Awesome artist with great process tutorials on how he works!

http://saejinoh.blogspot.com/

An excellent site featuring art book reviews that I stumbled upon while surfing for books on amazon. His reviews are generally brief, but give a much better insight than what amazon’s general descriptions have to offer. I recommend that you use his referral for his efforts.

http://parkablogs.com

A great magazine with some really interesting tutorials for media artists covering Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Painter, and many more.

http://www.layersmagazine.com/category/tutorials/

Some interesting texturing techniques from SparkingSpot.com

Derived Bump Maps

2d Tile Rendering

Showing Damage in Textures

Multi-UV Texturing

Adaptive Orientation Shader

Detail Maps

Anti-Tiling Techniques

Wanna learn how to use Mudbox 2009?

Check out the this series!

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/mudbox/mudbox2009/index.html

While this tutorial doesn’t cover the subtle nuances of building such a beautiful scene, it does go into some basic processes, involving Max and Zbrush.

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/max/beauty_bed/index.html

Here’s an article on the principles of lighting a game for game design. It’s very different from lighting things for illustrative/art purposes.

It talks about how simplified and concentrated lighting can be way more effective in leading the player than artistically lit environments, or lighting that ignores the fundamentals of game design (Condemned for example, breaks these rules to such utter frustration, that I found myself throwing the controller not because of player deaths, but because of running in circles unable to progress).

http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=2129

The Mirror’s Edge demo is up on PSN, and should be available soon on Xbox marketplace.

It’s graphically impressive, but not nearly as impressive as when I first saw it. I do like the look and style of it, gameplay seems rather interesting, though it might be my expectations, but it didn’t impress me nearly as much as I had hoped. Download the demo and try it out yourself.

You know what’s interesting, when I first started up this blog, the domain name mirrorsedge.com had not been taken. I am seriously kicking myself for not grabbing it when I had the chance…

This is a very old article, but it’s still one of my favorites:

Would today’s tykes tolerate the classic games you grew up with? Kids do say the darndest things in this uncut version of an EGM article—now with a bonus game not included in the original story!

Your average gamer these days is in his late 20s—young enough to still find new ways to destroy brain cells, old enough to worry about bills and 401ks, and wise enough to reminisce about the good ol’ days of videogames. But was the age of Pong, Atari, Mattel handheld football, and Donkey Kong really all that great, or are we just blinded by fuzzy, warm nostalgia?

That’s the question we asked—and answered—back in the November issue of EGM, in which we rounded up nine children of the PlayStation generation—ages 9 to 12—and forced them to play a variety of titles from the late’70s to the mid-’80s. Now read what the little scamps had to say, plus check their comments on a bonus game—Super Mario Bros.—that got cut from the EGM article. If you grew up with these classics, prepare to feel very old.

Note: Everything written here was actually said by these kids. Really. The only change we made was to remove the more gratuitous usages of the word “gay”.

Niko: Hey—Pong. My parents played this game.

Brian: It takes this whole console just to do Pong?

Kirk: What is this? [Picks up and twists the paddle controller] Am I controlling the volume?

John: I’m just going to do this [twists the paddle controller as rapidly as possible].

Tim: John, don’t do that. You’ll die.

Andrew: This is a lot like that game. Um, whatchamacallit—air hockey.

Sheldon: Except worse.

Andrew: Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip.

Becky: I don’t even see the point of having sound on this.

Andrew: Wow. The score is tied. It’s so exhilarating.

Brian: I saw a documentary on this. The game was so popular in arcades that it got jammed up with quarters.

John: In this thing? [Points to the Pong game console]

Tim: I would never pay to play something like this.

John: I’d sooner jump up and down on one foot. By the way, is this supposed to be tennis or Ping-Pong?

Becky: Ping-Pong.

Gordon: It doesn’t even go over the net. It goes through it. I don’t even think that thing in the middle is a net.

Tim: My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line. Fear my pink line. You have no chance. I am the undisputed lord of virtual tennis. [Misses ball] Whoops.

John: Tim, how could you miss that? It was going like 1 m.p.h.

