Lighting Mid Critique

I've been hard at work set dressing my level and getting lighting all set up. Here are some process screen shots that I presented for last week's mid critique! More big changes coming in the future!

Board Game - Finished!

Here's a quick final shot of the board game that I completed!

It was a lot of work, but the process of seeing it come together in a truly physical form was extremely exciting and satisfying. Thanks for checking it out!

Trailer for my board game, Victory Hill!

Prop Modeling!

Spent quite a bit of time learning some new software as well as getting some experience with some more advanced modeling techniques. The props I did were scaffolding, banners, and a bench. This was a ton of fun!

Thanks for checking it out!

Finished Print 'n' Play Game!

Hey guys! I've been hard at work and have finally finished my print and play game!

Hope you enjoy it as much as they did! You can download it here.

Level Progress Shots - First Critique!

Here are some progress shots to show how my level is currently shaping up! The whole thing is based around the concept of a Mage City floating in the sky with Byzantine and Russian architectural influences/Up next are the prop placing, set dressing, and lighting phases, as well as additional compositional tweaks and building. Looking forward to the next crit!

Solidifying a Theme for a Board Game

For my latest assignment in Game Design I, we've been assigned the ambitious task of developing and constructing our own board game in both a physical form and a "Print 'n' Play" form. I knew instantly that I wanted to base my board game off of historical warfare, but wasn't sure what period or era to zone into. After some deliberation and decision making, I chose to develop a turn based tactical combat game based in World War I. In this game, you'd be controlling a fireteam of 4 to 6 soldiers tasked with taking control of a village (either prebuilt or modular). Simply put, my goal is for this game to serve as an easier to approach, historically accurate strategy game that shares elements with turn based titles such as Warhammer 40K Tabletop and real time computer games like Men of War.

That being said, there are a few reasons why I went with World War I as my theme!  One of the main reasons for my choice are the weapons and tech used during that era. All of the guns, except for mounted machine guns, were single shot bolt action rifles. This would ease the process of balancing the most generic units in my game on both sides. Machine guns themselves, however, provided an interesting mechanic on their own. They can be utilized to hold down choke points, or to cordon off possible flanks that an opponent may take. Mortars and snipers were also a possibility I was thinking of including. All of these would serve as "special units" in my board game, good at specific tasks, but limited in other areas.

A title for my game that I have been thinking about is Blood and Iron. The name actually shares the title of a speech given by Otto von Bismarck in 1862, ideas of which remained strong in the hearts of many patriotic Germans up to the years of World War I. While cool though, that is quite an intense title, so I am still looking at other options as well before I go all in. A tagline for my game could be Blood and Iron: A Tactical Battle for Area Supremacy!

I found some photo references to convey the look I may try to capture with my soldiers. I was thinking of playing around with the illustrations a bit for each unit, and possibly making them in the style of a sketch that could be found in a soldiers sketchbook. Shaken, yet intense and powerful.

As for the soldiers themselves, I have gathered a few photo examples to go off of for possible factions I may include.

An Example of French Troops 

An Example of English Troops

An Example of German Troops

For the color scheme, I wanted to settle on something bleak, yet natural. The game would still have to incorporate uniforms of different colors, so that was another thing to take into consideration. For that reason, I will likely be depicting the factions of Germany and France within my game, for their distinct colors and silhouettes.

Figure Drawing Update

Time for something a bit more traditional! I've been refining some skills in the figure drawing department, and have grown to love willow charcoal.

Yaharr...

An In-Depth Analysis of "Coin Age": A Print 'n' Play Game that Literally Fits in your Pocket

Hey guys! The game I chose to deconstruct is called Coin Age. It is a Print 'n' Play game created by Adam P. McIver that literally fits in your pocket, as the size of the cards themselves fit nicely in most standard wallets. It is available here.

The Goal of the Game is to score the most points by the end of the game. These points are dubbed by the instruction cards as "Victory Points", or VP for short. VP is attained through area influence and control on the small map that is included on one card. Whichever player is in control of the most territory usually wins. However, different coin values and region control do offer some variables to that rule.

The Core Mechanic of the game is the randomization of coins that are face up and face down. Before the match begins, one player decides on heads, and the other decides on tails. A coin is flipped to see who gets to go first. Afterwards, a single coin is taken from each value tier (of which there are 4), and placed into a player's hands. The player then shakes all of the coins in his or her hands, then slams them down onto the table. Whether the coins are face up or tails determines the move(s) that they will make. These moves include placing coins, paying coins to the other player in order to place more coins, moving coins that are already on the board, and capturing coins from the other player.

The Space of the Game is the map itself. Coins can only be played and moved inside of the illustrated regions that are visible on the small map. If they are not on the map, they are located in either player's bank. The map itself is divided into regions. Each region has a select number of tiles to control within them. One has only one tile, another has two, another has three, and another has four. More than one coin can be placed on one tile. However, the coins must be placed in hierarchal order. Coins or stacks of coins that are moved may only be moved onto an adjacent tile as long as it is not already occupied.

