Graduate Blog

My first week at Clark has been one filled with excited anticipation for what is to come this year. I spent much of the week planning and beginning work on a number of projects that I am excited for. From the Lovecraft inspired first-person shooter I will be working on in studio, to the character I will be working on in seminar I’ll have my work cut out for me but I am eager to get started!

For Seminar this week I had to choose the project I will be working on for the next 14 weeks and to land where I did took a lot of thought. Initially I was flip-flopping between building out a dragon’s hoard or a Lighthouse in unreal or unity. Both these projects seemed feasible to me as I am comfortable with the building of environments, but after mulling it over for a few days I changed my direction. I started to think of the project more as an opportunity to learn things that are generally outside my comfort zone, so I landed on the building of a game-ready character.

Since my last post, I have officially begun work on my semester wide projects. I have made some solid progress on my 1st milestone for seminar, completing the dynamesh for my character and getting a firm foundation on what he is going to look like, as well as what he is going to be like when I play him in D&D.

I also worked on my studio project, “Project Squid,” developing initial concepts for the enemy I am going to be developing this semester, as well as completing an art test where I needed to create a lantern.

This week I worked on a handful of different projects across a number of classes and also participated in a game jam over the weekend.

Starting with the game jam, I worked as the head (and only) 3D artist for a game called Reaper’s Rent, a 2.5-D sidescrolling puzzle game about the grim reaper collecting souls in an apartment building. The game jam was 48 hours and me and my team of 5 others created a pretty decent product in the time aloted.
The issue aroze at the end of the final day when, while packaging the game, the computer we were working on blue screened; making us lose our only functional build and we weren’t able to submit. Despite the foul end, the experience overall was good and I am very happy with the work I did for it. My team is planning to recreate and potentially improve what was to be our final build and make it into a portfolio piece.

Other than that my week was mostly filled with my studio project, and art test in the form of a diorama. It was made up of a few repurposed assets from a previous project I worked on, plus a bunch of new ones. The assets made here we plan to add scattered around the game’s environment, fleshing it out.

This week I continued work on my studio project and completed my second milestone in my semester long Seminar Project.

For my studio I worked with my lead to develop the current iteration of one of the two enemies to be in our game. The enemy is still in the hi-res modeling phase but is coming along very well.

For my seminar project I spent the week working through tutorials on XGen and Marvelous, as well as advancing in the development of my character’s sculpt. I hope that I can have the clothing made by the end of the week so it can imported for final detailing in Zbrush.

This week I worked on the extra high detail portions of my two characters, my Gulper Eel Monster for Game Studio and my Bugbear Monk.

My Bugbear model is coming along very well, baring the clothing and hair the high res mesh is practically completed with the face and hands fully modeled. From here I now need to complete the XGen Tutorial and complete the clothing in marvelous.

Our second sprint completed in studio this week and I spent it continuing work on the Gulper. After completing the dynamesh model I have begun work on the details of the model, including a spine and a network of scales, gills, and fins. The head is all but complete, so this week I will be moving to the torso and arms.

This week I wasn’t able to do to much work on Game Dev projects due to a lengthy midterm paper I needed to write of a Project Management class I am taking but I was able to get some work done one my Eel Monster.

This week on the eel I was able to make a decent amount of progress on his arms and torso, adding scales and muscles. Unfortunately, when attempting to get images of this on my home PC I ran into this error in Zbrush each time I attempted to open it. I will update this post ASAP with proper images once I solve this issue.

This week I was able to complete the high res mesh for my seminar project. I worked through marvelous to develop the clothing, which I then finalized in Zbrush.

This week was midterms so a good amount of my time this week was spent preparing for those, however I was able to make some good progress on my studio project and begin Retopology on my Bugbear.

The High Res Mesh for my Eel monster is done, so this upcoming week will be spent doing the retopo on both the Bugbear and enemy.

This week was spent doing a whole lot of retopo on both my bugbear and eel monster models.

