Hello all game artists! Today I have decided to start showing my progress on creating my new portfolio for 2009. I really should have had this finished by now. Many distractions, including writing this blog, have factored into the delay in finally completing an actual decent, well thought-out update to my portfolio. I figured one way to motivate me a bit more would be to post my progress on The Gamer Report (to show you I also try to practice what I preach) and show updates along the way for you to see what it is that I do. Or at least, what I want to do for a living.
Trying to get a job in the game industry as a game artist is very competitive so updating your portfolio, as much as possible, is really the only way to stay above other artists. The more you work on it, the better it gets and the better your chances of getting hired over someone who is still shopping their student demo reel. Once again, I’m taking my own advice, especially after I found out some crazy news on Friday April 17. Read on…
I recently found out that I may be a Canadian citizen (applying for proof of certificate as I type this) which means, all the Canadian studios that turned me down because I didn’t qualify for a work visa in 2007 and 2008, I can now re-apply to these studios if I do end up getting proof of citizenship through a new law that was passed. Canada is where I want to be right now anyway so this is major news in my life. Trust me, I’ll be announcing to the world that I am a Canadian citizen if my application is approved. I’ll keep you informed, but it’s pretty interesting being one of the “Lost Canadians”.
So without further ado, here are a few screenshots of what I am working on in order to start applying to game studios again. It’s basically a simple street corner scene I started a while ago. The main focus is going to be the building on the corner which is a small pub/bar called Cyle’s. In honor of my nephew I lost last year in a car accident. Let’s just say he loved to cook, loved his beer, and well… my fiance and I have always wanted to open up a restaurant/bar/lounge someday and it just made sense when I started modeling this. We couldn’t think of anything better to call a neighborhood hangout other than Cyle’s. It’s my special tribute to him because well… this is what I do.
As of now, the scene is only about 20,000 Polys and I haven’t decided if I am going to add more. I seem to get burnt out sometimes with scenes like this because sometimes my ideas are too big, I end up not completing what I started. I have taken some things out of the scene to reduce my workload but I’m not kidding myself, this is going to take a lot of work to finish. As you can see, most of my UV’s (I know.. yuck!) are done. I have to rearrange some objects on the UV space and match up other objects to make sure the resolution is similar in size still but for the most part, the grueling UV work is complete. Just a few adjustments left and I can start exporting to other programs.
I really want to move onto texturing already because I know that’s one of my weaknesses and I need practice. But I think I’ve decided to take a majority of the scene into ZBrush first to generate some professional looking normal maps. Especially the street and sidewalk with all the cracks and rubble I want to add. I’ve watched a few ZBrush tutorials recently so I am hoping my ZBrush skills will shine with this new scene. I won’t get into too much detail with this first post but I will definitely be updating this and try to explain what it is I have done to get it to look the way it does.
By the way, I am primarily using Maya 2009, ZBrush 3.1 and Photoshop CS4 in order to complete this project. I had plans to add this scene into the Unreal Engine but we’ll see what happens. I haven’t done that before so this is all a new experiment for me. Glad to take you along for the ride. I hope to learn some new things and share with you what I’ve learned. I have a feeling I’m going to be doing a lot of problem solving once I get deeper into the shader creation, lighting and maximizing my color, normal, spec and diffuse maps.
Until then, happy modeling.
The Gamer Report 