Visual Design: Caterpillar

Our first speed paint! We had to take the line work of a great Caterpillar warrior concept and paint it up.


I'm very familiar with using these painting techniques from my freelance work so this was very fun. Using a multiply layer to lay down flat colours and then other layer types to add natural shadows before embellishing and adding textures with normal layers.


Having looked around at others work, I have a long way to go before I'm as confident with digital painting as I am with linework. Still, I don't HATE this start.

Visual Design: One Point Perspective

Having been freelancing for a few years now, I understand perspective and its fundamentals.

 However, after using digital tools to do all the heavy lifting for me for a few years, this was quite the humbling exercise. Not having perspective grids or Ctrl+Z to save me from simple mistakes took a lot of getting used to.

I went for a simple geometric environment, a tomb not unlike those seen in numerous action adventure games. I wanted a dynamic light course for the watercolours, so had the protagonist hold a torch. This was a lot of fun and boy are watercolours unforgiving. I definitely scuffed the perspective on the main characters platform. Something to be on the look out for.

3D Art: The Barrel

So after the delightful highs of 2D art it was time for the huge challenge of 3D. Part of the reason I enrolled on this course was to throw myself into the deep end. Add some new strings to my bow. I've been making art for years now but had never jumped in to the 3D arena.

Oh Maya. Cruel Maya.

This Barrel was a challenge, no two ways about it. A simple geometric shape with a few twists here and there and it was like being back in school all over again. Frustrating but in the end, worthwhile. There are some issues - I struggled getting the Turtle Rendering to take hold in the final texture map. Texture stretching is an issue along the metal rims of the barrel. But boy was it an exciting learning process. I'm excited to have this under my belt now, warts and all and can't wait to take the next step.

Part one: Barrel. Part two: Battle Arena.

Visual Design: Custom Robot & Speed Paint

This blog will be used to document my progress through the Computer Games Arts BA Honours at UCA.

First up, first assignment.

The class was asked to come up with a robot design complete with research, different concepts and a purpose for existing. I've always had a thing for utilitarian designs and how technology integrates in our day to day lives.

That's pretty much how the RunBot was born. We have a growing and ageing population, why wouldn't we have a robot with a near infinite life expectancy keep our elderly in shape. I was fixated on having a friendly user interface with human qualities.

Here are a few sketches and the final design at the bottom:

While I quite like the final design, I would have loved to have gone for a sleeker chassis. iPod meets Personal Trainer by way of Pixar.

And lastly my speed paint from my first Visual Design class at UCA. Steve made a fantastic point of zooming out and really roughing out the shapes before going in and noodling on the details. This will help me hugely in the long run and I tend to get lost in minutia.

B