Sheldon: Hey, why does it say Sears on the controller?

EGM: Sears sold it for Atari.

Andrew: Isn’t Sears, like, a clothing company?

Becky: Sears makes everything. Actually, I’ve never been in there.

EGM: Guess how much this thing cost when it came out.

Kirk: Twenty bucks?

EGM: Higher.

Brian: $50?

EGM: Higher.

Brian: $100?

EGM: Yep.

Kirk: My God—I could almost buy a PS2 for that. I’m sure when this came out, it was better than whatever else was out. Want to play chess with me, son? No way, Dad.

Brian: I want to play Pong!

Tim: Oh, I’m starting to suck. John, you drained my skill.

John: Yes, I used a power-up.

Tim: What? There’s no power-ups in Pong. The concept of a power-up hadn’t been invented yet.

Becky: It looks like a Mario that got run over by a car.

Andrew: Really. I mean the man is almost flat.

Gordon: He’s a funny color.

Sheldon: His face looks pink.

Becky: What color is he supposed to be? Green? And why can’t we get past this first level?

Andrew: Someone take over before I lose my dignity. [Mario picks up the hammer power-up]

Andrew and Niko: Hey, that’s from Super Smash Bros.

Andrew: So that’s where they got the idea from.

Gordon: Nooo!

Andrew: You got the hammer and you still got killed.

Tim: Mario dies way too easy. Oh, grab the umbrella. Those are cool. Unfashionable, gay, but cool. Oh, 300 points. That’s it? All you get is points? That’s lame. Can’t you do something with the umbrella?

Tim: They just put totally random stuff here for points. Oh, you’ve got an umbrella. You’ve got a purse.

John: Watch out, Tim—fire. It’s smarter than you think.

Tim: It’s strange that fire moves in this and has eyes. Oh no, the fire’s coming. It’s going to eat you. Are these barrels alive, too? Everything’s alive. And Donkey Kong’s mouth is made of pluses. Look: Plus, plus, plus, minus. They’re trying to teach you math by brainwashing you.

Brian: How can you die from a fall of a whopping 3 inches?

Kirk: He’s only an inch tall. He’s a little short fat guy who eats way too much pizza.

EGM: Who’s that chick Mario is rescuing up there?

Brian: It’s Princess Peach.

Kirk: It’s a hooker.

Niko: She looks cut in half.

Tim: Oh wow—she’s one of those pole dancers.

Handheld Football – Mattel • 1977
Everyone who grew up in the ’70s owned one of these portable two-player pigskin sims, which used red LED lights to represent players.

Brian: What’s this supposed to be?

EGM: Football. It’s one of the first great portable games.

Brian: I thought it was Run Away From the Dots.

John: I don’t see how this has anything remotely to do with football.

EGM: Which team are you playing?

Kirk: The red lines.

Tim: They could’ve just as easily called this game anything—Baseball, Bowling, Escape From the Monsters.

EGM: Did you score?

Kirk: I bumped into a dot.

Tim: Which button do I press to make the blocks explode?

EGM: Sorry, they don’t explode.

Becky: This is boring. Maybe if it had characters and stuff and different levels, it would be OK. If things blew up or something or—

Sheldon: If there were bombs.

Becky: Yeah, or special bricks. Like, if a yellow brick touched a red brick it would blow up and you’d have to start over.

John: Why haven’t I won yet? I’ve paired up so many of the same color.

EGM: Don’t worry about colors.

John: I just lined up six of the same color. Why didn’t they blow up?

EGM: Nothing blows up.

Kirk: We’re not going to play any mature games, are we?

Tim: I think mushrooms are like steroids in this. See how you get bigger and stronger?

EGM: What do you think of those graphics?

Niko: In those days it was like, “Whoa—awesome!” But now…it’s no Splinter Cell.

EGM: In those days? What days are those?

Becky: My mom and dad’s days.

John: The graphics are simple. At least the screen actually moves in this game.

Brian: This is Mario’s world. It’s supposed to look simple. You have mushrooms walking around. What do you expect?

Brian: No, they’re Koopas. My last name’s Cooper, so it works. And the King Koopa’s my dad.

