This Plan file is to chronicle my progress as the Lead Artist on the project "The 
Escapade".  The design document can be found here,
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/escapade_design_doc.html

2007/06/10 Pop up element mockup

     I wanted to show how manipulation a pop up element would work, so this is a 
quick gif just for that, 

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/pop_up.gif

The blue untextured bit is the pull tab element the player will always use to 
manipulate a pop up element. 

2007/06/30 Level Mockup

     Small progress on the level mockup. I'm using photos for textures, and just trying
 to do things as quickly as possible to illustrate the way it will work to my 
programmer.  He has gotten double jump working, so we're one step closer to having
 all character interactions working.  Here is the progress of the level mockup,

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/mockup_01.jpg

2007/06/27 Storyboards and level mockup

     Still trying to flesh out the design document with images to make the game design
 more clear. I did some storyboards of basic movement, and started blocking out a 
rough 3d model to help visualize the gameplay concepts. 

2007/06/25 Concepting

     I'm working on the level concepts. I have a very rough start here,

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/bedroom_01.jpg

I've already been solving some scale, and design issues, but I want to elaborate the
 level pretty far to have illustrations for the design document, as well as set a style 
guide.  

2007/06/08 Random Updates

     Iris is in game, as the player character, with the root animations working. I've 
also blocked out the color for her texture, and started on her run animation. Agust 
has the advanced camera resource integrated and working, so now the camera view 
in game is how we want it.

2007/05/29 Color blocking

     Very little done tonight. I blocked in some colors, and helped my programmer get
 Torque set up on his machine. I want to finish the blocking of the color tonight, and 
start getting her in engine.

2007/05/28 UVs done

     UVs are done.  I'm going to do a quick blocked out color map, no painting, just 
pools of solid color, and then start getting her in the engine. I need to first just get 
everything set up, then start on the animations. Whenever I can't proceed because of
 programmer hangups, I'll work on the texture. Texture will be a 512x512 map with 
Glow in the alpha channel.

2007/05/27 UVing

     I'm about one-third of the way through the UVing process. I've also finished a 
rough draft of the design document, which can be found at the top of this plan file.   

2007/05/26 Rigging

     Rigging is done, a gif cycle of the stretch animation can be seen here, 

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/iris_rig.gif

And a quick pose here,

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/iris_08.jpg

Now that the rig is done, I can move on to the UVs. Seems I could have done UVs 
first, as I didn't need to change the geometry at all during the rig process.  But I'm 
glad I did rigging first. 

2007/05/24  Rigging

     Today I finished making a stretch animation to test my rigging with, added one last 
model piece (a large beaded anklet) and started the skin weighting process. I've got the
 head, bangs, and hood done, and working on the torso now. It should take another day
 to finish the rig, then I'll save out the skin weights and UV her. I'm waiting to UV till 
after the rig, in case I need to add any extra cuts to facilitate proper deformations.

2007/05/23  First .plan file entry

     This is my first .plan file entry. I have already gotten a fair bit of work done, so I 
need to recap. Agust and I first thought of doing a game about 2 months ago. We have 
been brainstorming the subject matter and have a fairly good idea mapped out. I 
started working on the concept for the main character, Iris, here;

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/iris_concept.jpg

I've gotten a good amount of work done on the model too;

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/iris_06.jpg

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/escapade/iris_07.jpg

Right now I'm working on rigging. Tonight I had a hard time getting the helper bones to 
work, particularly on the butt. Whereas the other helper bones have half orientation on 
the parent bone, and half on the child, the butt would rotate 180 degrees with that 
setup.  So I parented the helpers to the waist, and added only the upper thigh as 
orientation, then backed the weighting to 50%. Works perfectly now. This being my first 
custom rig set up, I'm making a lot of beginner mistakes, but learning a lot. I'm now at 
a point where I can start weighting the model to the skeleton. I want to make sure the 
model deforms well before UVing.