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New year, new page!

Last time I posted in my website was in October last year and there have been a lot of changes since then,so here is a super quick resume of what I’ve been up to…

At the start of January I’ve moved to San Francisco to work with Jonathan Blow on his new game “The Witness” that you can read a bit about here (Kotaku coverage). It has been a great change for me, from Ubisoft’s corporate minded game development to a more challenging and stimulating experience with a small Indie team.

I’ve also been asked to do a small interview for 3D Total magazine that you can have a look here (PDF format)  if interested, it goes over my role as Art Director and the issues that I have faced during the last years as game developer.

I’ve always loved videogames and my goal has always been to try and create something meaningful that can elevate this medium as an art form. I felt my work at Ubisoft was getting very far away from that, purely commercial and marketing driven and I hope, with this move, that I’ll finally be able to make a difference and give my skills to something that can actually make a difference.

The city is full of life and the team is incredibly passionate so I’m curious how the next year will develop…

And since I cannot have a art blog without posting images here is the only released screenshot so far of one of the buildings I worked on recently with a before/after comparison. We are working closely with an Architect studio allowing us to build structures that have a really strong aesthetic balance while staying true to the gameplay.

I’m still settling in so it will take me sometime until I can start posting proper updates but please stay tuned!

General Update!

As I mentioned, here is the updated version of this character. I think this is as far as I will take it. I’m happy with the final result and how the smile reads better.

I still want to come back and refine him but only after I had a big break so I can see what could be improved.

Exoskeleton and a General

Just got another image showing one of the suits variations. Besides creating the main version of the suits we also had to make a female version and a texture alternative (since its a fighting game 2 players might choose the same character).

The characters had to fit with the Microsoft Avatar regulations, that meant we only had about 4000 polys and lots of restrictions in proportions and silhouette, as usual its a great challenge to try and work around these restrictions to create a unique character.

The other image is a concept for a character. Its a “General”. I wanted to reinforce strong shapes and just key  details. The idea is that he should be clearly readable and his personality should be conveyed by his visual details.

I’ve shown it to some friends and got some great feedback so a new updated render will be here soon. Its mostly fixing his expression (the eyes are too sad for someone who is smiling), adding some pockets to the jacket and polishing the folds and changing the glass of wine to a whisky one, more fitting with his personality.

PowerUp Heroes!

I had the pleasure to work on the really cool fighting game for the Xbox360 called PowerUp Heroes. It just got released so I finally got the approval to show some of the stuff I had a chance to do.

We had to create Super Hero characters that would fit with the Microsoft Avatar’s world constraints and look cool at the same time.
It was a great experience and gave me a chance to be really creative.

The first one is the Lava female character. The male version was already complete so the goal was to try and create a more feminine version of the same concept but keeping the lava aggressive style.

The second one, the cybernetic guy was a great challenge since we never got a final concept for it. I used polypaint to draw patterns on the body until we found a armor design that would work (his back and arms open to release miniguns and rocket launchers). It was great to conceptualize directly in 3D and be able to see it come to live.

We had about 2 weeks to get each one done so there wasn’t much room for re-design.
The last one is a  prop I did for the Shaman character!.

 

 

 

 

 

The muse – I’m calling this one done!

So here it is, did some extra tweaks in the anatomy about a month ago. Looked at it again today to clean up eyes and color balance and I’m done with this piece. I can feel my brain is saturated from working on this character and I think I brought it as far as it could go (actually I would redo the hair once again….). On to the next challenge!  (click to enlarge)

 

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