Tim: What’s the Queen Koopa like?

Brian: They also had that Super Mario Brothers movie—

Tim: That had nothing remotely to do with this. They had, like, laser guns that turned people into monkeys. What the hell is that?

E.T. the Extra- Terrestrial – Atari 2600 • 1983
The original lousy licensed game, E.T. had players fishing phone parts and Reese’s Pieces from holes in the ground. EGM voted it the worst game of all time. We forced the kids to play it because…well, we had to when we were little. Why shouldn’t they suffer, as well?

[E.T. falls into a pit]

Tim: What just happened?

John: Ah, you’re trapped forever!

Brian: This is sad.

Tim: Why did my head just get farther away? I can’t get out.

Kirk: Maybe you should try to go over those dark green things.

Tim: I’m trying. I don’t know how.

John: He’s using his E.T. powers! What does this have to do with the movie? I don’t remember the parts where E.T. falls into pits and makes his neck longer….

Kirk: Quit falling into the stupid pit, you piece of s***!

Tim: Can I stop now?

Brian: This controller’s crap; you need to sit on top of the TV to play.

[An icon appears in the pit]

John: Yay! You got a…thing.

EGM: What did you get?

John: A backwards C?

Brian: Reese’s Pieces? Am I in a different pit this time?

[Ten minutes later, Brian escapes the pit]

Tim: Whoa, someone has you!

John: It’s a lady.

Tim: No it’s not. Her hair is E.T.

Sheldon: No! No! Not E.T.! Kill! Kill! Kill E.T.! Glock E.T.!

John: This game is so confusing.

Kirk: No wonder it’s the worst ever.

Brian: A flower grew!

Kirk: Piss on it.

Tim: Oh look—it’s a dork!

[Points to Elliott on the screen]

John: He put himself inside your body. He bestowed his life force upon you.

Tim: [Points to lava lamp on TV stand] That thing’s more interesting.

John: Yeah, let’s watch the lamp. It’s more fun and less predictable.

Tim: E.T. is unpredictable: You never know when you’ll fall into a pit or when a kid is gonna enter your body…I mean use your skin as his own.

Nico: Didn’t they bury this game in Mexico or something?

Gordon: Is that a woman?

Becky: It’s Zeus. He’s taking you away to the Acropolis.

Andrew: The point of E.T. is to see how bad they can piss you off…

Nico: …before you turn it off.

Becky: Maybe another movie company that didn’t want you to like E.T. made this game.

Andrew: Yeah, it was some sort of corporate sabotage.

Sheldon: Hurry, make him die!

Gordon: Please.

[E.T. finally dies—general clapping and hurrahs]

Andrew: Eeeeeteeeee phone home.

EGM: This game was so popular in Japan that—

John: They made it into a TV show?

EGM: Well, no. It was so popular that they ran out—

John: Oh, did they make collectible trading cards for it?

EGM: Um, no. It was so popular that there was a shortage of the coins used to play it.

John: But you can get this game on a cell phone. Why would you want to pay for it in an arcade?

Andrew: I’ve seen a game like this in the arcade, but it’s tons faster.

Sheldon: …and it’s in color.

Andrew: …and your spaceship looks more like a spaceship.

Nico: …and not like a little box.

Gordon: It looks like food.

Andrew: Where’s my rapid fire?

Nico: The aliens look like spiders…

Becky: …and squids and crabs.

John: Maybe this is what seafood will do in a thousand years.

EGM: How long could you play this game before you got bored?

Sheldon: About 15 minutes.

Andrew: If you take it on the road and play it on your cell phone, then you might play it pretty long.

Nico: There’s nothing else to do.

Andrew: Except look at nature.

EGM: Would you rather play this or play outside?

Andrew: Outside.

Nico: This game needs a super bomb or something.

Tim: This is nothing compared to Grand Theft Auto III, because you can’t steal a taxi cab, pick up somebody, then drive into the ocean with him.

Kirk: And you can’t pick up an AK-47 and go kill—hey, those aliens on the top row, you use them in EGM for stuff.

