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OS3U STRIX
The OS3U Strix was a personal project of mine.
The project was primarily inspired by a game 'War Thunder' made by Gaijin Entertainment. The game was originally set between WWII and the Korean War, premised around vehicular combat.
During World War II the United States fielded a scout aircraft that was known as the OS2U Kingfisher. It was a pontoon-equipped aircraft launched from several classes of war-ships of the era, used as a scout and light fighter. It had not only the pilot who could use a 7.7mm machine gun, but also a dorsal-mounted 12.7mm machine gun for defensive fire towards the aft manned by a second crewman.
The project I had in mind was to take the OS2U and give it an overhaul. To make it a more capable fighter and remove the ugly pontoon, thus making it a carrier or land-based fighter-aircraft.
I used the OS2U's body as a baseline and then beefed it up, allowing me to fit in a set of landing gear, a full rear-mounted turret instead of a simple machine-gun post, a larger engine, and mount 4 x 12.7mm machine guns and 2 x 20mm cannons in the wings.
My model actually turned out to be relatively low-poly compared to those used in the game. However, I have not added some of the internals that in-game models use for structural integrity simulation and damage modeling. As it stands, this model is 18,135 polys.
Commentary
This piece was a digital painting I did in college for a capstone, independent studies course.
The main intent of the project was to improve upon my digital painting skills. Namely with lighting, backgrounds, and depth. I was to work on making my paintings feel more alive, and give them more depth.
A secondary objective I set for myself with this piece was to break away from my standard. So much of my work had been focused on weaponry and vehicles, I wanted something organic, and I wanted it to be shocking. Something that inspires a conversation.
I called the piece Commentary because the idea for it was based loosely around my own personal beliefs regarding the way humanity has treated nature, and how we've tortured and exploited our home for means and devices of universally negligible importance. I wanted this piece to speak to the very nature of what I feel is one of my generation's largest problems.
Shade
Another piece from my college days, Shade was a 3D model and character development project in one of my earlier classes.
For the project, we were given a matrix of various traits and rolled dice to pick between Protagonist, Antagonist, or Supporting character. We then rolled to determine if the character was Good, Evil, or Neutral. And then the matrix went on to determine character type and abilities. We then had to take these traits and create a character, story, and 3D model based upon the results of our rolls.
My rolls were: Protagonist, Evil, Robotic/Android, Intellect powers.
Shade is an anti-hero. A bad character with a dark past who is at the same time the protagonist of his story. I opted for a full-on sentient robot over an organic android out of personal taste. The 3D model was created, unwrapped, and textured in a very limited time window of approximately 3 weeks during classes.
Shadow was a sentient AI core created by a lone scientist who's intent was to make something to help humanity. A benevolent machine who could perform dangerous tasks in place of humans, protect, and otherwise help them. However, a dramatic turn of events ended in the death of Shade's creator, and the sentient AI decided that in order to help protect good people like the Doctor, that it would have to destroy bad people like those who caused his death.
Goblin Rocket
Goblin Rocket was a project that I worked on with 3 other students in college. The course was 11 weeks long, and in that time we had to come up with and implement a playable game with a 5 person team. For our team, I was given the role of art-director and lead artist. I did all of the concept work for our models, designed the main character, and was responsible for creating all of the splash art, as well as helping with the texture work and modeling some assets.
I directed the other artist and made minor adjustments as limitations were discovered with our project, and I also was one of the primary members who came up with the backstory for our title.
We opted to use the Unity game engine to build our game, and divided the team up with 2 programmers, 2 artists, and the team lead; who assisted in, and oversaw all of the tasks set before us.
The game was a puzzle platformer set in mines and tombs where the player had to direct beams of light between various nodes to unlock doors, disable traps, and enable them to get to the treasure at the end of each level. The main character was of course a goblin with a 'jet pack' or... more accurately a large rocket strapped to his back.
There were 3 other competing projects in the class, and of the 4, ours placed second. I was quite happy with how the project turned out, and I had a lot of fun working with my team to make it happen.
Armory
The Armory was another college project of mine in which I worked on some texture work, but mostly focused on the environment.
Most of the models were pre-made objects that I either slightly modified, or simply unwrapped and textured. The course was rather early on in my schooling, but I still think the general tone and atmosphere is strong, and shows off my ability to make a low-poly scene with limited texture sizes still look good.
