Today I start at Artillery Games down in Palo Alto, I haven’t been posting much work lately or blog posts because I’ve been insanely busy trying to keep up with client work and new, strict deadlines for my thesis. Those are going to have to get pushed back a little bit because I need some breathing room and I’d much rather follow the money than a project that doesn’t guarantee anything career wise.

Midterms are this week so I’ll post a huge thesis update, I just can’t bring myself to post anything quite yet. I think the work is getting impressive but it’s just hard to make myself post on my site lately. So many other things I could be doing instead that are more productive. I’ll try to post more! And eventually someday… I’ll make the tutorials I’ve hinted about creating.

First thesis post in a while, been so busy lately! I’m redoing some aspects of Jack Sampson and I’m loving the direction he’s taking. Lots of sculpting to do on him to get him back to where he was. Basically details have been moved from his middle to his sides to help keep the eye moving. Loving the early results.

Sarah got a redesign, she isn’t a typical explorer anymore and is wearing baggy, worn down clothing. I wanted to do this because I have never liked how women were portrayed in games. Sarah is a vicious survivor who lives on her own in Utah. Can’t wait to finish her!

My life’s been basically 110% work and I can’t seem to catch up! We had a wedding in New York and right after I had no time to catch up before school and some visitors. This weekend is crunch time, I’m catching up finally and will hopefully be ahead of the game for once.

I promised about 6 months ago I was going to start tutorials and if all goes as planned I’d like to do my first one next week. I already have the first 10 planned out I just can’t bring myself to do it because there’s always some work to be done somewhere for someone.

Along with the tutorials I’ll be posing up some new and retouched up work and hopefully a new color zbrush composite or two. Back to the grind stone I go, but first I’m talking the short walk over to my Keurig for some “go” juice.

I started by making a timeline this week for this semesters thesis work as well as an abstract and project breakdown to help me keep focused. Some things will be changed or modified as seen fit by my professors after we talk more about timing for the semester but this is a pretty good general idea of how things will play out.

Beneath is my abstract I wrote, it’s 200 words and tells the who/what/when/where/why of my thesis. This was requested for my other thesis class but I think it’s good to show and to post up here so I see it all the time.

My thesis centers around 3 characters caught up in a battle for earth from an intergalactic threat in Hanksville, Utah: a remote town of 219 residents. Our first hero is Jack Sampson, failed 80’s action star who’s clinging onto the dream of becoming the next big action hero. Second is “Big” Bubba Hendricks, truck driver extraordinaire and brilliant mechanic.  Third is Sarah Carver, a talented survivalist and a dead eye with her long rifle. All characters 3 have big personalities and designs that match.

As a seasoned Zbrush artist, I work solely in this program during the design phase of the project, frequently adding or subtracting to the characters based on critiques/feedback.  Their final sculptures will be retopologized using Topogun into as many pieces as are required.

Headus UV layout will allow me to quickly and cleanly UV the characters into 3-4 maps per character. I’ll then extract as much detail from the sculpt as possible. Using Ddo and Substance I’ll create all necessary maps for their game assets. My final display of the game assets will be in Marmoset Toolbag 2 as well as rendered sculptures of each character in Keyshot or Vray.

 

Also this this week’s homework I’m painting over my thesis characters to plan out some details in a more accurate, well thought out way. James Bach mentioned using different rules to design my characters to help with composition so I’m going to use some of those ideas tonight.

Busy week, trying to finish a bunch of work I thought I would have finished already and prepped a plethora of models to send off to printers. Exodus Wars is coming out shortly and I made the final weapon for my infantry units which came out pretty well. Later on I’ll do a proper sheet for it. Uber low poly count because the units holding it range from 2-4k polys.

There’ll be a small thesis update later today with a new timeline as well. Oh, also new renders of miniatures! If I can find time to do it at least.

Tomorrow is the first thesis class so I figured it was appropriate to finally pick up the project again. Feeling good going into this semester, I can concept and sculpt even faster now. Made some gloves I put off last semester for Jack, they came out pretty bad ass.

September already? wow..

This week I’m in talks with a serious amount of clients and I think it’s gonna take weeks to either make deals or go our separate ways. Lots to organize and think about!

I added in my latest game asset into my portfolio and tossed in a new miniature from last week. Asking for permission to add in a few more miniatures and today I should be finishing yet another Sword & Board miniature.

School is starting up for real on Wednesday so I should probably touch my thesis in some way shape or form…

Have some new work going up in the next few days! Also school starts Thursday but it’s not gonna slow down my vast amount of work I’m pumping out for clients!

It’s the start of a new semester and I’m getting back to work on my thesis. I haven’t done much on it this summer but the amount of work I’ve done professionally has more than made up for it.

My project is based around character creation for a game I made up solely for the purposes of modeling some characters in a style I love. Basically, somewhere in the desert in a small town, aliens started an invasion. This was the perfect opportunity for Jack Sampson, my muscle bound failure of an 80’s actor to prove himself as an action star. He grabbed his weapons, ran out of his shitty apartment and looked for someone who could help him take down these bastards! Jack Sampson uses his superior strength, speed, and agility to maneuver the battlefield. He’s obsessed with guns but isn’t afraid to get into melee range to toss some alien scum.

The first person he found that looked like he could hold his own against this intergalactic threat was Bubba Hendricks. This guy is HUGE, Bubba isn’t only a huge, incredibly strong hick, he’s a brilliant mechanic. He can either smash some alien skulls or play defensive and build things to help Jack and Sarah.

Once they began fighting they noticed a pile of alien corpses covered in arrows and in the distance saw Sarah Carver. She’s a survivalist who had been hiking in the area and saw what was going on down in town. Sarah felt she could help so she ran into town and got recruited by big Bubba and Jack.

Last semester I started by completely ditching the work I previously did, this was because of the quality of the models from a concept standpoint. Pryce felt I could push myself much harder with more direction in the concept stage. These were the shapes I came up with that I really liked. I did tons of silhouettes at this stage. Link

Today we fly back to San Francisco where I’ll be resuming full time work Monday morning. Sorry to any clients who had their projects slowed while I was away for 10 days, tried my best to do work on my new laptop but it’s very strange working on it compared to my PC as well as mandatory visiting time with families and old friends. I’ll do my best to get your projects back on track this week! Thanks for understanding. Cheers