3D Art Production: Reflections

The 3D modeling aspect of this course has been extremely challenging for me this year. It has challenged perception of art creation and has pushed me to be far more considerate of my designs in 2D concept art. Maya was extremely daunting at first, but now I feel far more confident and even find some joy in creating models.


The statue was probably less stressful than the rest of the battle arena. Maybe this is just experience and confidence, or just that we had more time to produce a singular element, but it was really exciting to watch this come together.


I still had issues with uv unwrapping and stitching; many of the seams aren't in places I would have liked and created some texture clashing and stretching. This is certainly something to work on over the course of the summer and next year. The arena in comparison now feels smaller and more rudimentary but again, I can chalk this up to experience. I made some small changes to it and added some animations to make it more immersive.  Overall I'm very happy with my statue and look forward to more challenges in Maya and Unity.

Visual Design: Scifi Ship!

And for the final task this year, we were asked to combine what we had learnt in visual design and what we had learnt in 3D design and use those skills to create a Sci Fi ship set at the most, 100 years in the future.

I aimed to create something utilitarian and realistic. Quaint even! I combined a moodboard of my favourite images for inspiration and began sketching out ideas.

I kept leaning towards this flying ship. a Literal ship. Maybe a flying medical barge that travels the dangerous skies about the seas, looking to rescue stranded travellers in a post apocalyptic landscape. The Star Destroyer had a strong silhouette but it felt just too futuristic for the brief.

With that in mind, I headed into Maya and began using primitive shapes to create a structure similar to this flying barge that I wanted to go forward with. It was important to me that it had railings and looked like a cobbled together piece of tech. Like a retrofitted boat. 

After finalizing the model I rigged up some lighting and tried to get some great shots of my model to paint up in Photoshop. I could probably have gone far more in depth with the tech on this model, but I wanted it to be very geometric and basic in appearance. 

I then studied plenty of decals and logo's that are found on current jet fighters and general heavy machinery. It is things like that that add an extra layer of realism to concepts. Below are some of the more useful ones I found:

And finally, it was time to take it into Photoshop and paint this up. Yeesh, technology still isn't my jam. I really need to push forward and get to the point where I enjoy and feel confident working on vehicles. They are a key part of the industry and no generalist concept artist can get by without a portfolio containing them. I used multiple textures and tried to hand paint on as much detail as physically possible. Overall I'm not particularly happy with the ship, which is something I haven't said much this year. It may just be the composition, or the colour palette but it just doesn't quite look right. It ended up looking like something out of WoW.

If I was to do this again, I'd probably spend more time trying out different colour swatches to create something more coherent and fit for purpose and try to fit in more logos and decals to make it seem more believable.



The main textures I used:

Final Piece:

Gameplay and Interactivity: Momentum Reflections

With the submission coming to an end, it is time to reflect on the project as a whole.

The group was fantastic to work with. All the members were chosen based on their given specific talents. We had a very strong coder and strong 2D artists. I took the charge with leading the main character designs and key animation cycles. We certainly could have managed time more efficiently as part of the team seemed to lose the fantastic momentum we had built up in the run up to the Easter, costing us bug testing time.



This combined with an over ambitious mindset has left us with a product that I'm not overly proud of, as it isn't quite as polished or well executed as I would have liked. Our initial concept of combining the characters momentum with a health and point system was never achieved. The game ended up ridden with bugs that couldn't be fixed and I generally feel that the 2D art team provided all that was necessary to have a successful game with the time given.


 We had to compromise with an alternative point system that works, albeit not living up to the expectations we set for ourselves. Still, a score system is in its place.



I'm happy with the art I contributed to the team - I was a driving force behind the overall aesthetic and developed the looks and animations for the main character and backgrounds. Again, with more time I would have loved to have seen all my work implemented effectively in game. There are countless character sprites and animations that ended up on the cutting room floor because of time mismanagement.


 Not to pretend that my work was perfect. There is a level of polish to certain background elements and animation cycles that if given the chance again, I would execute to a higher level. 2D Sprites are not to be scoffed at. My strengths are in 2D but that didn't stop me doing my part with the scripting and I'd love to be more involved in this next time around, especially to help keep things on track.