Both low res meshes are complete by this point, excluding the hair cards on the bugbear which I am still in the process of laying out. Once that is complete I can begin working on the UVs and textures for the models. I hope to get that done this week so I may begin work on the texturing so I can have them in a presentable state by the 18th of the month.

This week was prepping for the game expo that Clark will be holding next weekend.

My goal is to have two new models completed for presentation at the expo on the 18th, so this week was spent finishing the Gulper enemy. I completed the textures full and its been approved by my studio head so all I have left to do on it is getting a proper render.

This week I spent working on my 3D Modeling Final, a Character based on the ‘Curator’ monster from Kobold Press’s “Tome of Beasts 2.”

This week was both the game expo as well as thanksgiving break! Baring some final prep of a presentation of my portfolio, not much was done this week. But I was able to get some updated renders of my Eel monster.

This week was spent performing the final steps of making my bugbear. I have finished the hair and have begun work on final textures.

The final week of my 1st semester as a graduate student has come. With this week also comes the conclusion of my Bugbear project.

This week I completed the final textures for the model and created a render of the model in Toolbag.

The first week back after winter break was spent planning for the number of semester long projects I will be working on throughout the spring.

For seminar I will be working to revise and improve a number of pre-existing pieces I have created for my portfolio, mainly through the creation of 3D environments to house my characters within. I will also be rigging and fixing up the textures of a number of characters as well.

This week I competed the high res for the second enemy for my studio project.

I began concepting and working on the enemy during winter break, and I am really happy with how the final mode turned out. The enemy is based on an Ogre-fish, a horrifying deep sea fish.

This week I made a sizable shift in the direction of my Seminar Project. Rather than doing a revision of my portfolio, I have shifted to doing a companion piece to a 3D exterior I have been working on for my environment art class. While the revision of my portfolio is going to be doing, I feel like relegating it to the milestones may cause some fluctuating quality between the projects.

The exterior and interior are both based on works by Jessica Woulfe, specifically this piece: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AlDg1q. My end goal is to have both the interior and exterior be a part of 1 seamless environment presented in Unreal Engine.

This week i was able to make some substantial progress in the joined environments I’ve been working on. I have completed the whiteboxes for both scenes as well as begun working through some of the props needed for each scene.

The main project I have worked on this week was for my ‘Storytelling Through Characters Class.’ I was able to complete the initial High res for a little clockwork robot I’m calling Pipette.

It has been a really enjoyable project thus far and I am really looking forward to making further progress with their design.

This week I was able to make some more progress on the joint environment. Firstly, I made some major adjustments to the whitebox to fit better with the exterior of the house. After fixing the scaling issue I was also able to complete one of the center piece assets for the environment, the fireplace/chimney.

After having a nice week off from spring break last week, I was able to come back refreshed. Since the last post I have been able to make some substantial progress on the environment, mainly on exterior and joint assets.

This week I was able to finish the retopology on Pipette and begin work on the UVs. The UVs on the exterior shell are nearly done, but the gears have a ways to go.

This weekend was PAX East, and I was able to attend as a part of the Clark Booth on Saturday presenting the Studio game I’ve been working on ‘Dagon.’

It was a ton of fun and a really satisfying experience to present something we’d all worked so hard on at the con.

This week I worked on my texturing assignment for my STTC Character Pipette.

During the process I made the decision to stray from the initial silver coloration, as I felt the look given by the gold fit better with the ornate detailing and overall feel of the character.

This week I spent a good chunk of time working on my environment project.

I still have a good amount of in engine assembly to do for the exterior, However I have completed most of the assets.

This week was the Spring Game Expo, so I spent a good amount of time preparing renders for the presentation.

I was able to create a number of high resolution renders of new and old pieces that I will be putting on my portfolio in the near future.

This week I completed my seminar project, the Interior for my environment piece.

While the project is not 100% complete, I am very happy with what I have been able to complete thus far. I look forward to completing the remaining assets in the coming weeks.