Evolution of games part one:

The first part of Game history will be from around 1850 - 1980, you may not recognise most of these machines but they are the start of the game industry. The games you play now, the ones with amazing graphics, online game play, co-op mode etc have changed alot, but as you must know, everything great starts from somewhere.
So here we go;

In 1849 the first "computer" was created called The Difference Engine by Charles Babbage. I say computer but it was defiantly not what we are used to today, The Difference Engines was used as a calculator, but not for normal mathematical arithmetic, it was used to calculate polynomial functions. But The Difference Engine was never produced.


The next important creation in this history would be Colossus, a computer created by engineer Tommy flowers in 1943. It was used as a codebreaker in World War 2 and to intercept German messages etc... 10 in total were created and were said to help win the victory in WW2. When the War was over all 10 machines were dismantled and every set of instructions, diagram and anything else related to the machine was burned to keep it all a secret.


the first video game ever made was called Cathode Ray Tube Amusement in 1947 which you may not class as an actual video game, as it doesn't use any programming or computer graphics. many other playable games were created soon after for example tennis for two (1948), NIM (1951), Mit tx-0 mouse maze (1959).

The games develop more and more in around 30 years from the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement in 1947 to space invaders in 1980 which is more memorable game and most of you will probably remember from your own past of playing games in arcades and at home, and its even a game that has been made into a game on our phone.

Many people in the video game industry were wrongly credited or got there ideas stolen by others for example Max Newman , who was a famous mathematician, wanted to create a machine like Colossus, he had problems with sorting out how it worked and getting it to work. he went to a machine company called Robinson (as in Heath Robinson) which didn't work as well as he wanted and it kept having problems that he couldn't solve, so he was put in touch with Tommy Flowers an electronic engineer in order to help solve the problems with the Robinson machine, which he did. He helped solved the problems with the machine and he ended up taking credit for making the the "Colossus". and many other incidents like this happened through out the history of games.

The game industry came a long way in around 130 years from the difference engine which was a massive piece of machinery that only calculated polynomial functions, to space invaders, a playable game that we all know today, games have come very very far.

Part two will be with you soon, Thanks!

References:
http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/engines/
http://www.picotech.com/applications/colossus.html
http://classicgames.about.com/od/classicvideogames101/p/CathodeDevice.htm

The course so far...

The first few weeks were great,

Visual design:
We have been studying perspective, horizon lines and vanishing points etc...
The teachers have been taking us out to certain places and told us to draw it. First was the canal and everything around it, second was an arch way, which i thought was beautiful, but when we got around to drawing it there was a problem and loads of bollards and rods sign blocked most of it... thirdly we drew our student union and lastly on the forth week we took a nice school trip to Bradgate park...in the rain.
i was never a fan of landscape drawing and found it always too hard to get the proportions right, or even drawing straight lines for a building i found hard. and trees, don't even get me started. but when the teachers explained how to actually work it out and structure it, it was quite easy.

Life drawing:
I have done life drawing before and it wasn't much different for what i had done in the past, but it was still fun and interesting to do. we did various poses with different amount of time and different ways of drawing, continuous line, opposite hand and some detailed. we also used dark colour paper and sicossrs to cut out the silloette of the figure which found a particular challenge because i couldn't find my thin art scissors and had to take my chunky kitchen ones...

Game production:
We started off on a task to ease us into the program 3Ds Max buy following simple instructions and build a simple church structure, which i was happy with and felt i was getting the hang of it and thinking "this 3Ds Max thing isn't so hard" then they gave us our homework for the week. make a dalek. with no help. no instructions. under 1500 tris. mine was just under 3000 tris....
then we had 2 weeks to build a wheelie bin under 600 tris with reference images etc... I had minor trouble with it but nothing that couldn't be resolved although when walking through town I saw many wheelie bins that have fallen over and even one that had been thrown into the canal... so I'm guessing some people may have had more trouble then me.... My bin ended up being just under 600 thank goodness! But it did look like it belonged to a Lego house play set... But everything else with the UVW mapping and texturing went ok. But when I asked for a little help on something I found out my bin was the size of 2 houses stacked on top of each other... My wheel was the actual size of a wheelie bin, and I also forgot handles...
This weeks task we have to make an old building... Wish me luck...Please.

Even though there has been some challenges, it has been amazing and I'm starting to find myself looking at building and thinking (without realising) where is the vanishing point/horizon line and then trying to see how I'd make it in 3Ds Max... brain washing.

And so it begins...

Well, here we go, my first blog ever...

I have no idea how to start this so I'm gonna start with the basics:
My name is Sarah Lee Robinson and I'm 19 years old. I love art, and everything about it, except most modern art, for example in the Tate modern there is a glass of water on a shelf, titled "a tree"... seriously.
I love realism in art, my favorite artists are pretty much all of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and others like Leonardo Da Vinchi... etc...

I loved art at school and carried on doing it for my GCSEs and my Alevels. But i didn't know where to go with it, i just assumed because i love realistic art pieces that i wanted to go into fine art, i went to De Monfort University to do a foundation in art and design, by the end of the course i was confused... I thought i wanted to end up being a fine artist and do my degree in fine art, but it wasn't what i expected fine art to be. here i was doing detailed portraits, while my teachers were encouraging students to paint with their elbows and other body part (except hands of course) and pour custard on pretty much everything we made, to make it "interesting".
When it came to having interviews and applying for our degree, I picked my safe bet with fine art, and my not so safe, more like a dream bet of Game art design.
I say dream and not so safe because I was told the game art course was near impossible to get on, so many people saying hardly anyone gets accepted. But to me it seemed like the perfect course, realism, imagination, fantasy everything i wanted. I loved playing games and the only reason I bought games was because I liked the art, and then fell in love with the story and characters.
Then it came to which course I wanted, which pathway I'd go on. It seems cliche but I was, right then and there choosing my future. Would i go for my safe fine art or the impossible fantasy. So I did it, I chose game art, and I got accepted, but I'm sure you guessed that, otherwise i wouldn't be writing this blog. But I was so happy and excited!

The first day of the course was nerve wrecking to say the least, but it all became clearer and more relaxed when we met everyone and the teachers told us what we would be doing.
My first lesson was game production, which was so confusing. I'm sure most of my fellow students will agree that 3Ds Max is our new nemesis. but I'm sure in time I'll get it. It is becoming clearer and easier the more I use it. But I'm still finding random buttons that I don't know what they do. We had to make a church and I somehow gave mine hair...

I'm loving everything about the course, the lessons, teachers, the other students, everything. I find myself hanging on every word in the lectures, smiling at things that I'm being told. I feel I'm going the right way with this course. And now I only use custard for eating!

I tend to get bored of things easily, so I don't know how well this blog will go, but I'll try my best to update you guys every so often, also, I know I go on a bit too much, mostly about pointless stuff so sorry about that.

Thank you for reading this, and for getting this far through it, Talk to you all shortly!