Overall, the team worked effectively at the beginning of the project but towards the end time keeping issues impacted the final product. We set out to make a game that is easy to pick up and play and wonderful to look at and I feel that all being said, we partially achieved that. Just a shame that bugs really impact the user experience.


It was an extremely tough, yet enjoyable experience and I have learnt a lot both that I will take into the next challenge.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Bonus Environment!

With the deadline looming, it looked like I had a chance to create another background environment for the game. We were knee deep in bug testing but felt optimistic that we could get everything up and running to the extent that we could justify having a second environment for the player to enjoy.

Early on I generated small thumbnail concepts with Dan and it was pretty unanimous that the Jungle environment I painted was the one to go to full production. It provided a rich, vibrant colour palette that was a world away from the snowy mountains in level one. 

I had to generate this art under tight deadlines, so whilst I would have loved to have brushed up the leaves on the trees a little bit more and generally push the consistency further, it still looks pretty good when running at 1080p ( our target resolution for the game). It would have been wonderful to add some dynamic lighting if the framerate allowed it, but for the sake of time, this just had to be a static piece with no interactive elements. Next time!

Life Drawing Update

Here is another life drawing update. Some of these new exercises were truly challenging but yielded great results.


I feel my figure work has come on leaps and bounds this year. Of particular fun were the continuous walking sessions and those in perspective. As someone used to using perspective guides in various software packages, I have gotten into bad habits.


The continuous walking felt a lot like an animation exercise which was timely considering I have been tasked with creating animation frames for the main characters in our Gameplay and Interactivity final project.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Finishing My Sprites

Sprites, sprites, sprites. Whilst wonderful to create and watch come to life, I was happy to finish my contribution to the team.

I took the lead on 2 of the main villains of the piece - The red headed tattooed gent and the sportswear fiend.

I created the idle and fighting animations for the red headed character. This was a lesson in patience as what can seem like a quick job can change very quickly when playing through frames. It was difficult to get the right body posture when crafting his punch attacks. It was imperative that I created a sense of speed and to achieve this I used the classic animation techniques of speed lines. Streets of Rage was also a huge inspiration. Reflecting on this, I would have LOVED to have gotten a real arc of movement through his spine. Ewan brought to my attention a book devoted to classic animators techniques and this was very helpful.

Up next was the final villain in our demo game, our take on the sneaker head that queues outside Supreme stores when a new clothing range drops. At this point we were unsure whether or not he would make it into the final game demo, so I went for an idle and death animation. At the very least he can stand there and die in a cool way.

The death animation was probably the most fun I've had so far on this project. Coming up with grotesque ways of destroying a character was an absolute joy and I really wanted to push the gore level to compete with the fantastic animations George came up with. Intestines sliding out of his stomach should do the trick. This got a big laugh when the team saw it for the first time so I'd consider it a success.

Next on the agenda is getting some playable environments drawn up to test our mechanics!

Gameplay and Interactivity: Sprite Animation

Continuing with the Lead Character Sprite, the team debated as to whether we needed a walking animation or not. In the end we decided to have her navigate solely using the grappling hook and by riding on her sword. This was subject to change, but we felt strongly about this at the time.

With that in mind, I began crafting attack animations for our lead character. Firstly, the standard upwards slash. It looked a tad vanilla so after feedback from fellow course mates I decided to add a purple flame of energy emitting from the sword. This is consistent with the aesthetic we have built up until this point and adds to that feeling of momentum we have been pushing for. Depending on how this works in Unity, I may have to clean up the sheet by adding an extra frame or two.

Despite being a particularly laborious process, there really is a sense of achievement watching your character come to life. I felt strongly about taking the lead on the main character and it looks to have paid off.

Next up, the sword grind! Dan was particularly fond of this idea and it was cool imagery so why not! It is better to have a multitude of animations as insurance and at worst case it would be jettisoned if we couldn't fit it comfortably within the game.

This was a far easier process as the frames can just repeat on one another granting the illusion of movement and revert back to the idol stance very quickly without too much disruption.