The main focus of the piece was texturing and lighting, since that was what the course was premised around. It was a particularly fun project for me and at the time the idea was primarily premised around the games that I was playing, namely Dragon Age: Origins and Fable.
Heatwave
Part of the same course as 'Armory' this project was done during my Texturing and Lighting course in College. We were initially supposed to take free, un-textured models from online and then unwrap and texture them, but unfortunately when I finished downloading the models, I found so many errors in the geometry (particularly in this axe). I wound up remodeling all of them myself so that it would be easier to unwrap.
I had 1 week to work on this, as well as several other objects at once. This was my first taste of putting details into texture maps for objects, and working with more advanced maps like self-illumination.
Winter's Edge
Part of the same course as 'Armory' this project was done during my Texturing and Lighting course in College.
Winter's Edge was actually the piece I was the most proud of from the texturing portion of the course. Getting to play with transparency, and learning to unwrap and layout a UV efficiently.
The geometry on the hilt and pommel of the original model I downloaded were particularly bad, and needed the most work done to them, but I eventually wound up completely redoing the entire model myself just to get it to a workable state.
The blade was incredible fun to work with, and I am very happy with how it turned out. I worked hard to make it appear as though it is made of ice.
Orlimar PC1
When I worked at King Par LLC, one of my responsibilities was to fabricate 3D models based off of our 2D design drawings to give the suppliers overseas a better idea of how we wanted the club to be tooled.
This was one of the first 3D models I did for them. Since speed was more important to the company that accuracy, I opted for a low-poly approach that would give the suppliers a rough idea of how to design the club, rather than something as accurate as an engineering draft.
The model was made in 3D Studio Max, which is a program I've become very familiar with both in schooling and in the workplace. The actual challenge for me with this piece was remembering that since the model was not going into a game- and wasn't going to be unwrapped and textured... that I didn't need to worry about things like 5-sided polys.
The texture laid over the club was actually done in Photoshop based on the render of the flat-shaded model from 3Ds Max. This turned out to be the most efficient way to get the model visualized and ready to be sent to the suppliers so that they would have enough time to build the product for us for the next season.
TiTech XG4
Another project at King Par LLC, the XG4 was a design that I was required to take the product art for and turn into a 3D model under the direct supervision of the art director.
One of the reasons for the 3D model was to illustrate a unique design feature of this club: a 'compression channel' cut just behind the face. It was important that the placement was accurate.
It was important that the placement was relatively accurate, and unlike some of the other models I did for King Par, this one was not actually painted in Photoshop, but rather unwrapped and textured.
This project was difficult because time was short but accuracy was important, so I had to balance how precise I wanted to make the model with a very limited deadline. In the end, the project went ahead on-schedule and I was pleased that my model was more-or-less the baseline upon which the producers overseas built the club from.
Thorn
The Thorn is a slight departure from the previous two entries. This club design was entirely my own, rather than working off of the product art from the Production Manager and Art Director.
I wanted a club that was going to be much more than just a simple set of words on a slightly contoured surface. I wanted a radical departure from the norm in shape and form.
Each of the 'steps' leading down were each angled that they would fuse at the proper points for a club to maintain it's structural integrity along the heel of the club. The red insets carried the shapes along, and the second spike actually wrapped up around the heel of the club and came to a point on the crown... at least in paint.
My objective was to come up with a radical concept that would bring something the younger generations would find more attractive than the traditional look of clubs to date.
Matira
The Matira was part of a set of putters designed by King Par LLC that I was told to model. The major difference with this club over previous models I did for them was that I was given as much time as I needed to make the club look good in 3D. I was able to make a MUCH higher poly model than the ones I had previously created for them in the past.
The putter was a high-end product made of high-grade materials and they wanted to ensure that every detail was communicated to the producers overseas.
One of the interesting things I decided to play with for htis model, was to use NURMS, rather than straight vertex poly modeling. While I cannot say that I would prefer to use NURMS over the alternative, it was at least fun to try them out. Playing with the weights on the curves to get hard edges was particularly interesting, but I think the end result speaks for itself. I was very happy with the result of this particular project, and I would argue that it is one of the best models I made for the company.