In the category of Objects, Attributes, and States, coins fill the role of the objects. They are the entities that are placed and moved across the board, and their location and quantity decide how much VP the player earns by the end of each game. The coins themselves have attributes, depending on their type. Quarters are worth the most VP at 4, nickels are worth 3, pennies are worth 2, and dimes are worth only 1. Coins may be stacked on top of each other regardless of whether the coin they are being stacked onto is heads or tails, but only if they are a smaller value than that coin.

The Operative Actions a player can take are few, but each one can rapidly change the game. Coins can be placed by a player, anywhere on the board, as long as they are placed in a region that has no coins in it or if the region has a coin of a larger value on it. Coins can also be payed to an opposing player, allowing the player who payed a coin to place another coin on the board. Coins can also be moved, allowing players to move individual coins to new areas or to move an entire stack of coins to a new area.

The Resultant Actions of this allows players to take control of regions and bully other players out of their tiles, allowing them to strategize and plan the best course to maximize how much VP they earn by the end of the match.

Behavior Rules of this game are pretty simple. Players aren't allowed to cheat or fight one another. Trash talk, while not necessary, is encouraged.

Some valuable Advisory Rules to take into consideration when playing Coin Age it is wise to place coins that are of lesser value to decrease the likelihood of a player taking control of your area by placing a coin on top of that coin. However, this obviously won't earn you as much VP as a coin of a larger value will earn you. That is why players usually keep their large coins towards the end of the match so they can place them down and maximize the amount of points that they earn.

Examples of Skills Learned from playing coin age include strategizing the placement of your coins and planning ahead for the moves of your opponent. Some risk and gambling elements are taken into consideration as well.

The Role of Chance in coin age is pretty high. The coins flipped at the beginning of each round serve as "two sided dice", and the player's actions all boil down to what coins were either face up or face down. As a result, the player can be at the mercy of a randomized luck based system, but it is how they react to what they are dealt and how they use it to their advantage that makes their moves important.

Print and Play Adventures: Space, Arenas, and Classical Warfare!

So this was pretty interesting! For an assignment in Game Design I at Ringling, we were tasked with playtesting one or more print and play games available online in preparation for making our own print and play game in the near future. It was a really interesting experience. The games themselves were very easy to obtain and produce, hence the name, "print and play".

The first game I played with a group was Light Speed, a print and play game designed by James Earnest and Tom Jolly. The cards themselves were illustrated by Eduardo Muller.

The game was pretty cool in concept. It sells itself as a "Real-Time Card Game" on its site, and it does a pretty good job of delivering on some spicy real time action. The game is designed to be played with between 2 to 4 people (though it could technically be played with even more if one desired). Essentially, three asteroids are placed down onto the map, and people must place down their ship cards as fast as possible. Each ship has a different number, dictating the order in which they fire in after being placed, and a different direction and power of lasers that they shoot out in specific directions. There are two choices for players to obtain points: They may target the astroids in order to maximize resource mining, or they may place their ships so that it destroys others who are in their line of fire, depleting the player of any resources that their ship currently carries while gaining points of their own.

It was an incredibly fast paced game, for this one killer mechanic: Whoever places their cards first must say "Stop!", and anyone who is not done placing their ships down must stop. This forces everyone to think quickly and make rash decisions in terms of their ship placement, which could end up hurting them in the end. We had multiple rounds where somebody's ship would fall victim to their own friendly fire, causing them to lose out on some valuable resource points. Overall, "Light Speed" was quite a blast, and it's interesting and unique take on the concept of a card game left me excited to play even more Print and Play games.

The next game I played was called Sword and Sail, another print and play game designed by Jason R. Williams.

Essentially, Sword and Sail plays out like a simplified risk. The goal of the game is to take control of one country, or territory, of the map. Territories include small but hard to reach areas like Britannia, to vast, expansive areas, like Italia, or Africa. The whole theme of the game is set so that it occurs during the era of classical warfare, which was quite interesting. Each turn, a player would get four actions. Actions included drawing a card, moving an army, playing a card, and discarding a card. There were two types of cards that could be drawn. The most common card were territory cards, which would have the name of one specific territory on them. When activated by a player, he would place one army onto that territory. Another type of card was the navigator card, which would allow a player to upgrade one of his or her armies to a naval army, which would allow them to traverse water. However, their strength would be unchanged.  An army could only be destroyed if two opposing armies were placed in conjoining tiles. Then, one of each player's armies would be discarded, with the last remaining army taking place of the attacked one. 

