Playing with Mudbox

For those of you who don't know, Mudbox, among others, is a 3D sculpting program that supports such high resolution meshs that it allows the user to mold and morph a shape as if sculpting with clay in a digital environment. There is hardly a CG or next-gen video game studio today that doesn't use such a tool at some point in their pipeline, and the studio I'm currently working at is no exception. A couple nights this last week, I stayed after to play around with the newest version of Mudbox and practice my digital sculpting skills. Here are a couple of heads I sculpted.

The first is one I did late last week. I didn't have any reference for this one, and it was the first head sculpt I had done in a long time. I think it took me about 1-1.5 hours to sculpt.



This one I did tonight in about the same amount of time. I used a reference image that I found on the internet. Elderly folk are so fun to sculpt because they have so much visual interest going on in their face. That's a nice, artsy way of saying they have a lot of wrinkles :P

The First Week at Bungie

First things first... Pictures! I was able to snap some shots of a couple of the cool propaganda items they have on display.

The first is a life size, 7+ foot tall statue of the Chief. This guy is the first thing you see when you walk into the Bungie's lobby. It is very detailed and spot on with the design in the game, only the normal mapping is way, way better ;P



This is some of the gear that I'm assuming was used in the short films that Weta did prior to the release of Halo 3.
I actually did take a few more pictures of the awards and stuff that they had won, but most of them didn't turn out well due to my crappy cell phone camera.

The first week was fun, humbling and enlightening. The fact that I was working at Bungie was very exciting, but I managed to keep my composure and stay on task. All of the other contractors I am working with seem to have several years of experience under their belt and it shows in their abilities. They produce very good work very quickly. That's where the humbling part comes in, but also they are very open to sharing their knowledge and critiques which is where the enlightening part comes in. I think I've learned more in the last week than I did my entire last year of school, which isn't neccesarily the schools fault, alot of it was stuff that they just couldn't teach me, such as the in house tools. I've stayed after several nights this first week just playing with the tools and software that they have, which is something I can't really do while I'm on the clock, but it will help me get better and faster.

I'm still adjusting to the change of living in the Seattle Area. Despite the fact that I'm in a better place in my career than I thought I would be several months ago, I still miss a lot of my friends from school and my cat who is still in Idaho until January. I do like the area though, and I have a pretty cool roommate who I can see myself becoming friends with as time goes on. A lot of the people I work with are pretty cool too, and I will probably become friends with them as well, so I'm sure it is just a matter of time before I feel "settled in." To offset the lonliness, I've been focusing alot on work, which is probably healthy anyway.

My first job out of school, and what a great job it is

Just about everyone by now can recognize the character above, even most people who don't play video games. He is of course the Master Chief from the now infamous X-Box game franchise Halo; games known for being so popular and selling so many copies that they've smashed not only game sales records but box office records as well. Bungie, the company behind this game industry behemoth has just offered me a job, and I couldn't be more excited. After a very fun art test and a somewhat rocky telephone interview, I could barely sleep or think about anything else. Fortunately they got back to me with in a day, and offered me an on-site contract position that will run 6-12 months with very decent pay for my level of experience. I would be very lucky if at any point in my career I got a job at a company like Bungie, which has inspired me so much. The fact that I got it in my first job search out of school makes me feel like I've just won the lottery.

Bungie's next game, Halo 3: Recon is a prequel/spin-off of the previously released Halo games in which you play as a different character. It's too early to tell if this is the project that I will be working on for certain, but it's very likely and would just be the "cherry on top" of this whole incredible situation.


I'm set to start December 1st, so I've already started looking for places to live in the Seattle, Kirkland area.

Here are some images of the art test that I had to submit.

So what happened to that Hug guy after graduation?

The quick answer is I moved in with my mom. That's right! Big Woop! Wanna Fight About it!

It made sense though seeing as how one of the circumstances of the job I had was that when I was no longer in school, I was also no longer employed. No job leads to no money. No money leads to no rent. No rent leads to the dark side... which in this case I guess is no place to live, but ok, forget the stupid Star Wars reference. Anyway, it all worked out because I got a car out of the deal.

Check out my epic mount!

