Take 12...

popcorn

I was inspired to do something quick and fun today so I designed a popcorn bag to place around the exterior as trash. I plan to mess with the texture a bit to make it look older eventually.

I'm pretty much done with the high poly of my car too so I did a quick AO render in Maya. 

 

I'm excited to get the low poly done and texture it, I found some great reference from a photographer named Ellen Yeates.

Car Progress

The next step after polishing up what I have here is adding some mechanical details to make it look like a ride car that functions on the rails. I'm also trying to think of a good name for it, sort of like the ray-volver, but for a car. It's not really all that important but I want to make some advertisements to put around the city and I thought one for the car might be nice. I'll be doing one for the gun and movie posters for the double feature (Invaders from outer space and radioactive creatures from beyond) I also thought that the billboards might be a nice way to illustrate mechanics, such as having one say, 'U-92 ammo, pick some up today!'

take ten

There are a lot of changes in this one, shot wise and other wise. I have been experimenting with the new landscape tool in udk for the exterior environment, I think it will work well for my needs. Still having some issues with the game play spaces, mostly just in recording them.

Spawn sculpt progress

How to play...

Working on the shapes and scale of my buildings. Can't wait to texture these, I think it will help the space a lot to have windows rather than just solid blocks.

another cut...

sooo many.

THEY SPAWN

Gonna zbrush the crap out of him, but this is the base mesh I made today. I made his claws in pieces so they can open and close too. My vision is coming to life!

I also want to mention that I got Disney Treasures: Tomorrow Land and I've been watching it. It's a compilation of shows about science and space travel by Disney that were on TV in the 50s such as 'Our Friend the Atom'. Its really excellent, and great reference. I just love that stuff. Coincidentally, I noticed that the menu of disc two uses the same music I chose for the first half of my trailer. I guess they used killer tracks too.

THEY CAME FROM ANOTHER WORLD TO DESTROY

I decide to give the Invaders more character, I was going to put an alien inside the flying saucer but then I thought, why not make the saucer the character itself? After doing some sketches this is what I came up with. I really like him. It's fun and silly, but still slightly menacing.

I also made a new, older looking, rail set, as well as a modular support system that I think really helps to break up the space.

I'm working on giving my buildings more character too. I think they still need some work but this is the direction I'm going in.

As you can see this all came from an elegant thought process...

Some thoughts

My critique went well on Friday and no one was as surprised as me, but it was good and I am filled with a renewed sense of excitement for my thesis. I got some good feedback and a lot of ideas that I think will make it even better. People keep telling me that the idea is 'so me' and I guess it is. I really do think it's important to be passionate about the subject matter of any project you're working on if you want to put your all into it.

Someone mentioned that my tracks should be wooden so I did some further research and I found this:

"The range of motion is greatly expanded in steel roller coasters. The world of roller coasters changed radically with the introduction of tubular steel tracks in the 1950s. As the name suggests, these tracks consist of a pair of long steel tubes. These tubes are supported by a sturdy, lightweight superstructure made out of slightly larger steel tubes or beams."
-http://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/roller-coaster8.htm

So I think for the sake of progress I'll leave them as they are, I do need to fix the models though because I feel like I need some wider curves and some of them don't fit together quite right.

I'm also considering tweaking the title a bit, but I'm not sure yet. That's something I should decide on soon.

So my goals are basically to continue modeling everything and to really make my trailer sweet using the feedback I got on Friday. I also want to create a testable play space before next crit.

first faculty crit is today

Take 4

Getting to the point where I can focus on modeling more than block out now, exciting.

The ray-volver lives

some stuff I'm tryin to make the city cooler

fog and streetlights

my two favorite things

some small tweaks before class

This long weekend I plan on finishing the block outs of the playable spaces and transferring my gun scripts to the new build of udk to make the game play look a little more impressive for faculty crit next friday.

Take 3

Its easier for me just to post these videos for now. I'll post modeling progress once I actually start seriously modeling stuff. Right now its all just for block out. Big thanks to my friend, Michael Lanigan for helping me out with the narration.