV at Christmas so I was really looking forward to picking it back up again. The whole pirate thing had worn off a little this time around, and the story wasn't really doing much for me either but i was still having fun exploring and swashbuckling. 

Towards the final hours of the game you're given some actual assassinations to do, which felt fantastic, and Ubi try and wrap up the story in some meaningful way which I think was all a bit too late. Kenway (The protagonist) could have been propelled to the levels of Ezio in sense of story arc and the entire pirate-assassination theme could have been overall merged better, as it stands now you're 95% pirate. Despite some small hiccups ACIV is a well made and fun pirate game, I definitely recommend it!

Call of Duty: Ghosts

The Call of Duty franchise has now become so big it has started to collapse in on it self, where playing it will cause groans and the internet will grab pitchforks if you even mention it but I played Ghosts and enjoyed it. I wanted to blow crap up and not think for a few hours, while the ridiculous story plays out in front of me like a Michael Bay movie.

Infinity Ward tried to make the story reach the highs of Call of Duty 4, but sadly they never hit it, as the story's gripping sections came off more funny than emotional. It is also sad that the core gameplay hasn't changed much since I last played a CoD game but the different explosive set pieces made me want to ride the rollercoaster to the end. As I don't have Gold I couldn't try out the multi-player so it's very difficult to recommend Ghosts off the campaign alone but I imagine it's solid, like the campaign, if not feeling very similar to previous entries. 

Forza 5

None of the problems I had when I first played Forza 5 have been fixed unfortunately, the AI still bounces from hilarious to infuriating, the menu flow is ropey and the storefront still seems completely missing. There was however a free new track that Turn 10 have released, which has been slotted nicely into the original single player.

Taken in-game, using the Photomode

As I've played more it is becoming increasingly clear that eventually the game will lead to a grind to be able to compete in every race type due to the pitiful amount of money you are rewarded. Even with the external Forza Rewards system that gives you heaps of cash for basically nothing I probably won't be able to afford all the top tier cars I need. I will play the game for as long as I can, because I am still enjoying the racing, but if a grind becomes clear I'll probably stop, which is a shame.

I'm still waiting for a couple more games to come out on the One to make it feel like a true, next gen console, as it's stuck in that awkward bridging-between-generations stage at the moment. Hopefully this E3 will reveal some killer first-party titles.