-UPDATE- February 1, 2008
Finished a new model for another Gameartisans.org mini-competition, check him out on the Game Character Models page. The theme was Kingdom Hearts:WAR! I picked Quasimodo. You can follow his progression in the WIPs tab if ya like. :-)
At work I'm still pluggin away on a couple of the mini-games in Our House, and still lovin my job! Little Jane Isa joined our family on 11-17 at 11:17pm. and she sure is adorable.
.. I forgot how much little babies throw up...
..its a lot...
November 6, 2008
A little late, but my second shipped title came out on October 26th! It was a lot of fun working on GH4, I'll upload some jpegs of the custom content I was able to get in-game. I got to design a female "Create-a-Rocker" outfit, (concept, model and texture) and I got to model and texture a concept for a male C.A.R. outfit that Jeff Bellio designed of a "Budcat Samurai" outfit. I'm currently working on Our House for the Wii, and am learning a ton about game creation. Not only do I get to create models and textures, but I'm learning how to set up correct collision geometry, environment layout and design, as well as the tricks to using waypoints for the A.I. and portal tricks to cut down on render times to increase frame-rate.
Wow, a whole year at Budcat already! Time sure flies when you're having fun! And speaking of time flying, we're only about 2 weeks away from my wife's due date and the arrival of our little girl!
September 6, 2008
How about that? TWO next-gen models done in less than two weeks! The shark guy was my second attempt at the animal warrior challenge at 3DTotal. We'll see how it does, there was some nice competition in this one! I learned a few new things in ZBrush and got to practice the whole character creation process from start to finish again, so it was fun. I've also re-arranged the Game Character Models page. I've been meaning to do that for a while now.
At Budcat, I've been pulled off the Guitar Hero project and put on the Our House project instead. Its a super nice change to be able to work on my own models and textures exclusively, rather than just poly reduce and optimize next-gen assets, so I couldn't be happier!
August 29, 2008
Been a while since my last update since we've been in major crunch time at work getting Guitar Hero World Tour out the door. Its wrapped up as far as art goes, and this last week was the last major push programming-wise so its finally back to normal hours.
I just finished a new model for the 3DTotal Animal Warrior competition, you can see it on my Game Character Models page. Its a stinky, grubby, mutant snapping turtle. :-)
I've got a bad habit of only using about half the tris and half the texture space that's allotted to us for the models, for some reason.
July 1, 2008-
WOHOO!! My first shipped title just officially hit the shelves yesterday! It was a blast being able to work on the character models. Taking multiple diffuse, specular and normal 1024 (and even some 2048!) maps per character and trying to crunch all the textures onto one 512x512 map, while retaining as much detail as possible sure was fun! I got to design a few new Elroy Budvis skins too, you can see them on the Professional Art page. We're already nearing the final stretch for my second (and third) shipped titles, so it's definitely crunch time now..
May 21, 2008-
Man-o-man, it sure is amazing what you can accomplish when you quit playing World of Warcraft! I just finished another online competition, this one at GameArtisans.org. The topic was any character you could find running around the city of Grand Theft Auto IV. Had to stay under 3K tris and only got a 512x512 texture size to work with. I wanted to do a thug with a pitbull, but since they both had to fit on the 512 sheet together I lost a ton of detail. O well, live and learn, at least I finished it on time! :-)
May 11, 2008-
So I finally finished a speed texturing competition. (over at game-artist.net) The topic was "treasure chests" and we only had 90 minutes to texture a mesh that was provided. You can see my entrys here and the mats here. I also added a new model I just finished. I wanted to do a super low-poly, low-texture character. It ended up being 500 tris, using a 128x256 texture map. You can find him on the Game Character Models page.
March 5, 2008-
I'm having difficulties getting the file size down enough to post the video tutorials to my Mini-Tutorials page, even without audio, so I'll need to work on that a bit.
In other news, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is just about wrapped up and good to go! We've been working on more games with Neversoft and Majesco, and will start producing a Budcat original game soon!
January 15, 2008-
Found a screen capturing software, will be uploading the tutorials page with some videos soon!
Sat. November 17, 2007-
I know it's insanely tacky for this kinda stuff before Thanksgiving, but THIS has got to be the reason Al Gore invented the internet! [click here] We're loving it here in Iowa City, and I couldn't be happier at Budcat. I'm currently working on the Guitar Hero 3 expansion pack, and we'll be done soon! We're working with Neversoft and porting the Guitar Hero games for the PlayStation 2. So far, I'm in charge of the materials and UVs for the characters. I love my job!!
Halloween- Boogity-BOO!
I just got my first game studio job! WOHOO! Budcat Creations LLC up in Iowa City, Iowa liked my work well enough to set up an interview with me last Monday morning! After seeing how giggly-excited I was they decided to take a chance on me, and I start Monday! So this week I'm flying back to Denver, packing up a moving van, and moving my little family to Iowa City! Matt (my Art Director) already mentioned what I will be working on, and I can't wait to start! Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007- Well I just graduated The Art Institute of Colorado and am currently pursuing a career in the gaming industry! I was awarded the "Portfolio - Par Excellence" for my graduating demo reel, and a couple other awards for my GPA. It kind of took me by surprise since I didn't even realize I was in the running for any awards. This all made Heather (my wife) very proud, mainly because she knows I couldn't have done it without her, so in a way these awards are partly hers as well. We're excited to be moving.... as soon as we know where we will be moving to!
July 2007- I am currently a full-time student at The Art Institute of Colorado and will be graduating at the end of September 2007 with a BA in Media Arts and Animation. I am currently looking for freelance work until I graduate, and will be seeking full-time employment after graduation.