"The Canyonrush Crew" Concept Art - Games Design Work!

Welcome to my first post of 2015! It's already a busy year with a couple of big Uni submissions already done and dusted. One of these submissions was for my "Games Proposal" module. This module involves coming up with an entire game concept. I had to create a pitch document for the game idea for our January milestone submission.

My game is called "The Canyonrush Crew" - its an action adventure/treasure hunting game set in the Wild West. The player can choose from 5 very different characters including a Native American and a Retired Pirate to name just two.

For the background images of my pitch document, I used Photoshop to create 8 different versions of the same desert landscape at different stages of the day, so that as you scroll through the pitch document, a day passes before your eyes on the page! 

Obviously the actual pitch document itself is full of words, but its quite long winded so I've decided to just post the background images, I hope you enjoy!

This Week at Uni - Character Designs!

Super busy week this week, the submission of our character design module, which at first seemed miles off, suddenly snuck up, so everyone was freaking out and smashing out character designs, including myself.

I've posted some pictures of one of my character designs in previous posts, this one is now done:

 

We also had two other projects. One of them was to create two characters, a tank and a soldier, who belonged to a "visual family", meaning that they look like they could belong in the same "universe"/game. This one took a hell of a lot of time and late nights and is probably my favourite piece that I produced for this project. It was partially inspired by the Pacific and Band of Brothers series with a pinch of post-apocalypse included.

Finally, I have a picture that is currently unfinished but I'm going to return to it and try and boost my mark at a later date. This one is of a "cannon fodder" character - generally the most common type of enemy, that you see (and kill) a lot of in a game. I went for a more comedic approach to this one, playing on the cannon fodder idea. It's a zombie being tricked into stepping on a land mine. It's far from finished but I thought I'd post it anyway.

 

This Week's Work

This week at Uni was spent working on a new project. This involves two out of three of our study modules and we've got six weeks to do it, so it's pretty big. Basically we have to pair up and use Maya and UDK to create a level, from scratch, that provides 6-9 minutes of gameplay. Eventually this will result in the most complete "game" we've made thus for on the course. We're also being paired with music students for this project to create a soundtrack which is going to be pretty exciting.

With that said, I don't actually have much to show for it yet because we're still in the idea generation and concept stages. I spent all of Thursday using UDK and learning how to script events. Here's a screencap that I took of a script in which the player has to activate 3 switches to make a door open to give an idea of how complicated this is.....

I also did a bit more work on my vampire hunter concept art that I've been posting for the past couple of weeks. Here's how it's looking now....

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Finally, I also did a bit of music. I've entered a competition to remix a track by Hans Zimmer. The prize is a job as a composer in America, which I don't expect to win of course but it was a lot of fun to do and I learned a bit about composing while I was it. It was originally an orchestral track and I took a few separate instruments from it and added some guitar to make it sound as unique as possible.

You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/denimkid/from-afar-bleeding-fingers

This Week at Uni - Vampire Hunter development and Tile Texture

Not an awful lot to post this week as I've just been powering on through the projects that I mentioned in last week's post.

Firstly here's the latest version of my Vampire Hunter concept art for my character design module. I've cleaned up the character and reigned in the lines a bit to make it a bit neater. I've also started to further develop smaller areas, like weapons, accessories etc and started to develop lighting effects. A few more hours work and it should be done!

I've also finished the second of my high quality textures, which was pretty rushed but I'm fairly happy with how it's turned out.

That's all for this week!

This Week at Uni - Vampire Hunter concept art and Metal Texture

It's been a busy week at Uni this week with a few big projects kicking off.

The first is a character design project; we have to design a main character for a game and create a piece of concept art that can be used as a desktop wallpaper. My idea is an "Arctic Vampire Hunter" and I've gotten started on the picture in Photoshop. I'm experimenting with lighting and poses with this one. It's nowhere near done yet but here it is so far.

We've also had a "next gen texture" brief which is basically about using normal maps to give a texture depth and specular maps to dictate how it reflects light. This has actually gone very well so far and I've finished one of the two that I need for the brief. Here's my final presentation sheet for the first texture!

More to come soon...

"Crazy Jungle Swing" - User Interface Project

So my current project for Uni is to design a working user interface project for a game using Powerpoint, to demonstrate a main menu, in-game user interface, pause menu etc. We had to come up with a vague idea of what sort of game our UI was for, so I came up with a simple sidescroller for a tablet, involving monkeys. I also decided to do some (kinda rough) artwork for this to make it a bit exciting than clicking around some menus.

The UI itself is pretty much finished but I'm working on a video playthrough of it that I'll post sometime soon, for now, here's some of the art work that I did for it. They're not too fancy but I think they're a fair standard for the length of the project :)

Underwater Environment Art Finished

Today I finished my Underwater environment concept art piece that I mentioned in my last post. It's a lot more detailed than the work-in-progress version and has taken me roughly 8-10 hours to finish. It's my first ever finished Photoshop concept art (which is shameful seeing as I'm in my 2nd year as a Games student) so I'm pretty happy with it and I think now that I've done one, the idea doesn't seem quite as intimidating. I'll definitely be doing more in the future.

