New project, working on making an environment based off of the Sky Temple battleground from Heroes of the Storm. Right now this is just a simple start with these few models. Going to throw these into zBrush and get them normal mapped for some extra details. Then I'll be starting the hard part of matching the texture style. I feel once I can get it down with these few objects, I can start moving onto making a full scene.

Blizzard Environment Art Contest - 2015

This year I put my skills towards the Blizzard Student art contest. I decided to go with a scene of one of my favorite races, the Ethereals. This was a somewhat interesting challenge since as a race, they don't have any structures of their own, they simply take over old and abandoned structures left over by others, or they just set up shop where they need to with there tech. It in this case that I decided to create a Night Elf based tower that has been 'reclaimed,' by the Ethereals instead. Since they're always looking for a way to gather more magical artifacts and to make a quick gold, I also wanted to show them reaping the land, from harvesting trees to mining into the earth itself. Overall, the project was very fun and I'm satisfied with what I ended up with.

As for the gallery, it starts off with my starting concepts, a tower I used as inspiration and screen shots I took to use a guide while making all the props and textures. Next are two simple concept pieces I painted as I finalized my design. After that, I have two different shots. The first was my first placement of the tower and props, and with the help and suggestions from my peers, I moved everything in closer for a tighter and well fit scene. I also included my first base color texture, just to see how the colors looked and felt in the scene. After that, I started my fine detail of texture painting, getting into making the props actually look like what they were supposed to. And at last, I have the final product, with all accompanying textures.

For the technical stuff, modeling everything took around seven hours, texturing was around twelve hours, and everything else from rearranging props, creating the lighting, and other small details was another three hours. The only thing I forgot to time myself on was painting my concept piece, which I would estimate around 10-15 hours to finish. So a grand total of around 36 hours for this whole project. The final poly count is 27536 and I used two 512 textures, both with corresponding alphas.

Iron Nokana Model

This is the Iron Nokana from Metal Slug. The aim of this project was to do a high detail model with a little environment to accompany it. Everything worked out decently which was good, but I didn't learn to much. This was more of an exercise of my skills to keep myself sharp. The follow up to this project will be to cut back on the detail and get a better texture that will add it back. When I return the plan is to get this to a usable game model poly count limit. Cutting back on the geometry will be easy but my texture work will take a lot of time until it's passable.

Z Brush Envoirment

This was another experiment for me, trying to make an environment with Z Brush. This video is what inspired me.


Putting together the Gazeebo worked out fine since it's composed up of many similar parts. That was the easy part, however getting an island and other such parts of an environment was a bit more difficult. The good news is that I learned how to make my own custom alpha for brushes, which will come in very handy later on. I might return to this idea, but not this exact project.

Low Poly / Modular Envoirnment

This project was a bit more experimental for me than my normal work. The plan was to make a distant environment that used as few textures as possible while also using the least amount of detail possible. While part of it worked, the rest didn't come together to well. What I learned is that I should make the tile-able texture first, then UV my objects, which will allow me to easier match up edges and get the scale correct.

As a follow up, I'd like to try to make a more detailed environment matching this one, and see how close I can get the low poly to match it at a distance.

King Knight

This is the glamorous and glorious King Knight from Shovel Knight. This was mainly to get back into the swing of working on something each week and getting it done. Sadly, I couldn't get this finished Friday, but here it is now. The good news is that this guy didn't take to long to make, mainly from lack of major details and with him being so smooth. Took near 12 hours to complete. Will be working on the rest of the Order of No Quarter soon.

Boat Cave Grave: Learning Curve

After working with the concept and blocking out a starting scene for this environment, I've learned a few things going forward to put in with my next project. I need to be quicker in blocking out. I've already put in to much detail with the boats and especially with the mountain. I need to pull away from individual detail and focus on the area as a whole first. With at least 10-11 hours on this, I don't feel I've gotten that far. The good news is that I feel I found a better idea with the ending area, I know what parts of the ships I need to model and to ignore the rest, and after working out a general idea, I understand how I want this to flow.

Next part is to model out the ships in a bit more detail and then adjust the cavern walls, angle, and size. After they're done, work on figuring out how I can build the city in a modular fashion. Looking at pictures of Mesa Verde, my new inspiration, it should be easy to cut it down into a bunch of simple shapes.

Then, depending on how long I've worked on everything, figure out what needs the most work, and refine. What I want to have above all else is to have every area crafted in such a way that'll pull the player through it by interest.