Portfolio

I'm a freelance 3D/Technical Artist, with years of experience working on the design and production of 3D characters, environments, and assets for games, simulations, visualisations, and animations. In 2014 I graduated from a two year FDA Games Design degree with a Distinction, and in 2015 gained a 1st in my BA (Hons) Digital Media degree. I've been shortlisted for competitions held by NASA, Loop-de-Loop, and the BBC, and I create high quality 3D Assets for sale on the Unreal Marketplace and Unity store. I'm trained in a wide range of software such as 3DS Max, Zbrush, Quixel Suite, Keyshot, Marmoset Toolbag, Adobe products, Unreal Engine, Unity, and CryEngine, as well as being a competent sketch artist and photographer. Contact me at theitearooms@gmail.com

An Appropriate Self Portrait.

Created in 3DS Max

All Terrain Observation Scout. 

A.T.O.S was a high polygon robot model I sculpted in 3DS Max in my spare time. To aid with the rapid prototyping of the project I built a series of mechanical assets such as flywheels, pistons, heatsinks, cogs, and other 'real world' machine parts. Using realistic looking assets in this way grounds any model, no matter how futuristic/fantastical, in the real world.  I used these assets to create the internal structure, and then the chassis was made from the foot of the model which was duplicated and warped to create the shape of the cowling where needed.

Kung-Fu Druid, Game Concept.

During a concept art module, as part of my Game Design course, I practiced rapid character and environment conception techniques, such as silhouette and thumbnail production in Photoshop. From my initial character silhouettes I came up with the idea of a shape-shifting platform game character, with the project title Kung-Fu Druid! 

These are some sketches of my character in a few dynamic poses. I tried to capture the bird-like quality of the character I saw from one of the silhouettes. 
 

  

Using my character concept I experimented with a few designs in 3D, I decided to exaggerate the proportions of the character to create a more friendly, cartoon like, character. The render above is my first colour pass created in Keyshot and I've posed the character in his environment in the image below as part of my concept art imagery.

The images below are part of the artwork I created for my environment concept, based on my Kung-Fu Drood game design.

As part of my game design and in combination with the storyboard I had to create an animatic. In the animatic we are introduced to one of the enemy types from the game, 'The Wicker Man'. Kung-Fu Druid can scurry and swing up the giant in order to cut vital vines from it's body in a mechanic reminiscent of 'Shadow of the Colossus'.

I used the character animation toolkit (CAT) in Max to animate both my character's as part of my Animation for Games module. Kung-Fu Druid certainly knows how to strut his stuff!

Environment Concept Art.

As part of an Environment Design module our brief was to create an image to enter into a BBC, concept art, competition titled 'What If?' To create my scene I used a lot of reference imagery from early nuclear tests in the Nevada Desert and took inspiration from the Fallout Series, and Googie architecture, to give an alternate reality, post apocalyptic feel to the scene. The cherry blossom has sprung up as a sign of rebirth but mutated by the radiation from ground zero. A 1950's vision of a future city has sprung up around its base, the last outpost of life clinging to the new monstrosity that we helped create.

I created the bus to be the 'Hero' object in the scene using image planes in Max. I also had a chance to use Rayfire, a powerful pug-in to help create the broken glass and debris in the scene.

ED-209. 

I'm a huge fan of the original Robocop, as a kid the design of ED-209 in particular intrigued me, and still does to this day. This was one of my first, big, high poly projects after years of learning and messing around in Max, it was a design I really wanted to model. The renders were created using Keyshot that has amazing pre-built, studio lighting pre-sets, great for creating realistic renders quickly.

Warhammer 40K Venerable Dreadnought.

I love the designs and details in the models of the Warhammer Universe, especially the Dreadnought. Doing this project helped me practice animation in Max but also gave me a chance to use smoke and cloth. I used Fume FX to create the smoke, I'm really happy with the results although generating the smoke took a whopping 12Gb of memory!

 

 

Tron Light Cycle.

