Sam the Strudel Sloth- Character Creation Contest

Sam the Strudel Sloth was created for the Character Creation Contest group on Facebook. The theme is a parade featuring all the inhabitants of Candy Land.

"Sam the Strudel Sloth loves parades but he is always late. He has trouble sleeping the night before from all the excitement. With the help of his friend, Biscuit the Butterfly, and its powdery magic, Sam easily drifts off to a land of sweet dreams so that he can wake up just in time for the parade."

C.O.R.E New Units- The Tyr-Rex

The Tyr-Rex is an epic monster formed from machine and flesh. This beast has taken the form of the king of prehistoric terrestrial reptiles, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The mechanical giant has been infused with Xenosathem Crystals that formed in the caves where the CORE are now sheltered and has acquired new terrifying powers. Beyond the menacing chainsaw teeth hooked in its jaws, the monster can temporarily harvest the energy from the crystals growing in its back and unleash a beam of condensed radiation at its targets.

The design of the Tyr-Rex was inspired by my love of Zoids and Godzilla. I might go back to add more crystal protruding from the tail and other orifices to play up the idea that the crystals have really taken hold of this machine.

Sketch, still trying to figure out shapes and machination for joints.

Black and white sketch

Added colors and the crystals

Tyr-Rex does a rawr :D

C.O.R.E New Units- Welder Drone

The Welder drone is a mechanized unit with worm like qualities. It was described to me as a creature with a maw made of many teeth. The worm from Tremor, and the shape shifting mechanized parts from transformers were very influential to this design. Drawing the reticulated plates in perspective were a challenge, but adding the metal texture once done was very satisfying.

Sketch

Refined

Final

Finished card design

C.O.R.E New Units- Menial Bot Version 2

Today we have, as Bryan Steele calls them, murder-bots from the Samaria wastelands. The CORE were mechanized helpers created by the United Worlds before the apocalyptic event and has since evolved to be self sufficient by hunting for biomatter to fuel its reserves. The back bone of the CORE faction are the menial bots who fight in the front lines as scouts to locate potential targets ripe for the harvesting.

I started with a sketch similar to the power-loader that Ellen Ripley used in Alien as reference and build on top of that. The Borderlands bots also had some influence in the design.

K3 new units: Ocelatl

For the Ocelatl, I was tasked to design a stone jaguar sentinel for the Kukulkani warriors to employ in their glorious wars to harvest life energy from foes. I used stone textures seen in the Mayan temples as well as the macuahuitl weapons for inspiration. I also looked at some transformers just to see how the plates covering the mechanical creature would articulate.

K3 New Units: Chac Xib and the Technomantic Apprentice

Chac Xib and Technomantic Apprentice

Next up, some sci fi magic characters from the K3 roster. I thought it would be neat if the High Technician is depicted diassembling some weird contraption like a K3 scepter. The Apprentice is armed with a pole arm to defend their master. It was really find illustrating all the crazy pieces of metal that adorn their armor and helmets.

New K3 Units: The Sun & Moon Warrior

Sun & Moon Warrior

First up on the new K3 unit list are the Sun & Moon Warrior. They are opposites to each other, the Sun warrior emphasizes offensive capablities where as the Moon Warrior is more agile.I used more jagged shapes and radial designs for the Sun warrior, while the Moon warrior has spirals and curves with a few meandering patterns. Personally I liked the Moon warrior with that weird moon shape coming out back in the sketches,  but the game designers I worked with went with the one you see with colors.

The images below shows some of the references I used while coming up with the characters. My art director usually give me a set of images that I then process along with the written texts. I also crossreference the characters with an excel master file containing the character stats so I get an idea of what they are able to do.

New Kukulkani Units

Found some old artwork I did for the Dark Age miniature line. I was tasked to create some concept pieces for new upcoming characters. Here is a line up of the units. I will post up break downs for each unit later.

Galaxy Hunter Ranged Weapons: Sniper Rifle

I wanted the sniper rifle to use a railgun system since it has almost no recoil when firing its magnetic slugs. The umbilical power cable design from the pistol design can be seen here. A fairly easy piece to make since most of the shape flows in the same direction.

Galaxy Hunters Ranged Weapons: Pistol

I rather like this one out of all my ranged weapon art for Galaxy Hunters. It looks like a pistol with bunny ears! I played around with various pistol silhouettes before I came upon one with some sort of stock connecting the grip to the back of the gun. I guess the metal tubes on the top contains different ammunition so that the pistol can switch between various ammo types when facing different kaijus. Since the pistol uses so much energy, it has to be connected to a battery pack or to the mech. I am a fan of Evangelion, so the battery plug that connects to the EVA units had some influence on this design.

Galaxy Hunter Ranged Weapon:

For this Galaxy Hunter weapon, I was told to make an assault rifle. Instead of using the usual physical bullets, I made it a plasma rifle. The top of the rifle was based on the OICW sights, stock is based on the Fn F2000. I also liked the Plasma Caster designs from Borderlands so I modeled the canister magazine after the ones from the game.

Galaxy Hunter Melee Weapon: Sword

Ah the sword, your quintessential melee weapon for every big mech game. I used my fond memories of putting Gundam models together as reference for this giant buster blade. 

