Game Design

So I’m switching my focus to Game Design, basically what I initially wanted to do at this school, be the idea guy. I’m going to make a plan for my Game Design portfolio as well as an idea for some lower poly (WoW/LoL) type modelling that I can fall back on as freelance when in need of a job.

My initial Game Design Portfolio will include

• 2-3 WoW/Raid/Boss encounters with creative and engaging action. Complexity without  trial by fire. Hopefully these will be animated/mocked up in Flash or just AE.
• A Card game and a Board game. The first one being my Left 4 Dead card game I designed in Game Design and Gameplay with my team. The other being something else I think up.
• Advanced Prototyping Project. A small 3rd person tactical game designed partially by me. I also acted as the producer for the team.
• Senior Project. Our Team Fortress 2 wanna be capture the flag game with some special mechanics
• 1-2 Games prototyped in Python which I will be learning over the next 9 months.

Starting something.

Im taking a character I made awhile ago, refining and texturing him, Posing him and making a small suit and weapon for him. Then I’m going to finally put him together as a piece with proper shaders/materials on a proper base and hopefully do a turn around. Im sort of lost as to a workflow for all of this and what spec’s I am aiming for, I suppose game specs… so I’m going to have to try and trim him to under 10 k. 5-6k for the character, 1-2k for the gun and suit, and another 1k for the small environment he’ll sit on. Im going to do a few sketches to make sure I know what I’m going for, so I don’t change my idea or jump around.

Here are just some shots out of maya. I’ve recently been checking out xNormal and I think its an incredible tool for those who like to use Zbrush to get out their details. Im going to make my Zbrush Central thread soon.

robo-hooker

doodle in class evolves.

Hey robot.

I drew up a turns page for a Robot character I will develop later. He’s basically like some sort of, patrol/interaction bot. I could see several variants and  a lot of repurposing of these for different uses. Trash removal, armored defense, tour guides, prostitutes etc etc.

He came from this little sketch I drew a couple days ago.

and here are the turns.

Acting poses.

Used ‘The Setup Machine’ to get a nice easy rig setup for the alien, posed him and began sketching it out. Meh.

Practice

Screen grab out of maya with Lighting > Use No Lights on. HK G3. Needs more decals for the slide, safety and fire mode switch, probably do that later.

Doodles

I hate drawing.

The stretchless perfectly scaled UV unwrap, brought to you by Unwrella.

So I took the second level OBJ out of Zbrush for that dude I posted below this and decided to test Unwrella and see if it really was all that. I gave it an automatic map then selected all my edge loops where I would want to make seams. I used Unwrella and in two clicks I had a fairly decent full body unwrap with the seams I chose as well as a few seams Unwrella felt nessecary to add to reduce stretch, after a little bit of clean up (moving, some unfolding to make them look a bit neater) I used Roadkill to pack the UVs and viola, in less than an hour I had a whole base mesh unwrapped, perfectly scaled and about 98% stretch/accuracy (as in no stretching… anywhere… ever) Unwrella is probably my new favorite tool. It really is great, it takes care of about 3/4ths of your work when you Unwrap a character.

Check out this screen grab out of maya.

Couple hours messing around in Zbrush

Sketched up a little fat dude in Character and Object design and I liked his stupid little head so much when I got him I tossed in a few minutes and banged out a base mesh. Took it to Zbrush, re-posed, puffed him up and knocked him down a bit. Did some basics and gave him a little polypaint (I know all the ‘pros’ are like “Don’t paint right off the bat”) Well fuck that shit, I paint my models when I want to, it gives me ideas, gives me stuff to think about while I sort of the monotonous shit. After I was happy with his overall shape, did a quick detail pass (lips, fingers, eye lids etc) Toes still feel unresolves basically because, I don’t like working on toes. Took approx… 3 hours while eating dinner and watching some TV.

I think this could pass as some concept art, don’t you?

Some armor design

Hers a few WiP shots of the armor design I’m working on for the alien. This one is going to be outfitted for heavy weapons use. He’ll have some beefy mechanical gloves tubing on his backpack leading to his back vents. He’ll have a piece of chest armor that’s a bit bulky as well as a face mask and a giant cannon/beam type weapon.