Thesis!

Hey kids! I GRADUATED!!!
I'm officially a Ringling College Alumnus, and I'm heading up to Rhode Island this weekend to start working with Hasbro! I've got lots of plans for personal projects (portfolio-beefing and otherwise) in the coming year...

But first, how about a thesis??




The whole project took about a year-and-a-half, and was done by myself, Shannon Berke, and Max Golosiy. I was responsible for the temple environment in the first shots, the rainy village, and all the dead dudes who come back to life (the main dead general on the rock + garden/house env was done by Shannon, and the old samurai main character + castle env was done by Max).

Here's some cool stills of my stuff:

Fantastic Environment

Last 3D project of the semester done! Winter break almost here! Almoooost theeeeere....

You may remember some nice concept art that I did for this project. Well that idea got mostly scrapped and I went with a new one! The assignment is still the same though: create an environment in the style of an existing game (still Uncharted 2). We wanted to take our environment somewhere that Uncharted had never been before (unlike my concept art), and ended up with some Chinese myths about the Tree of Life and islands were gods live and the like.

Blah blah blah. Have some pictures!

I worked with Max Golosiy on this project, again. The temple area that you see in the last screenshot is his area, although we shared a LOT of small assets this time around. I think that helped to make the setdressing much better and more realistically populated... easier to keep everything cohesive as well.

But here's some of the big important props I made for my area:

Onto second semester! Characters awwwww yessssss!!

Realistic 3D Environment

Hello! Here's my latest project, the cause of much sadness and sleep deprivation over the last month. A realistic environment, based off of the art style of an existing game (same as the fantasy concept I blogged last time). This time the game was Assassin's Creed 2.

The entire environment included a cathedral cloister and chapter house. I worked on it with a certain Max Golosiy: I did mostly the interior and he did mostly the exterior. Anyway anyway anyway, here are some shots of my area:

(basically the things Max made in here are the scaffolding and props like bricks and boards and barrels)


I definitely need to plug in another weekend to get this really top notch for my portfolio.
It's close, but I know I can take this one further. c:

Still Life

Next 3D project! A still life... not quite as exciting as an environment, but I had a lot of fun with materials and actually am very proud of this one.

A few changes that need to be made before it's portfolio ready, but for now onto the next project!

Freeway Modular Kit

Back to school! Also, made a second blog to use for portfolio stuff, which means this blog can get less stuffy and important now. ASLFKAJLKFJF. There, unofficial blog.

The first assignment for my 3D class this semester was to create a modular construction kit, and then use those pieces to make a couple of different environments. I decided to create a freeway kit, and here's how it turned out:

Along with some additional decals and the like, the whole kit is about 2500 tris and aroooound three and a half 2048 texture maps. Excited about how quickly this class is moving along! (But also scared, two weeks for a project, aaaahhhh).

Sophomore Year Post-Mortem

Just wanted to compile some of the stuff I'm most proud of from this year.

Remember that you can click on the images to enlarge them!

High res character sculpt, made in ZBrush with a little help from Maya.

And the same character, low res. 11,934 triangles (our limit was 12,000), and three 2048 texture maps (also the limit). Modeled in Maya, then put together and rendered in Unreal Development Kit.

Scroll down to the older stuff or check out these links for more in-progress and detail on the character model: Face detail, progess shots, and the original concept.

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Game environment, based off of a classmate's concept and using assets shared by the entire class.  The assets made by me were several of the signs, the railings/fence, the garbage, and a set of building pieces, as well as any extra things that needed to be thrown in.

It's so tough to show off an environment without the ability to actually walk through it yourself, but these are some screenshots showing off my assets, which are:

This project is definitely the one I am the most proud of this year. There's just something so completely exciting to me about creating an actual space that someone can explore!

Scroll down or check out these links for more environments: more screenshots, and another camera move, as well as some concepts.

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And finally, well, I didn't get a lot of drawing done this year, particularly this semester (don't even get me started on how excited for the Drawing for Game Art class next semester I am), but I'm still very proud of this painting. This was an illustration of a mechanic from Chess: the movement of the knight piece, which can jump over other pieces. I sure spent a lot of time with that game last semester.





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Well, it's been a crazy, knowledge-packed, insane mess of a year. Bring on Junior year!

A Nicer Mecca Crater Walkthrough

Now that it's spring break (well, the last day of spring break now...), I finally got a chance to get a proper walkthrough of my level from last semester together.

Quick refresher: I was responsible for the level design, set dressing, and lighting of the entire level, as well as the railings/fence, some of the signs, the garbage props, and a few building faces. Check out the stills of my meshes for a better look at what I modeled. The rest of the props were modeled by the rest of the '10 Game Art sophomore class.

More Mecca Level

Some more screenshots of my Future Mecca level, focusing on the models I made - some signs, the garbage, the railings/fences, and the stone walls/building pieces. (Check out this post to see exactly what assets I created).

The rest of the models were made by my classmates.

"Future Crater Mecca" Level

Now for some stuff from my 3D for Games class. Over the entire semester we worked on one level, starting with the concept and going on to grey boxing, modular building and prop modeling, set dressing, lighting, all that jazz.

The level was built with UDK 3. The props and buildings were modeled in Maya, with help from guys like Photoshop, CrazyBump, xNormal, Zbrush, the like.

First off my concept:

...was a two-part kind of deal, with a clean, sunny street on top and a dim, messy, hidden bazaar underneath.

HOWEVER, as a class we decided on one concept to stick with, and mine was not it. Instead we went with "futuristic religious mecca inside of a giant crater" (concept by that bro Michael Curtiss).

My final level:

All of the buildings and props were modeled by the entire class and then shared. Here's what I made:

Check these models out in the screenshots and the video... they look much cooler placed in the world than on a grey background!