I'm really inspired by the work of legendary concept artist Syd Mead, who worked on films such as Blade Runner and Tron. As part of my research for my Vehicle Design module, and in tribute to the great man I created my own Light Cycle in Max.

Hard Surface, Panzer Tank Model.

 

I created this high poly, hard surface sculpt, of a Panzer II tank, as an aside to my Vehicle Design module. It took about three weeks to create due to the sheer amount of detail that went into it. The devil is in the detail with high poly sculpts like this but that's what I love about this type of modelling.

Rally Tank 2150 Game Concept.

 

I created this concept as part of my 'Vehicle Design for Games' module. I was inspired by the research I'd done on Syd Mead, and while my first design was more a traditional textured military vehicle I felt the high contrast, futuristic look, fit with the angular forms of the vehicle and overall style. As part of my design, the turret of the tank can slide backwards and forwards along the body, this helps absorb recoil when the tank fires during a race, so it's not slowed down.

 

Iluminated Knight Game Design.

In my second year at college we were tasked with coming up with a narrative for a game, and then designing character's and environment's around it. The 'high concept' for my game follows a battle weary knight who gets transported into a world inside a stained glass window. The game mechanics will be based around the physical properties of glass, e.g sand and fire make glass, or using glass to reflect light and change colours to solve environmental puzzles. I'm hoping to use the 'Ink and Paint', or edge checks renderer in UDK to create a stained glass look to the world.

Creating a character sheet helps to expedite the process of creating a 3D model of a design. This was one of the first times I'd fully unwrapped and textured a game character rather than using material presets. Weighing in at less than 3500 polygons my character base mesh is perfect for almost any platform, but could be refined further to create a high poly sculpt.

From the initial design concept I created a screenplay for an in-game cinematic introducing players to the narrative of the game. Breaking down the the scene I took photographic reference of a fellow student to help sketch the poses of the knight in the various camera shots. This planning made it easier to rig, and animate the character once I'd built the cathedral interior in which the scene takes place. Below is one of the opening shots of the cinematic as our weary hero enters the cathedral.

Using 'real world' references collected during the research phase of the development, I sketched a selection of stylised buildings for use within the game level. Each building was modelled in 3DS Max whilst using Mudbox to sculpt the fine details for normal map generation.

Once I'd created a number of modular building assets, I began working on my game level in the Unreal Development Kit. I'd already sketched a map of the environment during the planning stage which helped expedite the process of terrain generation and building layout. After the games' opening cinematic the player is washed up on the shores of a medieval village. The village acts as a hub for the main story-line where the player gains quests and interacts with non playable characters. The focal point of the level is the enormous cathedral where the majority of the game takes place.

'Shoots You, Sir!' An Eighteenth Century Duelling Simulator.

  I created this model for a game I'm working on in UE4. The base mesh was modelled and optimised in 3DS Max, the details were sculpted in Zbrush, and the textures were made using Quixel Suites nDo and dDo.

An alternate weapon design was needed for the 'Gentleman' character.

Some character design concepts for my game.

Character head sculpt created in Zbrush.

Character clothing concept, sculpted in Zbrush.

Revolver Game Asset.

Modelling this revolver helped me practice the steps used to make high quality, realistic, game assets. After creating a high poly sculpt in 3DS Max and Zbrush, I retopologised and unwrapped the mesh to make a low poly 'game ready' version. After baking the normal and ambient occlusion maps I finished the texturing using Quixel Suite, an awesome piece of software that really speeds up my work flow.

 Precision Modelling for NASA EVA Simulations.

As part of a competition, for the 'NASA Tournament Lab Challenges' through Freelancer.com, I produced some 3D assets for use in their EVA simulations aboard the ISS. Reference photography and measurements were provided and the brief was to create exact 3D replicas of the 'real-world' objects. Almost a thousand people entered the competition and ninety finalists were chosen including myself. I came fourth overall with the images I entered for one of the projects.

Unreal Marketplace Assets.

Using my modelling skills, and to capitalise on an emerging market, I started creating 3D assets for sale on the Unreal Marketplace, Unity Store, and sites like Turbosquid.

