New Project - Alien Sushi Hut

Greetings yet again!

Way back in college, I had an idea for a short animated film that involved a kind of "planetary prison;" a penal colony set up on a desolate world where life was rough and alien criminals from all over would have to band together in order to survive. Kind of like the country of Australia... with aliens! I had sculpted two of the main characters as an assignment for one of my classes, but unfortunately since then they had accidentally been nudged off their display table and are now in several pieces...

Anyway, fast-forward a few years. This past summer I saw the fantastic film "District 9," directed by Neill Blomkampf and suddenly my idea of aliens marooned on a desolate planet jumped back into my head

One of the more compelling ideas was for an open-air marketplace, where beings could gather and exchange goods. Learning from my previous experience with my train station, I decided to double-down on a single shack; a micro-level environment, packed with detail and character, and see what I could do. *Poof!* The alien sushi hut was born.

The big points I wanted to hit were Character, Detail, and Color. An opportunity to make a ramshackle food stall made up of scavenged materials makes for a lot of interesting scenarios. For the centerpiece of the stall I wanted something anachronistic. Something that under normal circumstances would have no business being used to make food for hungry patrons. I settled on an old busted robot being used as a stove.

As you can see I've begun the initial modeling for pieces in the environment, and it's been a lot of fun adding all kinds of dents and chips in the models themselves. I hope to take a lot of them into Mudbox and really go to town on the normal maps. I have the basic UV layouts set up on all of my finished models, and hope to get started on texturing very soon!

As for the hut itself, I have a basic layout set (the semi-transparent shell in the image below), and I hope to cover it in corrugated metal, wood, etc. All in all I'm very excited about this project, and can't wait to show you more! Until next time!

Post-Mortem - Train Station Environment

Well, that was quick huh?

Alright, so for my last big portfolio project I had hoped to construct a large, spacious environment in the hopes of filling it with all kinds of props and details, as well as try my hand at creating modular pieces of environment (kind of like lego blocks) and piecing them together. Simple huh?

The results? I managed to create a large, expansive environment utilizing only a small number of pieces. I learned a ton about building things in modular pieces, such as a set piece of wall or floor that can then be connected to other pieces in order to create a full environment. Every piece of the Train Station is modular, so it could actually be re-arranged any number of ways.

Overall? I learned a ton. I'm hoping to apply what I learned on this project to my next one. Stay tuned!

Let's blow the dust off this thing...

Hello!
It's been a while. My blog has been pawing my leg, begging for attention and at long last I think I'm ready to pick it up, scratch it behind the ears and spend some more quality time with it.

When I first started this blog I had meant for it to function as both a means of showing potential employers my stuff, but to also give folks (and myself!) a kind of archive as to the progress of my artistic ventures. I've got quite a few things in the queue lately (hence my lack of posting the last several months!), and I'm hoping to begin sharing the progress on them starting... today!