Saturday, June 27, 2020

Disintegration Art Drop #2

More work from V1 Interactive's "Disintegration".

1) The first 4 images are city design. The first image are a number of designs for buildings. The key was these needed to feel like "near future", so they needed to walk a careful line, modern day with a touch of future, without going full Syd Mead. Next are some store fronts in the city, these needed special attention since the gravcycle was going to spend most of its time near the ground, not way up high by the tops of the buildings. Then a few explorations how the storefronts would be integrated into the buildings. And finally, while I'm no videogame designer, as a concept artist I was constantly trying to create buildings that allowed the player to be tactical, areas the player could hide behind, hide in, ledges to hover over, basically ways to traverse the city that were more interesting then just walking / floating down the street. A good concept designer must always think about the player experience, and of course listen to the needs of the game designer, as they are the expert in that area.

2)  This is a dusk shot of what the deserted city might look like. Painted over top a greybox scene, the main design challenge was how much should light should come from man made sources (after your team managed to hook the power grid up to the city) vs the sky. You needed to be able to see for the mission, but it also needed to feel like dusk / night.

3) A wide shot of the city, this was a paint over on a greybox model, neutral lighting. There was a lot of back and forth on how ruined the buildings should be, should it be really beat up because of decay and the battles that happened there decades ago? Should it be abandoned but still mostly intact? How much plant growth should there be? This was a first stab, going for a more abandoned feel instead of ruined.






Friday, June 26, 2020

Soulburn 3D Education Page Updated June 26th 2020

Added a blog style post discussing how and why I took my own photo reference to help with a concept painting for V1 Interactive's "Disintegration" videogame.

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/architecture_at_dusk/architecture_at_dusk.htm

Monday, June 22, 2020

Disintegration Art Drop #1

So begins the "Disintegration" art drop. Big thanks to Marcus Lehto, Matt Bennier, and all the V1 Interactive folk who provided me with art direction, greyboxes to paint over and support during my time working on the project! Will do a drop about once a week for the next month. In this drop...

1) Painting for the outlaw's base in Iceland

2) The bad guy home base, the Iron Cloud! Got a rough model from V1, my job was to explore the details.

3) One of my first designs, an Integrated dropship. Did a number of thumbnails based on a simple base mesh, then drew more detailed views in Photoshop

https://www.disintegrationgame.com/










Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Disintegration is out!

A huge congrats to all at V1 Interactive on the release of the scifi shooter / strategy game "Disintegration" today! An amazing achievement for such a small team. Available on Xbox/PS4/Steam. Will do an art dump in the coming weeks of the concept I contributed to the project, in the meantime, go check out the game people! https://www.disintegrationgame.com/

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Soulburn 3D Education Page Updated June 9th 2020

Added a newly updated and enhanced version of my discussion of the 22 stage process I use to produce my artwork. In this tutorial, I discuss my art making process using as an example my new Megastructure image "Seastead 1". Available as a 25 minute video, or a text tutorial.

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/art_process_overview_2020/art_process_overview_2020.htm

Monday, June 8, 2020

Megastructures Seastead

A Seastead is a man made island that contains a full city. The structure could be an extension of an existing city, attached to the shore, it could be separate from the mainland but attached to the ground in shallow waters (like an oil rig), it could be a fully floating city far from the coast, or it could be a motorized city that can be moved from location to location on the water (like a giant cruise ship). If floating, it’s likely you’d still have enormous retractable cables to anchor yourself to the sea floor.

A sizable amount of the island would exist below the surface of the water as above for buoyancy purposes. Imagine an inhabited skyscraper that’s completely submerged except for the roof, which is the island visible above the water.

A Seastead could be used for any number of purposes, but especially when privacy or secrecy is involved, is a good way to detach yourself from the rest of society without leaving the planet. Imagine hundreds of these detachable island nations, each with their own laws, language or culture, or even eventually differences in evolution if kept isolated enough.

Power could come from solar panels dragged from your island, wind farm mini islands tethered to the main city, or power collectors at underwater hydrothermal vents. Food could come from traditional farming, undersea farming, or fishing.

The city could be configured as a grouping of smaller movable platforms, which would allow you to rearrange and reconfigure the city as needs require, something impossible to do on or in land based cities.