Dino-Racer

Hi Everyone,

Here is another drawing from back in June. There was a character design challenge featuring dinosaurs. Apparently, I learned about it three days before the due date so I spent the next two days pumping out something just to keep myself busy during the pandemic. I saw a couple really rad Sci-fi mecha dinosaurs and decided to try on of my own. I was inspired in particular by Keith Thompson's weird organic mech hybrid designs and have been watching a lot of Horizon Zero Dawn play-throughs.

The idea for this design is that the best dinosaurs are kept past expiration date through advanced tech and ethically questionable means.

Zbrush Class with ASIFA-South

Hi everyone,

I stated on my Zbrush courses from ASIFA-South featuring 3D artist Arash Salehi as my mentor. For my first project, I created a creature based on my concepts using Zbrush for the 3D mesh. In the past, I used Maya for most of my base mesh, but this course allowed me to process everything inside the software itself. Zbrush is very powerful when it comes to organic modeling, something that I found difficult using Maya. There are still some proportion issues to iron out with my 3D sculpt, but overall, I think it captured the essence from my concept.

The creature design is for a personal game project where the player encounters various creatures in an underwater world. Each "boss" is representative of different stages of grief and the methods you use to manage your encounters can affect gameplay. Perhaps you can even become the master of these beasts.

For this project, I started with the first creature the, Tide Ripper, a symbol for Anger, the first step of the Kubler-Ross grief cycle model. While the Tide Ripper has menacing sloping features punctuated with jagged armored shapes, the tiny vestigial arms create a sense of pity. The original design is supposed to be a representation of impotent rage that stems from being helpless or powerless.

Thorn Theater Panorama Art

Thorn Theater Production create a play for Easter 2020 and they contacted me for animated background art for their digital LED walls. I created a panorama for the scene where Jesus walked from the city to the sea where he performed miracles such as multiplying bread and turning water to wine. I created different time of days, and separated the environment into different layers for parallax animation.

Panorama

City View Day

City View Sunset

Hills Day

Hills Sunset

Sea View Day

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