User:Scruffy

Hello, I'm Scruffy. I'm a musician who wrote the updated music articles on Pikipedia, and now I'm here to create some original content!

My Pikipedia page

My YouTube channel

My gallery of images for Pikmin Forever

My game is Pikmin Forever. It's a conclusion to the story arc of the canon, with some new Pikmin types, new gameplay mechanics, and huge Challenge Mode and Sandbox modes. I'm modeling and rendering all of its concept art, and I'm composing its soundtrack! It'll all show up here as I complete it.

IMPORTANT: If you have render or music requests, please keep them Pikmin-themed! That's what this wiki is all about!

Pikmin Forever

 * Main theme
 * Day 1 Tutorial
 * The Lipidon's theme

Requested

 * The main theme to Pikmin: Attack of DeathSpike.

Other

 * an arrangement of The Impact Site theme

Pikmin Fangame Engine Area


I just created my first realized Pikmin Fangame Engine area, entitled The Workbench! It's sort of a Challenge Mode area; it's littered with tricky pellets that require up to three leaders to collect, but the President is walled off in one of the alcoves. Once backgrounds and bottomless pits are complete this place will really get interesting!

An Excerpt

 * An Excerpt

This is my first published animation sequence, an excerpt from a Pikmin-related performance of one of my favorite classical pieces. This took about a combined 80 hours to render, I hope you enjoy it!

Phosbat at the Piano


I just love how Blender can get a simple idea out of your head and into the real world. This is also my highest-sampled render to date, at 4,000 samples per pixel.

Blues Pikmin


There are no Blues Pikmin to take out, except for this one. See the band live this end of day at the Blue Onion.


 * Blue belting out licks on a Gardn Les Paul Special, in a Cherry "Almost Sundown" finish.
 * Red hammering on an "Ultra-spicy red" Calcio TDS-404 Digital Piano.
 * Purple laying down the law on a Wraith "Dream Series" J-bass.
 * Rock rocking a Progg classic 5-piece maple kit.
 * Yellow wailing on a Kingcap H K Alto saxophone.

Sunset Islet Previews


Today in Blender I created the Onion tree that resides on Sunset Islet, the final area in Pikmin Forever. While viewing trees for reference, I still tried to make it look like a tree alien to us. This project taught me how to create copies of objects with equations that define their color, rather than a single color for all copies. For example, the Onions above the tree have randomized colors with certain constraints (to limit the color choice to hue, not saturation or value), and the leaves on the trees have different colors of translucency based on their location relative to the tree. So, at a regular angle, the leaves change color; at an oblique angle or with hard sunlight, the leaves reveal their green base color.

This is only concept art, so the scale of the tree and island might change, but I figured that "final boss" areas in Pikmin games are generally pretty small and navigable. It would be neat to have part of the exploration in the canopy of the tree, amidst all those colorful leaves.

Overall I believe I prefer the first image to the second, but that's probably because the viewing angle and depth of the camera changed how the leaves and water normally look. But I loved working with color on these images, and it was certainly fun to make my own island. Expensive, though; this scene has over one million polygons and takes up more than 100 MB of space. I need to learn to optimize these models.

Awakening Wood Pulp
Another stylized scene, this time based off the Media Molecule game Tearaway (which has a great soundtrack, by the way). I tried to make everything look papery and simple, even the shadows of the trees and the light beams. I wonder if, someday, we can expect a Pikmin game or subset that explores other compositional styles than realism.

Pikmin, stylized
Believe it or not, this scene took a long time to complete, and took several minutes to render. After playing the game Grow Home, I wanted to try a change in style from photorealism, so first I tried putting a very simple shader on a Red Bulborb. Then I went through and simplified its textures pixel by pixel into just the basic colors (fortunately the Red Bulborb has really small textures!). And finally it had to be subdivided into hundreds of thousands of polygons for the shading on it to appear smooth. After adding a few more elements to the scene, I was happy with how the colors were turning out, and how the shadows implied depth but never intruded too much. I might upload new versions of this scene as I experiment more with this particular style. It's very... logo-y. It'd be awesome to have a Pikmin game with this sort of simple color/shading look.

Glassblat
A Cycles render of a blown-glass Calcified Crushblat figurine, along with a Searing Acidshock, on somebody's window sill. I wanted to try a focus on glass materials and how they refract light, and the Crushblat's funky shape is as good as any to showcase that refraction.

Aristoclay
A Cycles render of a clay model of the Peckish Aristocrab. This was a lesson for me in node-based materials and setting up light stages (with which I still have a long way to go, this is my first go at it). I wanted to work on developing my own complex materials from node inputs; up until now the materials I've been creating have actually been pretty simple. The soap bubbles in particular took a lot of tweaking to look how I wanted them to look, but I'm pretty satisfied with their color now. I only wish I could give these images more sampling; this had 33,012 polygons and 250 samples per pixel. I wanted to go with 1000 per pixel to clear the graininess, but Blender told me that'd take 22 hours! But this is clay, I suppose a little graininess doesn't hurt.

Daybreak Glade preview
My oldest big Cycles render on here, mostly getting used to how it handles realistic lighting, materials, and camera effects.

Thanks for the requests so far, keep them coming!

Requests
If anyone has requests for music or CGI images, don't hesitate to put them in my talk page! I have capable software and a lot of experience, and I'd like to give your ideas some musical and visual background. Keep in mind that, the more detail you put in your request, the closer I can get it to the idea in your head.

Music composition comes easier to me than image composition, but I welcome any and all requests!

IMPORTANT: Please keep your requests Pikmin-themed! That's what this wiki is all about!

Some notes: Some caveats:
 * I use Sibelius, Notion, Studio One, and GarageBand for my musical compositions. These are all paid applications; I would still recommend them if you want a pretty capable music product without actually hiring people to play a piece. Sibelius (and Finale, but I prefer Sibelius) is the end-all notation program for professionals; it is insanely good and I am humbled on a daily basis by its scope.
 * I use Blender, GIMP, Autodesk Sketchbook (the free version), and Autodesk Pixlr for all my photo composition and editing (all of those applications are free; I'd recommend them for getting ideas out of your head and onto a 2D or 3D world).
 * Nintendo doesn't want anyone to use their copyright, but they don't really enforce it. That being said, I would prefer if have your original music requests posted before your requests for arrangements of Pikmin music; I don't want to abuse their passiveness to YouTube remixes.
 * The more complex an image you desire, the longer it will take me. I do not yet have the tools to rip or view models from the original games, so please bear with me as I build most of my images from scratch. Don't expect the full 3D Valley of Repose the day after you request it (or the month for that matter). Pikmin requests I can definitely handle, and enemy/item requests take longer but are still doable. I can also make area previews, as in a small scene depicting part of an area. Each request helps me learn more about optimizing my computer for composing or rendering.