Roving Around

Based on this rough:

To the Air!

 3D Rough:

Continuing my process of "sketching it out" in 3D and then painting over the model. This time I went with a aircraft. I've seen this style of angular/negative space hull design in a few Scott Robertson Art Center designs, and I thought it cool. So now now here we are.  All of the rendering is done in Photoshop, on top of a slightly modified background image. 

Back To Space!

So one of my all time favorite things to draw, design, and pretend to have, are space ships. I've learned a lot over the years and more recently, I've been applying various techniques and process into my personal work. The process used for these was pretty straight forward : "Sketch" in 3D program, then draw over the outcome. For each of these I had an idea in my head of what I wanted before I started , so i didn't doodle around forever with the infinite possibilities of 3D. 

 The first image concept was really just jamming ugly poly cubes and cylinders together to get the overall agressive shape I was going for. Very 'anime' influenced.

This one was more of a grounded approach, maybe some kind of earth defense ship. I spent a little more time working out the forms, also it had rocket pods at one point. 

Here is a bit of work on the lines. Mirrored, and now lacking its rocket pods.

So far my experience has been fairly fluid. Fortunately I know most of the basics of Maya, so I can maneuver around and create pretty quickly (3D animation minor finally put to use) . I highly recommend picking up any 3D; sketchup to maya, to help block things in. I'd say for these it helped me get the perspective and forms down quickly, so i could move right into details etc. Frankly, its building with Lego bricks, except you're making each brick as you go. 

Products of Teaching

After a trial and error period (always save your work kids) I got back into swing of things in Maya and roughed this room out. I set this up to talk to the students of a class I am co - teaching at LCAD about drawing over game geometry. Granted, this geo isn't from a game, I did think about how the player would approach the scene, and what action could be taking place. It could use a little more focus as to what all the bio hazard suit dudes are looking at. I'll come up with something cool a bit later.

Here are some stills of the scene done in Maya. These are just screen grabs. I think at this point its clear that the concept design industry is leaning towards this 2D/3D hybrid, or even all 3D. I highly recommend learning a 3D package (anything from google sketchup to maya) and by learn I mean be able to throw down geometry without thinking about it, similar to you don't always think about how your holding your pencil, or how to move your hand to make the shape of something your sketching, you just create. Lighting is also a good tool to add to your toolbox.


Below is a quick rough done in class.... so quick in fact its really just a box , and I didn't dig to much into the shape. At this point I think I decided to make the above rough.

 Notice it is literally a box.

I'd say that a large part of my time has been talking about gameplay related elements such as props. In this case, I took the overall design language from a painting Ralph Mcquarrie of a hanger bay on Tantooine. I pulled the face value elements such as angles and material break up patterns. In this case, it was for a "crouch cover" height piece. Since cover shooters are all the rage right now, and there is a Star Wars themed one coming out, why not go back through the trilogy and design cover props based on existing designs! Though I had envisioned this just being a solid object, the question of "what would this be in the universe" came up. I quickly noted how the sides could possibly slide out and open, revealing a tool chest sort of thing. Maybe it just has spare parts, or a secret item? Either way, having components like this in basic props extends their life in the game, and means they can be repeated more often with greater difference between instances. 

I'll update this post a bit later with more information on what and where I'm teaching.