Finished the 3d model of the Rocketeer helmet! These are presented real time from within UDK. A little less than 1800 triangles with 1024 diffuse, normal, spec maps.

   So I’ve basically gotten all I want to get out of my previous zombie UDK project. I’ve been milling on it too long and needed to branch out and get portfolio pieces underway. I’ll finish with some nice renders of my scene and officially put the lid on that project.

   Starting the new year, the retro sci-fi style suddenly made a mark on me. You know what I’m talking about. Basically what people in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s imagined the future would look like. These designs featured lots of bold and exaggerated shapes. It’s probably the same reason why I think the 1971 Stingray Corvette is one of the most interesting looking cars. The organic, smooth shapes add to the silhouette of the vehicle.

   After thinking about this style, the first pieces of tech that flashed into my mind was the helmet and jetpack from The Rocketeer. So here is my WIP of the helmet from The Rocketeer. I have finished the high poly and plan on starting the low poly soon. I’ll post the finished helmet once it’s done and start work on the jetpack soon after!

   Towards beginning of the semester, my friend and then coworker Andrew approached me to create art for his masters thesis. His thesis was going to be presented in a game format that centered around the theme of recursion (a mathematics technique, thus used in programming).

   He went on to describe this as a 2D “side-scrolling” game. The environment was to be predominantly mayan ruins, while the character was to be an exploring robot. The character was to navigate through the ruins based on open paths eventually leading to the treasure. The gameplay was suppose to mimic the process of recursion. I went to work on creating the mayan background using mostly hand painting techniques. I believe there was only one image of a rock texture that I used to break up the surface and add some random noise.

   Even though I have yet to see the finalized version of the game, it was a fun, little side project for me. It gave me practice building an environment without much use of found textures. You can check out the finished environments below with the robot and treasure. (The interior of the temple was built in pieces so they could be assembled into differentiating paths).

So at work we have started this new game with a loose project name of “Energy.” Since our lovely game/instructional designer parted ways, we only have a few key elements really designed. One of these includes the environment, which is all the artists really need to get started on some basic props. The game will take place in a prairie, grassland setting (Oklahoma/Texas). There will be oil equipment, a farmhouse, barn, and the usual Oklahoma-like vegetation.

Having been more unfamiliar with normal maps than Gabe, I’ve been taking my time to really understand the best way to use them. I’ve achieved some pretty good results, though it could be better! It’s been really fun learning how to make “next gen” art assets. I believe the models that I have completed have been a valiant effort, but with practice, I know that I can make them more realistic.

My biggest complaint is that we are not going for a real style in our game. I know the setting is suppose to be authentic (which is a buzz word that researchers in the academia setting like to throw around too often), but I would like to do something more along the lines of Pixar or Team Fortress 2. The style of these two are unmistakable. It would be awesome for a school to look at one of our educational video games and immediately know who developed it. This is unfortunately of little concern to academia. To them, research and findings play an important role to the success of the game.

I could rant about all the little things that bother me with our process or what our company thinks a game should be, but that will have to be for another post. Regardless of how I feel about developing in an academic setting, I’m glad to be given this opportunity to increase my skill. Here are a few renders of some of the objects I’ve created. I’ll make an update once I have a handful of new objects to show off!