 

Anatomy Practice in Zbrush.

 Whilst practicing the software, and as part of a study on human anatomy, I created this skull in Zbrush.

I ♥ Star Wars.

One of the greatest influences in my early life was the Star Wars series, not only did it fuel my love of Sci-Fi and Fantasy but the work of ILM solidified my love of model making. Of course I'm older and (hopefully) wiser now, but I can attribute my love of 3D modelling to some of those early influences. In tribute some of my first tentative steps in 3D modelling were recreations of the iconic designs from the series. The Tie Interceptor was created in 3DS Max and then rendered in Keyshot to get that studio quality look. I worked on the Stormtrooper model using both Max and Zbrush as it required both sculpting and hard surface modelling techniques, and then rendered with VRay. The 'ink and paint' render was created in Max, I really like the high contrast look, it makes for a great desktop background!

Rocktopus, Loop-de-Loop animation competition, finalist.

As part of a live brief for college we had one week to design, and animate a character for an online bi-monthly animation competition called Loop-de-Loop. We were provided with four song choices by the website, of which we had to pick one and create a loop in time with with the track. The track had rock guitar riffs mixed with eerie electronica, which inspired me to create Rocktopus! As well as a lot of fun it was a great opportunity to practice Adobe After Effects. I rigged the character with IK chains and controllers so he could be animated like a marionette inside AE, in a very similar way to how I'd rigged characters in 3D before. With the design being two characters and one with up to eight legs I made a rod for my own back in terms of complexity and time limits, however my animation made it to the final selection, check out the finalists here!

Perspective Drawing. 

I've always been somewhat of a technical artist so I relished the opportunity to practice my perspective drawing as part of one of my modules at college. The brief asked for a technical style sketch of a building in Newcastle, I chose the Baltic due to its iconic status. After taking photographic reference, and sketching the building I used Sketchbook Designer to digitise my line work. This style of drawing can really help in the pre-production stage when modelling buildings in 3D.

 

Watchmen, Freelance Animation Project.

This was one of my first freelance projects. The brief was to create an animation of a spinning Watchmen badge, that hits a pile of badges and then when the camera pans back the logo of the client is made of millions of them. I did a lot of pre-production using MassFX to simulate the collisions and physics in the scene.

Experimenting with UDK.

One of the great things when getting to grips with the Unreal Development Kit was access to the huge amount of assets available in the content browser. This was one of my first projects using UDK  so none of the assets are mine but it helped me practice level design, set dressing and how the engine itself works. I created an entrance to a temple, set into the top of a mountain, the player can walk around the scene, admire the stunning vista's, then open the doors and delve into the depths of the temple.

Opening level of Perfect Dark, Recreated in UDK.

Continuing with my UDK practice I decided to start a mod, and recreate Perfect Dark in the Unreal Engine. I created a slice of the first level as proof of concept, but my ambition outstripped my technical ability at this stage. I started college before I was able to finish, but going back with the skills I have now would make the process a lot easier.

UDK, Art Gallery.

At the moment I'm working on an interactive portfolio in UDK, I think it's a great way to display my artwork, 3D models, videos, and artistic/technical ability all in one interactive package. I should be able to send this to studios or clients to help better represent my skill and interests than the blog you are currently reading. Below are some screenshots of my work in progress, at this point less than two weeks work.

I had created a few tree and grass assets for my 'Illuminated Knight' game level, so thought it would be nice to display them in an arboretum within the gallery. Creating low poly assets for games like this takes more work than you may expect to keep the polygon count as low as possible. I learnt techniques for baking to texture, and animation through materials and vertex colours, to get the trees and grass to sway in the breeze.

Weighted Companion Cube.

I'm a huge fan of the Portal series, in tribute to the games, and as one of my first 3DS Max projects I created a model of one of my favourite inanimate objects, the weighted companion cube!

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog, keep checking back as I continue to update it. If you want to contact me send an email to: theitearooms@gmail.com