She forked out about $5,000 for it as sort of a graduation present. It's a 2003 Kia Rio in very good condition. It only has about 15,000 miles on it, and comes with a 6 disk CD changer (who uses CD's anymore though? srlsy), 16 inch wheels (soon to be traded to Les Schwab for snow tires & wheels), but most importantly it gets around 30 mpg on the Highway and has an EPA Green House Gas Emission score of 8 out of 10, not bad eh?

Myth (My cat) is taking to the new area quite well. She actually has a window to look out of now and a much bigger space to run around in. Though being the overprotective jerk that I am, I don't let her out of the house much.

Myth scoping out her new pimping territory...

...keeping watch on her hos through the window...

Myth's new pimping grounds

Myth's new ho, Baxter

Myth's new ho, Canuck

And last but not least the dark little corner of the house where I spend 90% of my time.

Phat Lewts!

As far as what's been going on, it's been a rough month. I've lost Grandpas on both sides of my family in that time. The first of which, as most of you know, was lost the week before graduation. The second was lost the week following. Needless to say it made it a bitter sweet event, but I know both of them would be proud of me and wouldn't want me to dwell with everything else going on. So I've been able to get through it as good as can be expected, but the hardest part has been seeing my parents and aunts and uncles going through it.

On the upside, I've got a few freelance projects going on. One about to start through a company here in Idaho called Intralot, another one with Liquid Development and lastly an ongoing one with Jason Baskin's company, 3D Central. I'm really digging freelance work and will probably continue to do freelance on the side if/when I get a full time position somewhere.

Say hello to my little friend

So they say pets are a great way to relieve stress. I would agree. I used to just use my pillow, but punching a cat is so much more relieving. *rimshot*

Seriously though, I wanted to introduce my cat. Those of you who know me have heard me talk about her from time to time, but most of you haven't met her yet. Her name is Myth and I adopted her from the Humane Society about 5 months ago.


I couldn't have asked for a better pet, she is quiet, affectionate and loves to play. I can always plan on her ready to greet me at the door when I get home and if I have a friend with me, she isn't shy at all and will instantly try to make friends with them as well. She doesn't bite or scratch and best of all she is potty trained!

Here are some more pictures:

Wrapping up the fall term

Hello all, I've just today finished up the last of my final projects for the fall term. So I had some time and thought I would post up the renders from my Advanced 3D Modeling final. Click on one of the images below to view the larger version.


I turned these in today. My instructor didn't really have any critiques to offer so I'm sure I'll get a good grade out of this class.

Also I got another freelance gig. My room mate and I are splitting the load on some work for the same guy that I worked with on the Columbia Trade show Commercials earlier this year. This time we are creating normal maps for some Animals in a tech demo. Normal maps are basically 2D flat images that are applied to the surface of a 3D model to give it added detail such as muscle-tone, pores or wrinkles or in our case fur and feathers. He is paying $500 a map, and considering that each map will probably only take a few days to produce (with the exception of any revisions) thats a pretty good deal, great work experience, and a pretty nice line of text on a resume.

Anyway, after I'm all done with that. I'll be headed to spend the winter break with Mom this year. Hopefully some of you will be in the Boise area for the Holidays so I get to see you, but if I don't get to see you, have a Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.

Columbia Sportswear Tradeshow Commercials

Here are the finished Columbia Sportswear commercials I worked on. I made most of the objects in the office such as those in the background, the chair, the cigar box, the desk and the laptop computer.

For those that aren't familiar with the running gag in Columbia Sportswear commercials, Gert and Tim Boyle are the owners and Gert is constantly putting poor Tim through rigorous, sometimes sinister testing when he is wearing Columbia Sportswear products. This is a gag that they continue as 3D characters in these commercials.

These are currently being displayed at a trade show that they are hosting.

Patrick and Jacoby

Here are some images of the Patrick Stewart head I am working on for my Advanced 3D Modeling class. It is still very much a work in progress, but most of the proportion and anatomy is accurate. It isn't due for another 2 weeks so I may end up texturing it also to attempt to make it as real looking as possible.




For comparison, here are some of the reference images I used.


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Also I want to send out a big congratulations to someone that I knew in High school who just won the world series (He'll probably never see this of course but when someone from Madras wins the world series, it's a big friggen deal) .

Congratulations Jacoby Ellsbury!

There is talk of him being named the MVP. While I don't follow sports very much, I know that that is a big deal, and while Jacoby and I weren't exactly best friends. I had a few classes with him and knew him well enough to know that he is a hard working, good person and is definitely deserving of all the good fortunes that he has and has yet to receive.

