Effects | Bullet Render Test

A quick test render of a 9mm hollowpoint bullet I'm working on for my effects class. It's been forever since I've rendered any real thing in Vray, but I think the texture is coming along.

GameJam | Amo

Some screenies.

Trailer 
Full gameplay walkthrough.

Controls

Spacebar starts the game. Click on the colored triangle you want to place. A and D rotate it. Spacebar to place the triangle. R to reset Amo if he gets stuck.
45 Degrees. That was the prompt my professor gave me and two classmates for a week-long GameJam project. We limited ourselves to one week of development, Sunday-to-Sunday. In exactly one week, we took our little concept and actually concocted a playable, interactive experience. We spent roughly 10 hours a day working on this project, so in a combined effort, that's about 210 hours between the three of us. We started out brainstorming what 45 degrees meant, whether it was temperature or angles..We decided on a strong triangular aesthetic that reinforced the idea of sharp angles. For a week's worth of work, I think Amo turned out to be a very good learning experience, as well as an interesting, even if rough, finished product. I hope you enjoy playing our game as much as I did making it!

My personal involvement on the project included a lot of the art direction. On day one I sat down and drew up some concept art for the character, the mood, the settings, etc. After that, the rest of the days became a blur of modeling, animating, and applying materials. We spent about 6 days on content creation. The last day was when everything took most of it's shape, as I spent a good couple hours set dressing the level and bringing Amo's little world to life. Animating Amo was fun, but I am fairly proud of Nyx's hand. Also, this was the first project I've ever animated two characters in a single scene, which was new, but also quite challenging and fun. Interestingly enough, even though we had such a short amount of time for development, we still wanted to include a strong narrative, even if it was simple. I worked with my fellow classmates to develop a story in which Amo, our hero, is guided by Nyx, the Goddess of Sleep, on his adventure to become the hero he admires. Nyx helps Amo by placing triangles in his path to help him overcome obstacles. We set up special 'hero' locations that included a shop, a giant tree, and a shrine, where he obtained the armour he needs in order to become that hero. We also didn't want the game to include violence, so if Amo fails in his quest, he gets another try.

I could go on and on about how much I learned from this project, which was a ton. I could also talk about all the problems we experienced and how if we had had more time, this and that could have been fixed/added. But I'm truly happy I spent my school break building something unique, hopefully fun, engaging, and artistically driven with friends who I've gotten much closer to over the last couple of days. I'd love if it you could try the game out, leave some feedback on all of our hard work!  Here's the download link again in case you missed it above!

GameJam | Amo | Concept Art Sketches

Two classmates and I are in the middle of a weeklong GameJam over Thanksgiving break. I'm supposed to be doing the concept art, and almost anything related to the art. Our theme for the jam was '45 Degrees' so we are rolling with a very triangular design. I can't say a lot about the project yet, but so far is coming along pretty nicely. I hope you guys enjoy the style!

11.22.14 | Weekend Sketches

Here are some sketches I drew this week. I haven't drawn anything traditional in a long while. I really wish I could draw. I think I'm getting the basic nature down, but my lines are too tight and so my drawing suffers. Ugh. More practice, but these were fun and relaxing to do. Why is line weight so hard for me?

SOL | Artifact Concept Art

Here's another painting I've done for SOL. We took screenshots of our basic level layout, and then painted over them to show how that basic terrain could be built up. I chose to do an artifact site, where you can collect the antigravity ability for your gun. I wanted to put that artifact under floating rocks, as an indicator of what it might possibly be used for. I also put some lumen ore glowy bits on the floating rocks and on the cliff walls, as this might have been an area for good mining. This was fun to paint, I usually avoid color to work on value, but who knew colors could be so much fun? Let's hope this can quickly translate to our Unreal level!

To give you an idea of where this image started..

Before

After

Subject 8 | Modeling Progress 1

Watch in HD!

This is a character design I created last semester at school in 2D. One of my goals for this semester was to get Subject 8 made in CG, so I could either animate a short piece or put him into Unreal Engine 4. This is my current progress on his design in 3d. I worked on his basic mesh over the summer and I finally started sculpting him out last week. I don't have a strong understanding of anatomy yet (I'm using reference of course!) or shape design/language, but I think he's finally getting to a point where the design is starting to show through the form. I still have to finish his legs, hands, and feet as well as add some more hard surface structures and hoses. He's coming along though! I can't wait to move on to the look phase, where I'll texture and create materials so I can get some proper renders out.

Sol | Storyboards | Crash Scene Pass 1

Here are the storyboards I drew for the animatic I posted a few days ago. I figured I'd put up the stills, because there's something valuable in evaluating them on their own. Compared to my previous boards, these are a definite big improvement. Still, I feel like I could improve on overall direction and incorporating more dramatic cameras and interesting story points. These are arranged slightly out of order, but the general gist is there.The correct order is in the animatic. Hope you enjoy these! I think my favorite panel is the one where the squid is looking up after not being crushed by the spaceship like "Huh?! I'm still alive?!"