Project Rain Final Project Finished

Finishing up college! Happy to achieve my goal of not only producing a 1 minute film, but turning it into a playable game. This was an ambitious project to go solo but it provided me with valuable experiences.

Like I mentioned in the previous post, check out projectraindev.blogspot.ca to view more about this project.

Since I'm graduating with an animation degree I'm pretty much done with institutional schools and ready for work as a 3D environment artist/modeler. Video game projects are my primary focus, however I am open to opportunities in animation, VFX, arch-viz or other interesting industries using 3D technology in innovative ways. Here's my portfolio website: http://dariksmith.com/

And here's some screenshots along with my student film/gameplay recording. Produced in Unreal Engine 4

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:

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)

City Hall Concept Art

This is a more updated concept art piece for a the UDK environment I'm creating for the action analysis assignment. Next step is to really get into the 3D aspects.

Polycount thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=127465

 

 

Action Analysis Concept Art

This is some concept art for my major project this semester. I didn't get to finish all the designs I wanted, but this is what I have for now. I'll update this post as I finish the rest of the designs.

Western Town

We had a massive western themed layout assignment this semester, but the course wasn't structured very well, so I sacrified the class to study more of my own stuff. It's a shame because viz dev and layout are my favorite parts of 2D animation. The only decent thing I did was design the city. I did learn a lot of valuable lessons from this assignment, so it wasn't a complete failure, but I hope this situation won't repeat itself in the future. Quality > quantity and as a student I'm still learning. Gotta prioritize!

Learning Zbrush

This semester I studied Zbrush a lot on my own. Focused on characters and creatures because it's easier to learn the sculpting tools this way. These models look like plastic toys, but they're better than my first attempts, haha. At least they look like something! I did a pretty intense character model too, but it's NDA so I can't show it unfortunately.

I've been experimenting with different methods like dynamesh, zpsheres, Maya base meshes, etc and it's hard to say which is better, but it's all a lot of fun! Hopefully I can tutor for modeling next year.