Success is Near

As graduation day nears, I feel more and more confident in my abilities to perform at the professional level. Being that it has been so long since my last post, I thought I'd catch you up on what I have been working on...

With our game, Tesla's Wrath, there is a lot to say about the guys (and girl :) ) on the team. It is a team of very talented individuals and I am glad to be a part of it. When it releases in the spring of next year, I hope it gets as much, if not more, recognition as our predecessors. I will not be posting any of the work from the game here, but I will be keeping you posted as to when it will be released and when the website will be launched.

Ferrari Enzo Project Coming Along

I have been up for countless hours putting this thing together. It is in it's final stages and I am confident in its outcome. I really struggled with coming up with a less time consuming way of completing it. Using all kinds of methods to get it done; using separate objects, uv unwrapping, and so on. I finally felt that using procedural mapping would be best and it has proven to be a good choice thus far.

"Desolate" Rig Test

I had a tough time getting this rig to the point that it's at. There were so many vertices and areas that were affected by bones on the complete opposite side of the body. It was so tedious, yet, I love to get to this point in the modeling of the character and it will definitely be in my portfolio very soon...

"Desolate" Main Character (cont'd)

I got a bit further with the character and feel confident that it is headed in the right direction. I began the rig for the character using "biped". Reason being, that at the moment, I am just interested in getting the character to perform basic movements for my portfolio demo reel. Later on, I may incorporate a more versatile rig...

"Desolate" Main Character

As you may have seen before, I had the idea for a game revolving around a diluted human population with what I feel to have a Resident Evil feel mixed with the movie "Waterworld". When making the pitch to my peers, I froze up and was not able to present the idea to the fullest. Still feeling strong about the idea, I decided to go ahead with the concept of the main character and place him in 3ds Max. What you are seeing in the shots are very early renders that show the progress of the character so far. I decided to go ahead with this project because of an old blog or article written by Ben Mathis. In short, he said it was important to get as much work out of yourself as possible. I have always heard that, and always followed it, but reading it from him made that statement so much stronger. Therefore, even though this was not picked by my peers at the time, it may prove vital in the long run to have it worked on in depth.

Nascar Truck

In order to get my portfolio more filled with high quality work, I began this truck in 3ds Max roughly 6 hours prior. If you have gone to my portfolio site, you have seen that the 3D section is a little skim and in the need for some more work. Therefore, I have been putting a lot of work into coming up with things that I could showcase very well in 3D. I also loved the way it looked when rendered, even at this point in the modeling, so I decided to share it with you all...

Enzo Pt. 2

With more progress made on the final version of the Enzo before it is textured, I felt the need to show the most up to date model.

The Crew

Seeing as how a lot of boy bands, rap groups, r & b groups, and dance crews all seem to fall into some kind a cliche niche that consists of 5 guys, I decided to come up with a group that shows just that, as a small spoof of the sort; a group of young guys who portray a rap look, yet have the characteristics to fit the role of everything else in this entertainment realm. If you grew up in an urban environment, then you know what I was getting at with 4 "light-skinned" guys and a dark one :)

Please enjoy my work and keep checking for the new works to come.

I did this piece in photoshop taking about 6 hours from concept to completion. All of the designs of the clothing were all custom designed. I wanted to give an impression on what my "fashion design" skills consisted of.

Asylum Concept

With the current project I am a part of, there is a hospital level proposed to be in the game. I, however am not certain of what sections of the hospital will be seen in the game. I did this concept of a crazy escaped committee from the psych ward. I really think this could work very well and is a great concept with a lot of emotion and feel for the character. It may just be one of my best concepts to date (in my opinion).

Ferrari Enzo

In the recent weeks, I regained my focus to be able to begin creating some great work that I feel very confident in and can say is a large improvement in my previous works. I decided to put the WIP of this project up because the methods by which I created were something that I, personally, have not seen anyone do with a mechanical or hard object...

I started the project with a simple line silhouetting the car, making the appropriate cuts when needed. Once the outline was finished, I extruded the the line out and collapsed the two layers. This then made the object an editable mesh. I cannot stand working in editable mesh, so I converted to an editable poly. And after a few breakless hours, I have gotten to a point where the time and effort really shows and shows well. As you can see at the top, the car at this point is exceeding 5,000 polys. I didn't want to give myself a poly limit because I wanted to get all the detail possible with the modeling versus the texture.



I decided to show the model with the wireframe attached to it to show the how cuts were made and to show the inner workings of the model rather than just showing the gray model itself. At this point in the render it is roughly 10 hours in.

Concept Renders

As a pitch for my original game design, these are concepts that I included in the pitch. Unfortunately, my game idea was not chosen and it is still up in the air as to when or if I will ever be able to create this idea in a full game. Each was done in Photoshop CS3.

Choyce Cinemas

Ha ha, yeah, I like the sound of that. Anyway, here is an early render of something I started just today. I have had the idea to model out a movie theater for quite some time now. I just never got around to doing it. I have so many ideas swimming around in my head, and a lot get lost along the way. But this idea is sure to stick and will hopefully come out on top.

Breathing Animation

With this model, I used morph targets to animate the breathing motions rather than completely trying to key animate every motion. This works a lot better than trying to manually animate simple animations such as breathing, blinking, or subtle facial expressions.

If you look closely, you will see the chest move out with the neck inhaling and cheeks puffing. I forgot the video doesn't loop on its own, so you may have to view it several times to see the subtleties of the animation.

Weekend Warrior

Somehow, I found the time once again to handle some unfinished business; modeling business anyway. I got the urge late Saturday night and just started to work on whatever I could get my hands on. I found myself working on 3 or 4 projects at once. Going back and forth, fixing this, adding that, modifying over here... I feel relieved at this point that I can honestly say that I am no longer at a plateau of nothingness. But below, as you can see, this is just another update of my previous character, just with some better lighting that I was working on. I found out this new technique with final gather and just wanted to test it out on something that I had already started on. The other is a brand-spankin' new scene that I worked on for quite a while over the night and most of the afternoon today. I am loving this apartment. More renders will be made available once I get a little further ahead. Please enjoy, and please leave a comment.

Meshes, Meshes, and More Time!

Here are some updates I have been working on for our upcoming project, Toonville Horror. These are just some screenshots of some of the characters I worked on for the game as well as some 3D assets and such. Nothing is ever a finished piece of work, but for now, these are the versions that are currently "finished". Enjoy!

Current Projects

It's been a month since my last post. Since then, I have been promoted to Art Lead in the upcoming prototytpe student work of "Toonville Horror". We have been working on this for the past 4 to 5 months or so and the date is set for March 22, 2008. The last 2 months is how long it has been since my promotion. Eventhough it is only a small team of 6, it is a very large load to carry. But lately, the team has been able to pull through to meet about 90% of the projects deadlines. The purpose of the game is to bring the toon world to the nightmarish "Silent Hill" feel. So, you can expect twisted ideas, creepy little toons, and just a mix up of reality and imagination. Very soon, I will be posting the game cover to give more of a feel of what the game contains. Until, keep posted for I will continue to show my worth through this blog and my portfolio site. Don't forget to check out therightchoyce.com to see the finished works of many of the updates on this blog.

Basketball Court Project

Here is the initial render of a fictional court that I had the immediate idea for. At the point in the render, I am about 3 hours in.