Project Rain Development Blog

I made a separate blog for my final project as a place to organize all the art. Here's the link. http://projectraindev.blogspot.ca/

Since I've been animating and working on the game mechanics for the past few weeks, not much new art. But the next couple of months will be exclusive art mode. The models are pretty much all blocked in, but have lots of cleaning up to do!

Here's some concept art of the detective's office. The 3D version of this enviro is intended to be used in the main menu:

Film Noir Environment WIP

WIP screenshots from my noir environment.

The Nightwatch

Tried a new trick over the weekend to make paintovers way easier. Gotta love the speed and efficiency of 3D.

I recorded a timelapse of the painting process, but there is no audio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cucD3T2ftZw

Thesis Project Teaser

I ditched my original film concept "Spirit Asylum" and a few other ideas in favour of a film noir inspired detective story set in the 1920s. There were many personal, artistic and technical reasons to make this decision. It feels like everything we take for granted in the world these days is built upon those moments in history. I've already learned a lot of what I feel are fundamental skills from just basing my work in that time period. Authentic fantasy can come after studying history and reality.

Loving Marmoset Toolbag 2 for previewing/concept design and going to use Unreal Engine 4 to output the final product. Quixel Suite is amazing too! So glad these programs come out this year and so affordable because without them there's no way my art would look this good. I want to get the final look/feel as quick as possible. The title "Project Rain" is just temporary.

Going to be a fun year for sure! Hopefully this turns out decent and gives a good rep for Sheridan's 3D films.

 Early Environments (Maya Viewport 2.0):

 Early Character Test (Marmoset Toolbag 2/Zbrush)

Fantasy Film Concept

This is another abandoned film concept I created a whole world for. The theme is still kind of interesting so I might return to this idea some day.

Summer 2014 Stuff

So I was told I have some fans out there which is sort of weird. I remember the days back at the start of college when I was discovering and being inspired by artists on the internet. Had lots of art heroes. Downloaded a new artist's work a day until I reached 1000... Those days are sadly over since I have to make my own stuff now and no matter how long I look at the cghub (RIP) galleries I managed to save before their demise, won't get better without putting in the work! Guess being a producer of stuff is a whole different feeling than being a fan, but these days are a lot more fulfilling. It's kind of cool to see how you've grown into the person you wanted to be 5 years ago, but also sort of sad those days are over.

Anyways here's some experimental art I did over the summer.

Unreal Engine 4

Finally upgraded my PC and got Unreal Engine 4! This is just an experiment; raw game at the top, apply post camera effects and the bottom is just a Photoshop paintover. It's pretty amazing what you can do with the engine alone!

Experimenting with Modular Level Design

Recently I found a few useful Maya scripts to assist with level design/environment art. Since I prefer to concept my whole environment in Maya before dealing with the game engine, these scripts are great. They allow me to split my scenes, quickly swap out pieces and export the scene to UDK for testing important things like gameplay and scale.


The scripts are:
Ninja Asset
Ragnarok Exporter

I'm still using UDK until I can upgrade my computer. I hope there's a quick way of getting assets inside Unreal 4 too!


Here's what Ninja Asset looks like. I actually separate my Maya scene into different categories like Architecture, Organics, a folder for WIPs and a folder for kitbash testing scenes.

  Here are some of the assets I made for the project so far. Most of them aren't UV'd and the topology is messy, but I'm just testing these ideas out for level design purposes.



The following images are just some of the quick kitbashed scenes I made

Actually this environment is for my thesis film project so it's not thoughtlessly kit-bashed. Brought into UDK and lit with default night lighting. With this technique I find I can explore design a lot quicker than drawing it out actually because it's faster to duplicate a bunch of shapes around than to try getting the perspective correct in the drawings.

The only downside to this method is the results can be limiting depending on the pieces you have in your library, but you can always create more as you go. Since I'm doing this for concepting the pieces aren't all perfectly aligned to the grid either, although I try to align as many modules as possible because it'll probably be less of a headache later.

One things for sure though, I love Maya scripts. What would my life be like without them...

~

Spirit Asylum

Teaser for my latest project.

Blogger messed up the color AGAIN. Check out the proper version on my tumblr: http://visoutre.tumblr.com/image/81259458116

Rough Concept Art

Probably going to take a long time (few months) before I revamp my blog. It takes longer to plan something than to actually do it. But better take my time with this sort of stuff.

Speaking of which I started conceptualizing my final film. It started developing from another idea I pitched and the medieval models I've been working on in my spare time. Every day it evolves in a different direction, so who knows what the final product will be.

Custom Shape Technique

I have an interesting project in the works, planning to revamp my blog too, but it's going to take time to prepare my materials.

In the meantime I started using Sparth's custom shape tool technique for design. I love it because I have a hard time coming up with interesting shape language on my own, so this is a nice way to speed up the process. Didn't spend much time on any of these thumbnails, actually 80% of the time was spent making the shapes but I have around 100 of them now so it should last a while.

So stay tuned for exciting stuff!

Some zbrush environment sculpts. Always trying new things.