A Christmas collaboration with Robby Duguay! He made some awesome game-meets-Christmas-carol music in his album called 12 GBs of Christmas, and he asked me to create some Final Fantasy VII inspired art! I went with a really simple scene featuring Aeris and completed it within a few days. It’s low poly and low framerate, just like FFVII! Rendered in UE4.
The goals for this project was to create a 3D showcase of a future mall’s realty development, with seamless visibility between exteriors and interiors, with beautifully realistic and polished next-generation art. It is showcased on high-resolution touch-screen devices for a fully-featured real estate experience.
My contributions to this project includes:
- Lead in research and development for engine pipeline for a large-scale, fully visible exterior to interior realistic rendering
- Collaborated with art director, 3D artists, and programmer to set standards and pipeline. Particularly, creating tutorials and directing meetings on the Maya-Max to Unreal engine pipeline with modellers and stakeholders who are unfamiliar with the game production pipeline
- Quality control of all art assets from Maya/Max into Unreal and their respective textures
- One-person complete assembly of Maya/Max 3D assets from modellers into Unreal, and transferring all asset files from UDK to Unreal Engine 4 mid-project. Over 4,000+ assets managed, organized in hierarchy, placed and dressed in level build, checked for mesh, texture, lighting and shader quality. I was the key content manager for the final production build in conjunction with programmer
- Creation of the majority of in-Engine shaders, including glass shaders, water shaders, car shaders, sky shader, animated ad shaders, and architectural shaders
- Spearheaded prototyping for lighting, camera controllers for a touch-screen interface, and UI
- Additional modelling, texturing, and clean-up work for store-fronts, cars, and light-map work for the base architecture
- Producer for internal communication for quality control and pipeline standards, and communication to different stakeholders, including clients, and showcase opportunities for the team
Babel has been an interesting process lately because I am going back to the drawing board for a number of design considerations, in order to better create a match between storytelling and immersion. Script writing continues to be an iterative process, which helps articulate the scope of the game, since it is narrative-driven. There will continue to be more prototyping to see what works best!
I’ve been looking at different interfaces, but also find myself enjoying some of the beautiful rendering and shader tools available in Unreal 4!
Just newly built on Dec 7th, 2013!
Here is the artwork from Babel’s first prototype, built in Unity and 3DS Max. Story and art driven, Babel was a challenging one month build because I had to ensure that the first chapter’s script was comprehensible to the world that I had to level design for, while keeping the authenticity of East Asian urbanity. I had over 75% of all model assets to complete for a six-minute puzzle game.
It is an experimentation with a painterly acrylic look to the art assets. The rest of the models – including the NPC – are created by Mikki Benaglia and Blake Withers. Rob Richard was the lead for programming, real-time deployment and optimization.
Gameplay: You throw a projectile to hack into electronics, in order to reveal game dialogue. We are going to continue to develop this gameplay mechanic further so that there’s more iterative puzzle solving.
Our timeline for this build:
2 weeks of preproduction: Script writing, script editing, level design, asset list, concept art, core systems
2 weeks of production: Voiceover recording, promotional printing materials, modelling assets, building the level, coding scripts, lighting, video editing
In engine (Unity):
In Max:
Some of my favorite electronics.
Double Blind is a project that first started in Aug 2013′s Indiecade/Oculus VR Slow Game Jam.
It is a multiplayer PC first person game using the Oculus Rift Head-Up display.
It features a tag game between two to four players, where one person plays at the Medusa, and are able to freeze other players in their tracks. The other players seek out fortunes in the ruined temple within which she resides…
I was the Lead Artist for this project. The majority of the art assets, excluding pillars and the Medusa herself, are created by me. I also designed the look and feel of the world based on Creative Director’s greybox. I designed lighting and also build some shaders in engine. It is built in Unity.
Created a large format store-front display for Le Chateau Eaton Centre location using 3D rendering and design of a steam train. The main focus of my work was on texturing, composition, lighting, rendering, and post-processing in 3DS Max and Photoshop direct for print. Collaborative work with modeller and in-house graphic designer for additional Logotypes and snow effects.
Feb 2015: Updated business card for 2015 that matches with my older painting for Babel (Solace State).
Dec 2013: Promotional material for Babel designed in time for Bit Bazaar Winter Market (Dec 7 2013). Small painting on business card by David Kan.
This is the first concept art that I did for Babel. It was at first just a vague idea in my head that I wanted to do something about Eastern Asia and mass consumption. I started the drawing in Hong Kong, specifically in the Wan Chai neighborhood. I finished it in Toronto.
Freelance illustration for Autodesk, using Autodesk Ink app on tablet. About: The affect of being scrutinized by such disinterested parties.
Autodesk freelance illustration, using Autodesk Ink app on tablet. About: The underside of the city shows a different palette of conversations, running counter to all that rigidity, all those grid lines.
Autodesk freelance illustration, using Autodesk Ink app on tablet. About: In the mirror, she has to think twice about the subversion of the object into Subject.
An area concept piece for Cindering, an adventure game. My original IP.
Babel is a single-player 3D video game that encourages the player to explore and solve puzzles to piece together a complex, narrative-driven world. This world is set in an alternate-history, current-day Hong Kong. This vertically structured urban jungle will tell the story of a people with contrasting cultures and ideologies, with dreams of improving their social standings, coloured by their personal ethics and fears. As you search for a missing friend, you are drawn into a brewing discontent between an underground group claiming to speak on behalf of the people, and a conglomerate that owns most of the city.
I’ve since changed the art direction for this significantly, since I created this in a few days in time for an ideation roundtable with local game devs! Nonetheless, it shows some of the themes that I will be developing for, even though I will likely change the Engine from UDK to Unity.
Please view in full screen in HD for optimal quality. Thank you.
Wastes is a fully realized environment running real-time in UDK. It is meant to be an art showcase piece rather than a gameplay environment. In a team of five, we created a post-apocalyptic environment from ideation to real-time deployment.
This cinematic showcases our vision with the storied, post-apocalyptic space.
I played dual roles of Producer and Environment Modeller for this project. I had ensured the quality and timeliness of our art team to create a realtime interior environment, and advised on scale of work in cooperation with level designer, art director, and executive producer.
The fire escape sleeping area is the asset that I independently created for the environment. It is rendered above (with grey background) in Marmoset. The ones in level are real-time in UDK.
