2015 - 2016
The Meat4every1 Twitch channel was born from a need to combine the time I spend working on art and other projects with brand promotion. Many of the other projects listed here and in the gallery were created live on this stream.
2016
This webcomic is currently the main focus of the collected efforts of myself, my partnership with Speck.Tech, and our associates to create the foundations for a recognizable brand. These first two strips are the launching point for the development of lore, story, character and world building for an expansive IP.
2015
Singularity was the working title of an exploratory prototype project between myself and Bobby Speck. The idea that drove this production was to create a simple system for demonstrating basic coding principles within a puzzle game. The project was focused on determining whether or not this idea could be viably produced based on our time and resource limitations. The final conclusion was that this was outside of our achievable scope. During this production I able to create a proof of concept framework for turning UI blocks representing code chunks into readable scripts.
2014
First Set: Sven
My first venture into creating art assets for the Dota 2 workshop and store. During my time in college I had many opportunities to master the various steps necessary to create professional quality game objects, but never had the time to compile all these steps to create one solid piece. The goal of this personal project was to give myself a chance to take my time and fully explore every aspect of my character creation pipeline in one model. Every texture for this armor set was meticulously hand painted in Photoshop using the same techniques employed in my digital art. Though an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling project, It illustrated for me the virtue of creating a pipeline that reaches similar quality goals but utilizes more than just my painting skills. In my following projects I have endeavoured to find a balance between this direct approach and more procedural approaches to asset generation.
My second venture into creating art assets for the Dota 2 workshop and store. Valve's Shadow Demon character is rigged oddly. His shoulder joints are located near his neck, up behind the clavicle. This placement allows for an unmoving platform around his shoulders, on which spikes can sit and remain stable, while maintaining appropriate movement in the shoulders. Creating shoulder pads attached to the moving portions of the arms of Shadow Demon is made difficult by this. They cannot be created as a single piece, like my concept, but must be separated into multiple independently moving pieces.
My Original Concept
The Rig Structure
Finished Modelling
My third Dota 2 Workshop project. This is the first set I began sketching in Zbrush as step one. My familiarity with the pipeline made me comfortable starting in HD instead of building in Maya first.
2012
During the early exploratory stages of my Master's Thesis I considered doing research into destructible characters for real time engines. I eventually came to the conclusion that this was not possible with the confines of avaiable tech. During the process of coming to this conclusion I learned a lot about the Digital Molecular Matter plugin for Maya, and created these tutorials.
Promo Video: 10 week prototype
Promo Video: 20 week prototype
2011
My first major game project at Drexel University, developed over the course of my Gaming Workshop I and II course at Drexel University. The class was split into two groups for the first 10 week semester. Epic Defense was my proposal for the class, and I stepped up as project manager after it was chosen as one of two projects to go into production. The first 10 weeks I managed my team and created the dwarf character in his entirety as well as other assorted art assets. Epic Defense went on to be chosen for a second term of development, at which point I shared my duties as project manager. During this time I created the new goblin enemy and bugbear enemy seen in the second video.
The Rig
2011
My first facial rig, this demonic old man was created over the course of 10 weeks for my Character Animation II course at Drexel University. The character was modeled in Zbrush, rigged, animated and rendered in Maya, then the video and 3D render were composited in Nuke.
2011
An animation created over the course of 5 weeks for my Character Animation I course at Drexel University. The rigs for this animation were provided by our professor. I was disappointed that I could not create a new character for this project, and was not satisfied with the provided rig. Being the only person I know who enjoys weight painting, I ripped the model off of the provided rig, fashioned the feminine curves, added and rigged her hair, and rebound her to the rig. Over the course of this project I was also responsible for camera work, lighting, the females characters animations, and a portion of the background assets.
2010
A three person project created over the course of the final 5 weeks of a VFX course at Drexel University. I was responsible for the modelling and texturing of the tree and character. I rigged the character which included 3 stretchy spline rigs. I also animated him for the short.
2010
My first complex character rig. This project was produced over the course of 5 weeks during my Animation II course at Drexel University. Considering the time restrictions, and my inexperience at the time, I am still very happy with the outcome, though it is not perfect. Having only only basic experience with rigging, I created a spline rig for the characters spine and a complex multi jointed, multi-IK, leg, that sadly is barely seen in the video. I learned a lot about how to prioritize from this project.
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