Update!

Been working my ass off. There's more than this, will post on Monday when I get to the studio for more images.

3D'd Texture Test!

Sometimes textures look great, looking flat and perpendicular to your face. However, in the 3D realm of games and animation, it could look way different when tiled, lit lowly, and viewed from a different angle other than head-on in Photoshop's window. So far, I'm very pleased with what I have done. I've grown much in putting more and more dimension into my handpainted textures, adding more darks and lights to make it feel like there really is depth to it, starting from the brick walls back in May, to the summertime stone floor tile, to the wood that I've started and finished yesterday. And I hope to grow so much more with this. My next challenge: metal! Hope it turns out well when I get to it!

Another WIP

Because I can't have enough work on my hands, right? I'm already working on the spaceship, the Imagine Cup game, the Zombie Cab, and a texture package. And now this flying jet car thing. Personally, I like the results so far, a lot of it is looking very smooth, and hopefully, it'll keep up like that all the way through.

BUY MY MODELS!!!!

In an effort to work myself harder on improving my work (and earn some much-needed money), I've decided to put my better models up for sale over at turbosquid.com!

BUY MY STUFF!!!
http://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/AmarantusDesign

Current WIP: Zombie Cab

Between working on my class assignment, The first Imagine Cup Project and gearing up for what will hopefully be my second IC assignment (I couldn't find a way to log on to the US site, so I might be SOL--I'll find out in a few hours), I feel like I'm going to experience a severe case of burnout, if I don't have something to keep my mind busy. So, I decided to take on another little side project: building the Zombie Apocalypse Marathon Checker cab.

The progress is going well, and I'm currently working the hood. Hopefully when it's done, it'll look a lot like this:

Imagine Cup

Awhile back in my C++ programming class, we were sucked into entering the Microsoft Imagine Cup (official site here), competing in embedded systems. However, I'm not exactly a coding logic-oriented person, and found little interest in competing in it. I found that there were other fields other than embedded systems, such as, well, game design. I talked to my professor about it and how I was majoring in game art & design. She practically flipped and told me about another team she was mentoring in Huntington Beach, that was in need of an artist (their original guy apparently flaked out or something, I'm not too sure on the details) and I agreed to join. The theme for the year's national competition was something along the lines of educational gaming. The team's subject was a rather grim one: infant mortality. So I was charged with making a simple house interior, with a crib, some toys, and a fridge. Just some of the more important things to focus on, as well as the GUI:

The texturing and GUI was developed with Photoshop and Illustrator, and modeled & rendered with Blender. Many of the other teams were quite impressed with the work, and I was asked to do a splash page by another team, whose project was oceanic pollution:


Despite our hard efforts, however, our team did not make it to round 3. Hopefully, we will get back together for 2011, as we do have much of the artwork and source code completed.

Speed Modeling: Range Rover Classic

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The castled bonnet was a bit tricky to make, and the mesh isn't all that symmetrical. But the vehicle's basic shape was made rather quickly, being intended to be a low poly model. Unfortunately the lighting flattened the shape of the grille bars, which is in fact a modeled mesh rather than a normal map.

Shaping the rear tailgate presented it's own unique problems, but the flaws were easily covered once the taillamps were placed in. Note the Blender monkey placed as a badge in lieu of the traditional Land Rover logo.

All in all, not too bad for a two hour sit down. This was more an exercise in getting in line on working with vertices and faces, as a means of cutting back on polygons for smoother gaming. Though the roof may be a little too high, the exaggeration of it's shape with the lack of fine details, gives it an almost cartoony look while still making it recognizable as a Range Rover.

EDIT: Now that I look at it again, it looks like something you'd find in Katamari Damacy. Which I have to admit, plays off it's low graphic quality as good stylization.

Monday Vignette: The Nerve Centre

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If there's one thing I love, it's Sci-Fi stuff. Especially things like space battles. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Watching C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. Okay, enough Blade Runner references, you get my point, almost every epic sci-fi movie/game has an awesome space battle scene. Or even cooler, a shipwreck drifting about. While this little scene isn't exactly wrecked, something definitely has happened to jostle monitors, knock off communication lines, bring up alerts, and pull down the lighting fixtures. The scene was heavily inspired by the GFS Valhalla level from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, though not as heavily wrecked as the Galactic Federation's battleship. And definitely not swarming with those nasty Metroids.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption © Retrostudios & Nintendo
Bad cellphone shot © me

I especially like the outcome of the scrambled screens. Photoshop's wave filter, set to square, and repeat. Adjust settings or hit randomize until satisfied. Add some noise and horizontal grain filters, play with layer modes and opacity... voila!

Ahhhhh... reminds me when the logic board took a crap on my Mac... bad times, bad times...

Currently Project: Environment in Unity

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10 minute sketch
Traced over and details added
Pullout of surrounding environment
Composite render in Blender

The project in my environment design class is officially underway, and I've gotten a handle on Autodesk Maya. It's coming along slowly, but surely. Hopefully I'll get it done in time to code into Unity for the iPhone. Though I am mostly working in Maya now, I'll still be doing side projects in Blender, including a regular posting of vignettes.

UPDATE

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After much scouring the internet for some help on generating texture maps, I finally figured it out, and began to give my environment an even grittier, industrial look. I'm eventually going to implement this scene into a game using the built-in engine. The game itself is going to be a survival horror genre. Hopefully I'll have a working version sometime by the end of the summer.

New WIPs

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Pencil Sketch


Modeled and rendered with Blender

Recently, I downloaded Blender 2.49 to stay sharp on my 3D modeling skills, and to get a taste of a much more advanced programme before I just dive head-on into Autodesk Maya. After a few days of struggling, I've managed to get a feel for the interface, though there are many more things I need to learn.