Greetings Fellow Avatars!

More cool stuff to share with you this update, including Geoff Mellon’s revamping of the male avatar outfit, Bren Wilson putting some moves on the avatar attacks, the Edelmann House Poll, Tracy Hickman’s awesome Sojourner Tales Kickstarter campaign, and changes to how project updates are being shared.

Avatars in Motion

Bren Wilson (animator) has been hard at work adding more animations to our latest male avatar! Here is a video of his new axe attack animation:

SotA Male Avatar Axe Attack Video

And here is the bow attack animation:

SotA Male Avatar Bow Attack Video

Male Avatar Revamp

Geoff Mellon (character artist), has a great thread in our Dev+ forums where he discusses his revamping of the male avatar and leather outfit. Here are some excerpts:

Geoff (Qball): This discussion is…to readdress the Male Avatar demo Clothes. I built those for speed and since we have been designing the Customization System [i.e. what parts of the avatars are interchangeable] we have stripped the Male Avatar down to his leather vest and such. Well I finally got the time to revisit the leathers and this thread will be step by step of my process…This is what I had to start with, the vest needs life and I intend to give it some.

[Note: Yes, his forearms are too long. Several community members brought it to our attention]

MRCalderon3D: Great job Qball, but I think that the forearm is too long. I made a copy Avatar’s arm and I turned it from the shoulder. I have placed a reference to the proportions of the human body…

Geoff: …thanks for all the feedback folks. I see the forearm issue…with this leather I wanted to be able to have color control over different parts of the vest. After working in 3ds Max, I go into Zbrush and sculpt in detail. So for Day 2, I mostly was doing this sculpting.

Geoff: Here is the final version of the paint from Zbrush. It makes the very strong foundation but is by no means the last time I will be painting. These textures in PhotoShop will be much more controllable and tight to work on.

Geoff: Below you can see some of the detail painting I look to do when working in Zbrush. I can enhance all the painting with a sharp brush with carving inside of the leather. And as much as I would love this little piece of leather to show all this detail in game, I am sure it will be lost as the maps get shrunk. But it was fun, I love painting leather and chrome…so yay!

Cloth Armor!

Geoff Mellon took a short break from his 3D modeling tasks to crank out a couple of concept pieces for additional male avatar outfits. Geoff will start modeling these soon so look for in-game version of these outfits in the weeks ahead!

Ya know, Geoff sits right next to senior programmer Justin Gilbert, who wears a hoodie every day, all day. I’m thinking Justin was the inspiration for Geoff’s Epic Cloth Armor concept art. What do you think:

The Edelmann House Poll

The rewards for the Edelmann Pledge Tier included “Unique, upscale, German Benefactor/Founder Edelmann’s home (German home styles to be submitted and voted on by community; available only to pre-launch backers)”

Bob Cooksey (senior environmental artist) has generated his recommendation for an Edelmann home, and you can vote on his version, or alternate versions, at the Edelmann House Poll thread in our forums.

 

Tracy & Laura Hickman’s Sojourner Tales Kickstarter Campaign

All of us on the SotA dev team love great board games, and we love them even more when they’re developed by one of our own team members! We even had an epic board game room set up during our Kickstarter all-nighter, and have spent many lunch hours together shuffling cards and moving tokens in the conference room! So of course we were all excited when Master Storytellers Tracy and Laura Hickman announced their Kickstarter Project: Sojourner Tales.

Sojourner Tales is a story based strategy game where players will have to use their wits as they discover and collect the pieces of a mysterious puzzle and try to be the first to complete the epic adventure. And because of the innovative Ebook Story Modules and adaptable design, the tale is different every time you play! So if you love great board games like we do, be sure to check out the Hickman’s Kickstarter page before funding closes on Oct 10, 2013.

Project Updates Transitioning to SotA Website and Emails!

Since we completed our Kickstarter campaign on April 7, 2013, we have been double-posting our project updates to both Kickstarter and the SotA project website. To help consolidate our communications with our community of backers, we will start posting the updates only on the SotA website, but we will continue to send an email version of the updates to all of our Kickstarter backers using the email addresses provided to us by Kickstarter.  This way we can consolidate all of your replies and comments to our updates in one place.

We’re currently using MailChimp as our email distribution platform, so keep an eye out for our future emailed updates. You should continue to receive these email updates even if you haven’t yet registered on the SotA website. If you don’t see them, then make sure your spam filters aren’t blocking them from your inbox!

Please Register on SotA and Link Your Kickstarter Account!

Stay on top of all the latest game development news by registering on our website, https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com. And if you have not already done so, please be sure to Link your Kickstarter Account, so we can ensure that you receive all of your backer rewards as soon as they are ready to roll out!

[This edition of Update of the Avatar written by Dallas Snell, COO/Co-Founder, Portalarium]