July 2020 - Character Concepts

I've been designing a few characters over the past week or so, three in total. They are intended to accompany my previous character as opposing fighters to battle. I made each with an accelerated pace and limited time spent on coloring, so they have a few obvious blemishes. If I could draw anatomy better, they would likely be slightly less stiff.

I refer to this large man as the Chef (no relation to Chef from South Park). I've imagined him to be incredibly French. He focuses on brutal crushing and slicing, utilizing hands hardened by a lifetime of scalds and cuts in the kitchen, as well as an array of cookware such as massive butcher knives and cast-iron skillets.

Surely, I will create a better name for this fellow and the others eventually, and even create reference sheets filled with poses and actions.

This is the Cheerleader. She is a fierce competitor, becoming enraged when facing any whom would dare challenge her superior cheerleading capabilities; this disgusting attitude is under a thin veil of vague charm. She specializes in flamboyant acrobatic attacks, and is especially adept in aerial combat. While fairly lightweight, she will summon a massive spirit stick to punish the unlucky and unfortunate.

Her palette is taken from a picture of potatoes of various colors, including her team's name, because it seemed funny.

This is the Queen, the most in-progress concept of these three. She is a Gothic insectoid with an inflated ego and considerable disdain for commonfolk. Her regal demeanor and thick carapace allow her to trade hits without breaking poise. The Queen also conceals much of her body beneath her oversized attire, making her quite difficult to read and allowing her to briefly hide some of her attacks.

Recent Work - May 2020

I have been doing some minor art projects lately. Some are finished editions of some pieces I mentioned before in the last post.

Punchgirl Concept v2

Here is a completed concept for my previously mentioned Punchgirl character.

Poster

This is a completed version of the previously mentioned drawing.

Assorted Comics

I have made a few simple, short comics. You can view some others, as well as a number of very old drawings, on my DeviantArt page.

Recent Work - Spring 2020

3D Character Creation

Here is a simple model I have been slowly working to finish. It is intended to be a player character for a 2D fighting game. It is overall low-poly, in order to meet projected performance needs and also the particular style I want.
I am using Blender to create this particular model.

The basic construction of the character (which I am referring to as Punchgirl) is complete. I started with the boots, and gradually extruded upwards until I reached the head, keeping major body parts as separate elements. I have been making small adjustments to various areas, like elbow/knee placement, arm/leg length, and torso curvature/scale; otherwise I feel there is a strong basic structure.

I have been attempting to create the character's hair, but am seeing little success. The primary issues are where it should start, and how to make it look how I want it to look.

2D Art

These are a few items I have completed or been working on, or otherwise stopped working on.

This is an incomplete concept for the Punchgirl 3D model. I became frustrated with the pace at which it was being completed, and so I decided to just wing it and make the 3D model without any concrete reference, other than what I had imagined.

These two items are short comics I was inspired to make after playing XCOM: Chimera Squad. I guess they're fine.

The first image is referring to Vinny from Vinesauce's dislike of a certain anthropomorphic cat on his stream (link here), and that weird cat (seen here).

The second is an incomplete idea where I predicted what Vinny would look like in 2021 after the world has been destroyed by a certain virus.

Concept - Slug Creature

 

This is a simple concept design for an amphibious slug-like creature. The idea behind it is not complicated, combining the general sliminess of a moist toad with a strange and alien facial structure. I primarily wanted a gigantic mouth that looks odd, which could swallow something whole in a grotesque display.

This was created using Adobe Photoshop.

Unity 3D Concept Level

Here is a video capture of a small concept level I created using prefab assets in Unity 3D. It contains three sections, with different configurations of hazards and geometry. Sound effects were created from a variety of sources, though I cut them and applied effects using Audacity.

Download the Unity game files here to play it.

Photography Project - 'Highway Star'

Here is a project from a photography class I took. The criteria was to shoot a set of 9 images that follow the lyrics of a song. I shot it entirely by myself using a DSLR on a cheap tripod and a IR trigger. The photos were touched up and manipulated with Adobe Photoshop.

Photography Project - 'Highway Star'

The images follow along the first few stanzas of the song 'Highway Star' by Deep Purple. Ideally, the project would have represented the underlying, non-obvious metaphors embedded into the song, but I went for a more literal interpretation.

373 Tower Model

This is an older project. We were instructed to design a tower that could be used in a Realtime Strategy game, with 3 different versions that could be used to display its power level. The criteria dictated that each model could not exceed 800 tris, and the textures for all three models had to be on one 256x256 image.

Tower Models

2019 Recap

Hello!

Here is a selection of work I completed over the course of this year.

2D Art:

Here are some images I produced for various projects. The images below are cover art and posters for games I was a part of.

Posters and Titles

These are a selection of concepts and other 2D assets I produced for those games. Additional information about these projects can be found in a few of my older blog posts.

2D Art

Motion Capture:

These are a few animations I helped create along with other students. They feature actions performed by me in a mocap suit recorded by an Optitrack and Xsens system. I also assisted with animation clean-up in Motive for some animations. Models and environments were provided by other sources, such as Mixamo.

This collection is for a game animation set. All of these animations were performed and cleaned up by me.

This scene was for a revisualization project, where my team chose an existing scene in a movie and recreated it using motion capture animation. It features one of my teammates and myself acting out a scene from Star Wars: A New Hope.

This set of animations is a small sampling of a previsualization project. My team came up with a 20-second scene, involving a guy encountering zombies. I acted out several different animations both for the guy and the zombies. These particular animations are the ones that I personally cleaned up, and also the portion of the final video I edited.

Personal Projects:

These are a few items that I produced just for myself this year.

Vinesauce Art

Comic Sketch

CAGD 470 - Blog Post

For this final sprint, the team focused on producing deliverables, polishing assets, and eliminating bugs. We also published a final build to itch.io, allowing others to view and play our game, which can be found here!

My personal work included creating the itch.io page, which needed a cover image, descriptive text and information, gameplay footage and screenshots, and the game's files. I also personally verified the integrity of the game's final build before submitting it.

Other than those two general tasks, there were not any other important tasks available for me to complete.

Now that the project is complete, all that is needed is to do a post-mortem presentation to the class.

My personal post-mortem for this project is not exciting. Much of my time with this particular project and team was spent waiting for a task to do, and the tasks I did have were minor and insignificant compared to what my teammates were producing. I felt that my skillset was not being challenged and utilized properly. The only reason I was team lead was because the person who designed the game (and who was directing everything anyway) didn't want to be team lead. In the future, I will not allow myself to be given responsibilities that I don't want just because someone else didn't feel like it.

377 - Blog Post

 These are three jellyfish I designed. They are supposed to be pickups that the player collects, so I made them as non-threatening looking as possible. They are based directly off of pictures of jellyfish I found

These are two animations I created using previously designed sprites and Photoshop's Timeline editor. I then exported them as PNG image sequences so they could be imported into Unity.

 This is a pufferfish intended to represent a static obstacle for players. It looks sufficiently scummy and hostile.

 This is the image that will appear when a player completes a stage. There is also an animated 'COMPLETE' text that I created, though I don't believe the team can import it into Unity properly.

This is a simple color edit of a previous background image to be used for later levels.