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:

Going to D.C. After All?

I'm posting this from my C++ programming class, and when I walked into the lab earlier, my professor approached me and asked me if I had received an email from Microsoft, regarding the Imagine Cup. I told yes, and that I was a bit saddened that I wouldn't be going with my dev team, and c'est la vie and all that. She then told me about how the team that I had done the splash page for was going to D.C., though, and that I might have a chance to go to the nationals after all.
Once this class ends, we have to figure out how to get me on to their team so I can go to D.C. for round 3, which is sometime in April.

Long Lost Rendering!

I was digging about the depths of my hard drive, and I came across this,one of my first complete 3D models ever made. Man, do I sure miss watching The Venture Bros. It's all King of the Hill and Family Guy, now. And it makes me a saaaaaaaaad 3D artist. :(

Some Space-y Stuffs.

So I've been pretty busy with this semester long assignment for my gaming environment design class. I've finally got something into the game engine (we're using Unity) and the little bit that I have somewhat polished was shown to an advisory board meeting of some professionals from Blizzard (art lead for Diablo III), Farsight(environment artist), and Sony Santa Monica(Environment art lead for God of War III), which I was really excited about. I was paired with a character designer who had made an excellent robot character, (seeing as my spaceship was the closest match) so many changes were made to my environment. Originally, I wanted to make everything in Russian, to give a sense of unfamiliarity, and to stir up some old Cold War/Space Race vibes, as well as everything being designed with a retro-futuristic/atompunk flair. So we have this vintage/modern clash going on here, which I think is pretty cool, and will make it much more interesting.



This is the current state of the generator room, sans walls to get a proper rendering. One of the biggest motifs I wanted to flaunt was the use of the Tesla coil. These things scream "mad science" and is a staple in a retro sci-fi theme. Case-in-point: Fallout 3 and Wolfenstein!





Granted, the coil wasn't too big of an implement in my original ray gun model:



The model has been abandoned anyway, as it was originally going to be used as an FPS implement.

Another big thing were the computers.



The computers are made in the old-fashioned UNIVAC style room fillers. Granted, this is a rather old rendering. The rest of the components are fully textured, as well as a mainframe model, which compliments this very nicely.

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.

Serious Need to Update

I've neglected this thing for too long now. Been pretty busy with working on Red Orbit and looking for work and all that stuff. But within the next few days, there will be a flood of posts and images and all that.

Finished! (almost)

The modeling for the main structure is pretty much done, save for some adjustments, and now I'm going to have to go through the painful process of unwrapping and creating the textures, and moving toward programming the models into the unity game engine.