That took far too long.

The 'That' to which I refer is fixing my access to both my YouTube channel and my access to my blog. At the start of this past semester MATC killed the access that I had to these sites and I was no longer able to log in and update who-ha. I finally figured out how to fix it. Hooray. This means that in the following week I'll be updating this blog with some new 3d work that I've been doing, a dragon being the most impressive. Granted it is only the dragon's head, but still good.

A small Side Project

While I've been teaching at Discovery World this summer I've had some spare time during the night to work on projects of my choosing. I spent a few nights making the below model.

This steam punk weapon is incredibly high poly due to multiple turbo smooths, but I can't argue with the results, now can I? It took my a total of around 5 hours to reach this point, and I haven't had time to work on it in a week or so. The next step will be Unwrapping and then texturing the model.

The end of the School Year

Portfolio night went well. There were not nearly as many industry people there as I had been expecting, but I have managed to get two offers for temporary positions due the work that I showed. Since portfolio night I have been working to get the two video game projects that I have been working on complete and ready for a presentation tomorrow.

BadDrop, the fourth semester project, is officially at a beta state and is actually really fun to play. After having spent almost a year on the game and going through the engine change from Unreal to Unity I'm glad that we have a good final piece. The game was originally my design and I served as the product owner during its production.

The other student project, the second semester's Caesium, is almost at a beta state as well, and can even be ported to the Android tablet. I served as the Art and Animation lead for that production.

I'll post a link below which will direct you to my other blog, which specifically deals with the projects that I've been working on at MATC.

I've spent some of the morning uploading some of my videos to youtube.com and will be adding them to my videos page in a little while.

Also, this Friday I graduate with my two Associate Degrees in Animation and in Computer Simulation and Design.

Click here for my student blog.

The Rush to Portfolio Night

For the past few months Portfolio Night has been at the forefront of my thoughts. I knew that there were many pieces that need to be rendered and finished, the textures completed and arranged, the movies rendered and compiled.

Portfolio Night is on the 11th of May. I have less than a week to get all of my pieces finished. The good news is that I only need to render and compile the videos. The bad news is that I'm not sure on the amount of time I will have to make DVDs of my work to present. This site will be featured on an open laptop next to a running of my DVD, thus I will be adding a large amount of work to my models and videos pages before the end of this week.

An example of one of my renders is here. This is a controller modeled for the Deep Tunnel project. It will be used to indicate how and what each of the buttons do while the player is navigating around an aerial map of Milwaukee.

Starting work on the deep tunnel.

And so it is that my portfolio is pretty much done. With all of that finished now I can start posting on things that I'm currently working on. Today's focus is on the Milwaukee Deep Tunnel.

I have been tasked with modeling the Deep Tunnel underneath Milwaukee for the Virtual Milwaukee project that MATC is currently working on. After spending about 4 hours looking for a map of the tunnel which would look like more than a few lines drawn over a satellite image of the city I asked my dad, who works for MMSD, if he had any good images of the tunnel system. He found much more than I had and now I'm moving forward with modeling this system which covers more than 19 miles.

I get the feeling that this is going to take a long time, and I need the rough done before Friday.

= 2 Hours Later =

Hasn't been too long and already I've got the rough that was needed. I'm hoping to get it sent over to the project lead in the next few hours. Obviously not done yet, but still a good start.

Studies and Created Work

For the past three years I have been studying 3D Animation and Simulation and Video Game Design at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC). I've spent my time learning Photoshop, Mudbox, and 3ds Max. Since I began I've learned the proper way to model, rig, animate and create full 3D environments. During the summer of 2010, I interned with Digital Iris, learning new strategies to create textures and low poly models.

During the spring and fall semesters of 2010 at MATC, I learned game design. During the design related courses I served as product owner, rigger, modeler, texture artist, environment artist, level designer, and animation lead. For the large majority of the projects I've been involved with, our teams have used the Agile Development Method, which is a way to structure the development of games. I've learned the Unity Engine, the Unreal Editor, and, in an on-going internship with Forever Interactive, the HeroBlade Engine.

While working with Forever Interactive I have worked on two greatly differing games. When I was first brought on to the team, I was tasked with creating levels for the upcoming release of "Battle Gnomes," a game powered by Unity and originally intended for the IPhone and IPad. After having created over 100 maps for the game, I was recently transferred to the ongoing project "Visions of Zosimos," where I work as a designer.

In the future I hope to gain enough experience to work for a Triple-A studio as a level and game designer. Until then I continue to improve my skills working on a variety of internships and projects with Forever Interactive.