With the goals that I have set for myself and my career when I get out of school, it is incredibly inspiring to know that someone from Madras could go on to be successful in what they love to do (super successful in his case) but successful none the less.

-- Cheers

First few weeks of Advanced 3D Modeling

Hey Everyone!

I had a few minutes so I thought I would post up some images of my first couple of assignments in one of my classes; Advanced 3D Modeling.

I had been waiting for the right opportunity to take this class and was extremely excited when the school finally hired a really good instructor for it. I actually had to beg the Program Director to force add me to the class because it was full when I tried to register for it, but I'm in now and having allot of fun with the assignments.

Here is project 1. The concept and orthographs below were the instructor's own. It was basically supposed to be a fairly simple model that could be completed in a weeks time. I finished early so I UV unwrapped/textured him too.

This is my finished render.


Project 2 was to model an anatomically correct male torso. Here are some images showing the ploy flow.


Here is the finished render.


The next assignment is a realistic reproduction of a celebrity's head. I'm going to be doing Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard from Star Trek). Hopefully I'll find time to post up some images as I work on it.

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Also, I set up a Meebo chat widget on the right side of the page that lets anyone chat with me if I'm online. All you have to do is type your message in to the field provided. Feel free to say hi.

Summer Quarter Synopsis

Hey everyone :)

Finals are finally finished and I figured I would post up images of some of the work I did over the quarter.

First up is my digital sculpting class. All these assignments were done using a program called Zbrush which is a 3D modeling program that lets you work very much as if you were sculpting an object out of clay. It is widely used in the both the game and tv/movie industries as a method of getting more detail into characters, such as wrinkles or skin pores.

The first assignment was just to do a human~ish head. The first one I did turned out pretty good considering it was my first time using Zbrush. See Images below


I also worked on a self portrait model that I had made previously in Maya; another 3Dprogram.


For the final project in the class I made a tripod character that I had concepted for another class.


Now onto my Game Production class. This is actually a class that is spread over 3 quarters in which we will make a fully functional, playable and hopefully enjoyable video game. For this first section we did alot of the conceptual ground work for the game. Many sketches were made for ideas that were eventually decided against but alot of us came up with some pretty impressive pieces of concept art. Here are a few of the concepts I did through out the term.



The idea we eventually decided to go with was a game where the environment was out to get the player, such as plant life.

We decided to go with a female avatar and for a while our game kind of felt like was going the way of Tomb Raider :/


My third class this term was about making board games. Most of the term was just developing new mechanics for currently existing games and materials such as a standard deck of playing cards or a game of checkers. So most of it was writing rules, but finally at the end we were allowed/required to do some art for our game. I think I went a little crazy and ended up pulling a few all nighters getting it done before it was due but here are a few examples of the assets I made up using Adobe Photoshop. It is supposed to be kind of a futuristic battle robot themed hybrid of Magic the Gathering and Settlers of Catan for those of you who know what those are ;)

Here is an example of one of the 3 player pieces



Some cards that players can draw. There are about 180 of these in the game plus 150 resource cards.
Some examples of the 25 triangular tiles that make up the game boardAll this plus box-art ended up costing me about $100 to print at Kinkos but it was worth it to see the finished product. When I get it back from the instructor next term I will probably post up some photos of it all set up ;)

Another class that had some Photoshop was Level Design. In this class we basically made several level designs for a few different genres of games. Most of them included some form of concept art, a list of points of interest and a top down view. This class wasn't incredibly exciting since I mostly want to do character work, but we did get to play Unreal Tournament 2004 (computer game) for like 3 days out of the quarter. We called it "research" ;)

Here's concept image that I busted out for an earlier assignment.


This is an example of what a top down view looked like. This one was for my final.



This is an idea of what the finished final kind of looked like. The dimensions of the mat board were something like 20x32 .


Last but not least is Advanced Animation. The homework for this class takes ALLOT of time, and fortunately the instructor knew that and gave us some leeway. Most of the stuff (as you'll see) isn't very polished and I would even go as far as to say it wasn't finished. For the most part I barely had enough time to get the key-poses finished. If I have time later I may revisit some of these because I did have allot of fun making them but for now here is a compilation of what I managed to get done by the due dates.