Things have been very busy for me as of late. The 2010 Game Developers Fair was a success, and I was offered an Art Test by a major studio for an Environment Artist position. If possible I will post the results of the test on this website in the future.
I have also been working on another portfolio piece. With the completion of the ‘Space Station Living Quarters’, I have set my sights on a medieval piece. I am creating a tavern scene based on concept art by Jarkko Naas, the same artist that created the concept art for my previous project.
Tomorrow is the 2010 Southern California Game Developers job fair. In preperation for this event I have updated the layout of the gallery section. The individual projects are now separated into individual sections.
In art related news, I have been burning the midnight oil on a new environment that I plan to show off at the job fair. I will be posting renders of the scene later today.
After recently receiving a very helpful and much needed critique of my portfolio I have been hard at work on new projects. What’s lacking in my portfolio are full environments and variety. I plan to change this over the next month with three projects.
The first of the projects is a garden variety public restroom. I will be modeling and texturing two versions of the scene. One that is clean, or as clean as a public restroom can be. The second will be a destroyed version, the restroom will look like a bomb went off inside.
Below are two progress renders of the scene, both the clean and destroyed versions.
I am nearly finished with the modeling phase. I have a few sculpts to do in Mudbox, and then it’s texture time.
Finally, I plan to import the entire scene into UDK.
I just received a very helpful review on my portfolio from a person in a position to hire artists for a major game studio. I now feel that I have a road map to success in the near future.
I will be taking the comments and critiques I received and updating my portfolio a lot over the next few weeks. It feels really great to have a defined direction to take. Knowing what needs to be taken out, what there is not enough of, and what is already working is more helpful than I can express.
I am excited to report that there are a lot of things coming together for me right now!
Project: Death Race continues to come together. The newest version of UDK has included Scaleform, which has opened up a lot of UI and menu options for the project. The team is busy brainstorming new features to add to the project.
I have been talking with GoPlay Games about coming on board as an artist / designer for some upcoming FaceBook games and potentially a few Unity3D projects. The crew at GoPlay are really excited about the opportunities that are coming up. I pitched an idea to bring the VictoryPoint board game, Forlorn : Hope, to iPad & iPhone. For the pitch I created a few 3D assets. One of which, an Alien Xeno Warrior, can be currently seen in my gallery.
And finally in non-game design news I have started a blog called NerdNightmare.com It is a place for me to post about various topics that interest me.
-Johnny
Things have been very busy for me lately, and that’s a good thing!
Work continues on Project: Death Race. New features in UDK are allowing us to push the project in new exciting directions. I’m looking forward to posting new content soon.
In bigger news, I have been picked to work for HazardousSoftware on their upcoming RTS title – Achron. I should be getting my first assignment later this week, I can’t wait! I was told that I will be allowed to post renders of my work here on my site, so look for updates on that soon as well.
And finally, I am collaborating on an iPad game project with my long long time friend Jheswin Montoya. It’s not ready to be announced, as we are still working on the design doc and ironing out the full scope of the game. But I am really amped about it and can’t wait to show off some screenshots.
-Johnny
The hurricane known as GDC Aftermath is over. I have been busy following leads, contacting studios, and working on Art Tests. I have also been busy working on Project: Death Race over at Digital-Mercs.com as well as some fine art related pieces.
I’m looking forward to the new work I will be posting to the site in the next few days.
If you haven’t checked out the progress on ‘Project Death Race’ over on Digital-Mercs.com, please do so!
There have been some really great new posts these last few days. I just posted two renders of the Riviera I am building, everything is starting to fall into place as we draw nearer to GDC, only 18 days left! Gasp!
Back to work!
-Johnny
I spent the better part of today adjusting the design of this website.
On Tuesday I was fortunate enough to attend a “GDC Prep Talk” hosted by Jim Rivers of Obsidian Entertainment. Although I am no longer a GDC noob, I am not a GDC veteran either. I discovered from the meeting that there are a number of things I am doing wrong. Luckily I still have time to make changes before the big conference.
One of the biggest changes concerned my website. Hence the updates. I plan to have a lot of new art posted to the gallery section in the next few days so please check the site for updates!
If you haven’t checked out the progress on “Project Death Race” over at Digital-Mercs.com recently, you should head over there! Things have really picked up steam as we get closer and closer to GDC2010!
Here is a progress render I posted recently of the vehicle I am working on…
Click the image for full size.