EGM: Yeah, we use them to end our articles. They do kinda look like they’re from Space Invaders, don’t they?

Tim: They’re going to sue you.

Kirk: I’m sure everyone who made this game is dead by now.

Source :http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3109674

It’s going to be a crazy two months ahead. Due to the approaching Black Friday, games are being pushed out in time for the holiday season, and the buyer frenzy. Just on DS and PS3 alone, we’ve got a mass amount of titles that will make you either flinch in agony as your time is whittled away, or leap for joy at all the drooling goodies.

We’ve got Little Big Planet coming out on the 21st, in addition, on that very same day is the new DS Castlevania – Order of Ecclesia. Let’s not forget Rockband 2 is being released for PS3, which I happily preordered.

On November 11th, is supposedly Dragon Quest IX for DS, Eternal Poison for PS2, Castlevania Judgement, and super-drool Mirror’s Edge! And the day after that is Valkyria Chronicles! A week from that day is Tomb Raider Underworld!

Some of you may already have Eternal Sonata, Dead Space, and Bioshock on your radars too.

Personally, I’m going to skip Eternal Poison and Castlevania Judgement. I’ll have to let a few of these games pass “Day One GET” in favor of my wallet and my time constraints. I’m still trying to play Uncharted!

I’m definitely going to get Valkyrie Chronicles. Played the UK demo, and I’m supremely impressed with the game mechanics.

Mirror’s Edge is an obvious DAY ONE GET. What I am kicking myself for though, is the fact that when I registered this blog, mirrorsedge.com was available, and I didn’t take it. Why? I’d say a sudden lapse of stupidity.

Another GET is Tomb Raider Underworld. I’ve always loved Tomb Raider, and seeing it improve so much over the last two games has really injected new love for the series for me. May not be a Day One Get though, but definitely one of the higher priorities.

I’m also a huge Castlevania fan, and can’t wait to see what this new DS installment will bring to the table. The new combat system sounds interesting, and I’ve always wanted to see a female lead since Dracula X.

Little Big Planet is already preordered. I don’t have to say anything else. The reviewers have said their word, and I agree. Beta showed me the light.

The demo for Eternal Sonata didn’t impress me very much. I really like the art style. It’s beautiful. But it doesn’t seem to add much to the RPG genre. Nothing interesting at least. I was really anticipating this game when I saw it on the 360, but after playing the demo, decided that I’ll buy it “when I have time”. I have enough RPGs to tide me over for potentially the next 5 years!

If I can’t purchase all my wants, then hopefully, someone else will for my christmas present.

This is probably one of the best tutorials you could ever wish for in terms of learning from basic to advance, the workflow of creating a high detail character using normal maps, mudbox, and maya. It doesn’t cover exact modeling tips and tricks, but it does cover workflow, basic strategies, and advanced techniques to achieve high quality models.

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/maya/varga/index.html

This tutorial teaches modeling from the basics all the way to completion. It’s definitely the grandfather of tutorials and is incredibly helpful. A must read for any modeling beginner, and for modeling refresher.

http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp

Not sure if it’s photoshopped or not. It’s highly possible. But Regardless, it would be nice. I’d pay for it.

Edit: confirmed. Video found here

Sometimes, Photoshop can get slow. You can make it perform better by following the steps posted here:

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/photoshop/optimizeram/optimize.html

Since this is useful information, I will also post it in this blog in case the original tutorial disappears.

How much RAM does your PC have? If you run Windows XP, it is probably in the range of 512 MB to 1 GB. Older Windows versions will do the job with less than that, but as soon as you execute demanding applications or more than one application at a time, anything below 512 MB will likely translate into performance bottlenecks.

The best way to improve Photoshop performance is to make better use of your RAM. Here are several tips to show you how to try this before you buy more. No matter how much memory you have, you could always use more. Installing more RAM is generally the quickest way to better performance. But you can also speed up Photoshop by making better use of the RAM you already have. There have been a lot of times when I’m working in Photoshop and things really start to slow down. When this happens it usually means it’s time to take a look at my RAM and see how much of it is allocated to Photoshop. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how you can speed up your Photoshop performance by using your RAM more effectively.