Now to test in Unity and see what needs fixing!

UPDATE: After taking the sprite sheet into Unity and cutting it up, we had a lot of difficulty getting the animation cycle to work correctly in tandem with our attack button. It seems to skip a frame or two and then quickly revert back to the beginning. Frustrating as I'm brand new to this sprite business but continued bug testing will be necessary.

3D Art Production: UV Unwapping and Texturing

Looking at the feedback form for my initial Battle Arena, I lost marks based on the fact I dropped textures straight on to models without UV unwrapping them first. I lucked out on the more simple models, but more complex ones ( like my statue ) required proper unwrapping.


This was a laborious but rewarding process. It is simple enough to do with less organic shapes, but the head and torso were more difficult. I feel that seams on parts of my statue aren't where they should be, but this is a learning process. Stitching them together wasn't as difficult as I once thought, and it yields far superior results. There is still some stretching and that is something to consider for the next time.


For texturing I used a combination of Quixel and X-normal in order to get really solid results. Quixel worked a treat for me last time and this time it was much easier having proper UV maps to work from. I tried to be lazy last term, but this time round it worked very well. I went for a very basic weathered stone look to fit in with the general aesthetic of my arena. Some stretching is certainly visible on parts of the body like the hands but overall, I'm very happy with the model.

Visual Design: Brush Technique and Speed Paint

For this session we were tasked with using lower opacity and flow settings on our brushes to build up value and texture.


This is a technique I have been using for years now and I find it the most natural thing to do coming from a traditional painting background where you build levels and levels of colour and texture up to create something more tangible and realistic.


After this, we had to take on a speed paint replica of the Whale Boy by one of my FAVOURITE concept artists Bobby Chiu. He imbues such character and whimsy in his pieces - a far cry from the schlock of generic sci fi concepts.


Initially we had to just block in colours and around midway through, were given a more detailed reference image from which to paint details from.


This was a hell of a lot of fun!

3D Art Production: Animation

This week Phil introduced us to key framing animations in Maya. I've had previous experience of this in Unity when adding animated elements to my Battle Arena and as per usual, this seemed to be a far more in depth way of doing it. This was handy however, as although we aren't animating our characters this year, it did introduce us to basic animation after rigging a mode. Even if it was just a floppy tube!

Gameplay and Interactivity: Pause Script

Part of the brief stated that all members of the team had to produce one piece of production art for the game and one piece of script. My main strengths are in 2D production and concept art but after my first foray into the world of scripting, I was excited to contribute to the project.

I took control of the pause script. Although relatively basic and straightforward it is integral to nearly every game produced today and I felt confident enough that I could pull it off successfully and efficiently considering my art duties.

Getting the canvas UI to work correctly was a bit of a pain because I couldn't put it straight on to the canvas. I had to create a panel to place it on underneath. It was also a slight nightmare trying to get the panel alpha to act independently of its child element. After navigating these issues though, it was easily bound to the letter 'P' using an 'Input.GetButtonDown' command ( thankfully that was a bridge I crossed on the winter assignment with a torch).

Gameplay and Interactivity: Level Design

My aim with the background design was to create something visually beautiful in the vein of Dreamworks concept art, but not have it obscure the main characters and platforms. With a game moving as swiftly as Momentum, it was imperative that the background never detracted from what the player was trying to achieve.

The plan was initially to stick to one background and keep the palette very cool in order to allow the characters to 'pop' on screen. This was a joy to paint and allowed me to push my skills in a direction I'm not normally comfortable with.  We ended up making some of the trees interactive in various builds of the game to give the illusion of depth.

Dan added snow particles into the first few builds of the game but it caused the frame rate to stutter, which flew in the face of the very concept of our game. We couldn't afford the player to suffer any lag, so although it added another element of immersion we had to drop it.

I built the levels to be modular so that we could rebuild and repurpose levels on the fly. This meant less man hours if we were to push the game further along after completion of the assignment.

It was also very easy to add ambient lighting and change levels and hue's to create alternate levels. Our initial idea was to have the seasons and colours shift as the player progressed through the game but this ended up being a tad over ambitious. Below is an example of what I had in mind.