Here's the previous version that I posted recently, for reference.

A lot of changes have been made in the final version, here's a quick list:

• Added plantlife and fish/animals (including sharks!)
• Added highlights in areas where the light is hitting the landscape
• Increased the intensity of the blue overlay to give more of an underwater effect
• Tilted the ship very slightly

Here's the final version:

Stuff I Made this week - (DnB Track / Concept Art Piece)

It may only be Tuesday but I can already safely say it's been a busy week so far. There's a couple of things I'm gonna include in this post. The first is a musical project that I finished today, and the 2nd is a quick work-in-progress concept art picture that I've been working on for a Uni project.

So today I made my 2nd Soundcloud upload. This time it's a drum and bass track, titled "Messages", that I started work on a couple of weeks ago. It's inspired by various different DnB artists and tracks, but I also tried to give it a bit of a Deep House vibe. The track was made in Reason 5 using only Midi instruments. 

Check it out on my Soundcloud page: https://soundcloud.com/denimkid/messages

Now for a work in progress. This is a piece of concept art that I've been working on this week for a Uni games design project. The project is to create a game concept and accompanying pitch document, complete with art work, so I'm creating this piece of concept art in Photoshop to be used as a background to each of the pages in the pitch document.

 

Stay tuned for the finished product.

Metal Barrel - 3D Model

Following the completion of my Gravedigger scene, I took a quick break from 3D Modelling, but now I'm back at it and I've got another scene underway. It's going to be an alleyway scene featuring a number of 3D models such as boxes, trash etc, and this dented metal barrel that I today in Maya. As usual it's a simple model with a simple texture, but I tried to make it a bit more unique by denting the side of the barrel a bit.

I aim to get this scene done a lot quicker than gravedigger scene, probably before I return to Uni in a couple of weeks if possible.

Decade in Characters Part 1 - Digital Painting

This post marks the beginning of a brand new series of blog posts that I am calling "Decade in Characters!".

I've always been interested in 20th Century zeitgeist and culture, including anything from music and film to fashion and subcultures, and I often find this interest influencing my own creative projects including my character designs, so I've decided to do a series of themed posts of characters based around specific decades. This will give me a chance to look further into a subject that I am already interested in and will also help me to improve my digital painting skills.

I've decided to kick things off with the 1950's! I'm a fan of the style of the era, and many of my favourite works of fiction including games (Fallout series) and films (Back To The Future, Grease) are set in the 50's or influenced by 50's culture, so I've had plenty of things to draw inspiration from.

I've saved my personal favourite for last. This picture was a first for me because I've never been great at drawing female characters, but I worked at it on paper and digitally and finally produced something that I'm very happy with. This is my favourite digital painting that I've produced to date.

Look out for more Decade in Characters posts in the near future. I'm thinking of doing the 70's next.

Digital Painting - Environment Art

Having finished my group project (see previous post) early, I had a free day today in Uni and decided to spend this time developing my skill in an area that I haven't had much experience in: Digital Environment Art.

By the end of the day I've managed to produce a painting using my Wacom tablet and Photoshop. This has been a productive day because environment art (especially digital) is one of my weaker skills. The picture isn't quite finished and I plan to return to it and finish it off next week.

Samurai - Uni Work

I'm now approaching the end of my first year as a Games Design student at UCLan and have been set a final group project for each of the two modules. For one of these projects, my group and I have been designing a game based around Japanese Samurais in the style of the company Team Ico (producers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus).

This of course means that we've all been drawing a hell of a lot of Samurais over the last couple of weeks. This has given me an opportunity to develop my drawings skills and move out of my comfort zone; I have been drawing full-body characters and movements/action poses.

I have also recently found a half-full sketchbook from last year, before I even started Uni! Looking back over the pictures in this sketchbook has opened my eyes to just how much I have developed in less than a year. I plan on making a more indepth post about this later on.

Meanwhile, here are a few of the pictures that I've produced during the current Samurai project.

 

 

I've still got quite a way to go, but I'm quite happy with how I'm progressing.

Drawing Practice: Faces

I've recently been doing quite a bit of practice drawing faces and character design, trying to develop my skills at getting scales right and use of shading amongst other things. Below are two quick drawings that I've produced recently.

Making a Corner Scene - Uni Work!

I am now at the end of the second semester of my first year as a Game Design student at UCLan and thought this would be a good time to get a blog up and running.

My most recent University project was the creation of a corner scene using the Unreal engine, from scratch, using Maya to model items, Photoshop to texture, and the UDK engine to present my assets in.

I decided early on that I would theme my corner as a prison/wine cellar style room as this would allow me to create some simple items, such as crates and bottles, that wouldn't be too difficult for me to model, as I only have a couple of months of experience with Maya. The scene's setting would also mean that I could make use of the lighting and use a contrast of dark and light areas in my scene.

After drawing up some preliminary sketches of what I wanted to achieve with this scene, I opened up Maya and modeled some items. I then UV mapped them and created the textures in Photoshop before important it all into UDK and fiddling with the lighting to get it looking how I wanted it to look. From beginning to end, this project took a total of about 10-12 hours over the course of two weeks.

The picture below is the presentation picture of the final project.