This game was exciting and tactical. There were many occasions where the game came pretty close to ending, where it would require one player to gain control of only one or two more tiles in a region such as Africa or Britannia to win the game. However, either of us were would always end up draw a card for these regions, allowing us to enter in behind enemy territory preventing the player from gaining control of it without losing one of their armies. This tactic earned the name "Orbital Strike", as the ridiculousness of having an army come flying in to the top of Britannia when most of that player's armies were located in Africa was pretty funny. In the end, I ended up winning by taking control of Italia. It was a long and protracted war, but "New Rome" was ready to restore the world of its former glory and peace.

Overall, the whole experience of playing Print and Play games found online was really fascinating, awesome, and fun. The whole time, I kept thinking that "These are pretty much indie board games", and they definitely played like them as well. Some, like Light Speed, took really unique approaches to an old concept which resulted in a fast paced shoot first, ask questions later game that I wouldn't normally associate with tabletop games. Others, like Sword and Sail took a popular concept and made it smaller and more simplified, making sure that each component in its small set of rules was refined and easy to follow as possible. Last but not least, this whole process has gotten me super excited to make my own Print and Play game. Bring it on!

Thorne Room from Freshman Year

For my second semester at Ringling, we were required to construct a Throne Room in our 3D for Game Art class! I was paired up with two people, and we constructed a really awesome piece. We decided on the idea of staging an assault on a top secret Soviet Union war room during the 70's by US Spies.

Hey guys! So today, I decided to take a look back at something that really caught my attention a few years back.

It was E3 2010 when the reveal trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution was first showed. Having not grown up with the original Deus Ex, this was pretty much my first true experience with the series. The powerful, dark narrative of the trailer along with it's bladerunner-esque cyberpunk style and slowly building soundtrack from Michael McCann peaked my interest. There is just so much going on in this trailer, from mythical allusions, baroque era references, world and story building, character development. It's absolutely nuts. And it's awesome.

Photobashing and Pitching Concepts

This week was fun! We had to come up with an original idea for a game environment, create a piece of concept art depicting that environment using photobashing techniques, and incorporate that into a slideshow that we would pitch to our class.

I chose the idea of a frozen over, ice age era Venice.

I had a lot of fun with this one! For a first time photobash, I was pretty glad with how it came out overall. Looking back on it, I almost wished that I had broken away from the whole idea of accurately depicting Venice. However, this was a realization I came to near the end of the development of this piece. In addition, the scene may have overall benefitted if, perhaps, there were two enormous glaciers, meeting together and crushing whatever city lied between them. That would make for some cool geography!

After all the thing's I've learned from doing this, I'm very excited to try my hand at photobashing once again.

Grunt Final - 3D for Game Art

Hey everybody!

I figured now would be a good time to post some of my work from freshman year, specifically my 3D for Game Art class. In this post, we'll be taking a look back at the final for that class, which was my grunt.

The grunt I created, Malidictus, is a take on a biological apocalypse that occurs during the peak of the Roman Empire.

So, more or less, this Roman Legionnaire was unfortunate enough to contract the zombie bug! You can find a lot more information, such as the type of game this grunt could exist in as well as his combat abilities in the writeup I did on my character here:

It is the year 115 C.E.
The Roman Empire has been flourishing under it’s emperor, Trajan. It was a nation which seemed to have absolutely no limits in terms of its power, influence, and boundaries. It seemed that nothing could challenge the power of the mighty empire. That is, until the blight struck.
It came from the North, sweeping down Roman territories. First villages fell, then cities, even entire legions succumbed to the blight. Those affected turned into something... inhuman. When the blight took over the human body, it mutated it into a vicious, powerful beast capable of taking out even the most well trained members of the Roman Legion with just one blow.
This specific specimen is a Roman Legionnaire who has been stricken by the blight for quite some time now. As the original human body starts to decay, the blight takes over, replacing old limbs with new one, growing muscle-like tendons and even extra bones in areas such as the legs. In addition, this specimen has grown not only a powerful claw arm meant to strike and maim enemies, but has also developed an arm that works as a sort of club, which can stun and disable more well armored soldiers of the Empire. While it’s limber front leg can stretch to great lengths and guide the grunt, the powerful, club like back leg propels it, allowing it to advance at great speeds to each victim.

Doing this project was a lot of fun, and it was a great way to finish off the second semester of my first year at Ringling. I tried to use many different materials while constructing this dude, figuring that the grunt would look more authentic and believable by doing so. The final grunt was a result of hard work, experimentation, research, and a lot of patience. Needless to say, I learned quite a bit with this project, and am excited to push the boundaries on any future 3D projects.

What's up!

I'll kick off the new blog with a self portrait.

This was part of my final for last years Figure Drawing II class. As a bonus, here's the full figure that was the second half of the assignment.

I plan on making figure drawing a very big part of this blog, as well as drawing in general. It is crucial that I keep honing my skills in this area during my second year, and I'll make this blog an outlet of my work as I go to F.U.S.E. and sketch at cafes!

Thanks for reading! I'm looking forward to posting more stuff.

This is a Test Post.

Beep boop bop.