What is RAM – Random access memory (usually known by its acronym, RAM) is a type of data storage used in computers. It takes the form of integrated circuits that allow the stored data to be accessed in any order — that is, at random and without the physical movement of the storage medium or a physical reading head. The word “random” refers to the fact that any piece of data can be returned quickly, and in a constant time, regardless of its physical location and whether or not it is related to the previous piece of data.

As you’re working in Photoshop, click on the right-facing triangle on the status bar near the bottom left of your image window, and choose Show>Efficiency from the pop-up menu. You can use this indicator to determine how Photoshop is doing with the current amount of allocated RAM. If the efficiency indicator goes below 95% then you are accessing the scratch disk which, in turn, will begin to slow Photoshop down. But if your efficiency starts to go below 70%, then you may see Photoshop’s performance increase if you change your RAM allocation or add more RAM.

Tip 1: Go to Preferences > Memory & Image Cache and If you’ve never made changes to this, then the Maximum Used by Photoshop setting should read 55% by default in Windows. Increase the amount of RAM in 3-5% increments to start. Click OK to close the preferences. And restart the Photoshop for viewing any performance improvements. Don’t allocate too much RAM to Photoshop because don’t forget that your operating system still needs RAM.

Tip 2: If you increase the number of History States that Photoshop saves to large number, then you’ll really slow down your editing and image creation in Photoshop. At any rate, the decision is yours and it depends on the way you work, as well as how much RAM you have on your computer. Go to Preferences (under the Photoshop menu on a Mac, or the Edit menu on a PC) and choose General. My suggestion is that if you have at least 1 GB of RAM, then you should set the History States to 50 and Photoshop will now save 50 History States instead of only 20. If you find this slows Photoshop down too much, then try changing to something lower.

Tip 3: When you work on your images in Photoshop, it breaks your image into sections called tiles. By default, the maximum size of each tile is 132 KB of RAM. However, in CS2 you can increase this tile size by activating the Bigger Tiles plug-in. This means that Photoshop can process large images faster because it won’t have to draw as many tiles. Go to Adobe Photoshop CS2/Plug-Ins/Adobe Photoshop Only/Extensions/Bigger Tiles folder and remove the ~ (Tilde) from the file name. Now Photoshop redraws more data at a time because each tile is larger, it will process your images faster.

Tip 4: Go to Photoshop CS2’s Plug-Ins folder, and in the File Formats folder add a tilde (~) in front of any file types that you don’t use to speed up Photoshop’s startup time.

Tip 5: Pixel doubling is an option that lets Photoshop redraw your images faster whenever you use tools or commands to move the pixels in the image. Whenever you have an image open and you move the pixels, Photoshop must redraw the entire image. This can take some serious processing power if you’re working with a large photo from, say, an 8-megapixel camera. To speed the process up, turn on the Use Pixel Doubling checkbox in the Preferences dialog (under Display & Cursors). Photoshop will temporarily double the size of the pixels in the photo (essentially cutting the resolution of the image in half) for a fast redraw. It doesn’t make any permanent changes to the photo and as soon as you’re done using the tool, it returns the image to its normal pixel data.

Few More General Tips:

a) The Task Manager’s Performance tab, provides the best way to monitor memory use. To run the Task Manager, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, then click on the Performance tab. With it, you can interpret the information and make better use of your memory.

b) Over time, your PC’s hard disk can become damaged or fragmented. If there is not enough contiguous space for the system to save a file, it saves pieces of the file to different locations on the disk. It takes an application longer to read a fragmented file whose pieces are saved in several locations. To optimize and defragment the hard disk on a PC, use the Windows Disk Defragmenter or if like to use more professional utility then use the Diskeeper software.

Along the way, I found this tutorial on how to load photoshop faster:

http://whiterbunny.wordpress.com/2006/04/20/loading-photoshop-faster/

Excellent Photoshop tutorial on CGArena by Lukasz Szeflinski in Poland. Concentrating on photo-realistic lighting, starting with a basic sketch to color blocking, to final detailing.

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/photoshop/lukx/index.html