Galaxy Hunters Melee Weapon:

Another old piece from the Galaxy Hunter game. I was asked to make a mace, the references given to me showed a regular old mace. I thought to myself, "This is a mech game, why not have this thing coming out their arms?" Now you can not only swing this thing at your foes, you can also punch them using the pneumatics connected to the arm. I borrowed airplane wing designs to create the segmented armor plating for the fore arms and other car engine parts for the elbow joint. Playing with the specular highlight on the mace itself was quite fun.

Galaxy Hunters Melee Weapon: Gauntlet

KER THUNK! That's the sound I hear as a Kaiju gets pummeled by this pneumatic fist from Galaxy Hunters. I was influenced by car engines so I cut out elements such as the pipes to act as coolant channels. The fist guard region is based on bumpers from the BMW vehicle. The rail at the front could possibly be fitted to conduct high voltage electricity to stun foes.

Galaxy Hunter Melee Weapon: Axe

As a continuation of old art I found from Galaxy Hunters, today I present the Pneumatic Axe. It folds so that you can store several on your mech in case one gets damaged, lost, or you just want to dual wield. I was playing a lot of Warframe at the time so some of that industrial Grineer motif influenced the design.

Galaxy Hunter Cover Art

Just found some old artwork for a canceled project when I was back with CMON. This one is called Galaxy Hunters which is a big Mecha vesus Kaiju game. I was commissioned to create cover art that featured a Bumble Bee/Big Bad Beetle Borg looking mech standing in an alien forest while Galaxy Hunter ships fly overhead.

I struggled a lot with the perspective of the gun and that weird horn part of the mech's helmet. Ah well, it's neat revisiting old art to see how much I have learned since then.

Cosmos Coaster Ui Design part 4 final

Finally got things switching out properly, though the finer details have yet to be completed. I don't have screenshots of the final item, but I do have a video of Cosmos Coaster's release as part of a news story. 

Space station. No display mesh for this level, although the travel icon above the level name shows that you are at the first stage.

The Anomaly after you enter portals between each planet. This location was taken out of the final game to speed up the pacing and tempo.

Low Earth Orbit.

Moon level. Moon mesh changes Yay!

Venus level. Color of UI changes, there is a flame icon indicating crazy high temperatures, and the speed gauge has ramped up.

Mars scene. Temperature back to normal as shown by temperature gauge. Speed has slowed. 

Neptune level. Temperature drops.

Compilation of all the different views.


News report from 13WMAZ about the Cosmos Coaster release

Cosmos Coaster UI Design part 3

So after assembling the UI, I had to physically bring that into the game engine. I had to do some additional blue print work to animate specific elements. I worked with one of our programmers to get the static mesh switch using enumerators and left the more advanced task such as tying the animation in with the speed and temperature values that are internal to each map.

The preview below does not feature the completed blueprints, that will be for a later date.

Clearly not Neptune. This is interior of the starting space station you depart from and will return to.

Clearly not Neptune. Venus scene with volcanos.

Clearly not Neptune. Mars with a storm cloud in the distance. The cloud was a jumbo of meshes that were original stuck in there.

Now this is Neptune, huzaah! This scene features a piece of the glacier sliding off toward you for one of those close call moments. 

Cosmos Coaster UI Design part 2

In my previous post I showcased some sketches to more refined concepts. After that I started building the actual elements that will are exported to Unreal Engine to be rebuilt as a Widget within the game. The original UI was projected on a 3D model which required a lot of work around to get the elements synced up. The flat widget looked cleaner and allowed for more direct control of the UI elements without having to touch the meshes.

I exported all the elements from Photoshop as pngs that I then brought into Unreal Engine to assemble using the Widget Blueprint.

Assembled preliminary UI element. I need to add the static meshes that switches out when you are on different planets. The mesh will basically be the planets you visit, but deformed to fit in the large circle space on the right which looking like it is popping out from the element.

An early attempt at displaying a projection of the location you are travelling through. I created a material targeting a render cam placed in the scene. Interesting concept, but we opted with just static meshes of planets to save on memory. 

Static mesh planet instead of the target cam render material. Will have to set the mesh to unlit to get rid of the shadows.

Cosmos Coast UI Design part 1

So back in October I started my new job at Pulseworks as a content developer for their VR rides. My first project was to redesign the UI seen inside the sci fi car's cockpit for the Cosmos Coaster game. The game takes you across reimagined landscapes of Low Earth Orbit, the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Neptune. The UI I designed will feature temperature color changes, a working speed gauge, and other widget elements that can be swapped out using Unreal Engine blueprints. 

I started off with some sketches seen below. More progress shots coming.

Early Sketches

Quick icon overlay over the UI space provided

Refined UI concept art with some frost elements. The frost was never used in the final version of the Neptune map.

Sweat Pledge 5 Student Loan Debt and College

Story 5 for Mike Rowe's Sweat Pledge is about the insane cost of college degrees, how so many jobs require a 4 year degree but the graduate is woefully under prepared for the job, and that there are jobs out there that do not require a 4 year degree which saves money and time. One caution I have to say about these trade jobs is that they are replaceable by AI and robots which does not appear to be too far in the future. When this happens how do you retrain such a large population?

This hits home because as a college graduate myself I have been through the process of applying for loans and trying to acquire scholarship just to pay down my college's exorbitant tuition fee. I have seen friends rack up 100k+ in loans just to attend college only to leave with a degree that left them still searching for a job to this day. 

Woodshop

Where so many stereotypical graduates works when unable to find a job after graduation.

Show me the money!

Plumbing scene. Apparently plumbers can make some good money.

Tons of falling text books to crush your soul after you see your tuition fee.

City without garbage cleaner