Cross posting from Artstation. Go check out the goodies over there. But for those that stay.
For [Redacted], I had the chance to lead character development,
collaborating closely with my peers on NPCs, enemy units, and boss
characters. With a top-down camera and a cel-shaded aesthetic, the focus
was on strong silhouettes and visual gameplay clarity from a distance.
With the top-down camera and cel-shaded aesthetic, we selectively used
normal maps and high-res sculpts—focusing only on assets where the added
detail and depth made a meaningful impact relative to their on-screen
pixel space. We also reauthored select assets from The Callisto Protocol
to accelerate development while creating new content tailored to
[Redacted]’s unique gameplay and tone.
The project had a fast-paced production cycle for some of us—just a
little over a year from start to finish—and was incredibly rewarding to
work on. I’ve already sunk an ungodly number of hours into it on the
Steam Deck! 🎮🎮🎮
As always, building characters is a highly collaborative effort.
Huge thanks to the concept artists, tech artists, material artist,
animators, VFX, engineers, and directors who helped bring it all
together. Special shout-out to Amanda Stewart who created the
Post-Processing Material to drive home that cell shaded aesthetic. 🙌
A $#@&ING Crane Boss, in A-Pose. This was a fun boss to work on, especially with all the animated parts needed to support gameplay and design needs.
A $#@&ING Crane Boss, animated .gif of the grinder extensions.
Sentient boss: The tentacles were a technical challenge. To achieve the
overlapping look we wanted, I layered and combined multiple tentacles—an
approach that simplified the rig, preserved the visual intent, and
still allowed animation to do their thing.
Sentient boss and supporting attack assets.
Rival NPC: Liz Harry the Lunch Lady.
Rival NPC: Bob Bleckman from Accounting
Rival NPC: Joanie Smith the Karen
Rival NPC: Dr. Patti Lin the Psychiatrist.
Rival NPC: Zach Stern the Nerd.
Rival NPC: Ronnie Flagg the Punk.
Enemy: Acid Snail. Principal Materials Artist, Amanda Stewart created an
awesome animated liquid material that sloshes and moves around inside
the canister vat—really bringing the design to life!
Enemy: Armless Braintank.
Enemy: Turret
We authored the guns as low-poly assets with no baked maps, given the minimal screen pixel space they occupy in-game. This kept the workflow efficient while preserving clarity from a top-down view.
Different stages of development.
Ideas and iterations of development. Design needed to add a “Duster”
attack, so I mocked up a few ideas to explore the idea and see what
would stick.
Ideas and iterations during development. Design called for some large
grinders to emerge from the crane, fully extending across the area to
attack the player and block their path forward. Here are a few basic
mock-ups I created to help communicate ideas.
Ideas and iterations during development: Quick mock-ups to help communicate ideas to the team.
I’m a little late to post this, but I’m really excited to share that at SDS, we launched our latest game [Redacted] (formerly Project Birdseye) back in October! It was a fun project with a fast-paced production cycle—just a little over a year from start to finish. For me, it was incredibly refreshing to work on something quick, simple, and focused on finding the fun. Out of all the projects I’ve worked on over the years, this has been one of the most fun to play—I’ve already sunk over 20 hours into it on the Steam Deck! :D I’ll be sharing some character work from it in the new year. Now go out and play!
Excited to share the trailer for the Final Transmission DLC the team has been working hard on! Working on DLC is always a good time and I had a fun time creating a final cinematic asset of Jacob.
The Callisto Protocol is out, so get out there and play it!
As I joined the project midway through development, there were a number of unique opportunities to help the team close things out and ship the game.
I contributed to polishing different aspects of the main character, Jacob. This included creating snowy weather effects, building and helping set up his gore effects, working with Tech Art on physics setup for his prison costume and weapon holstering, and debugging and polishing a few cinematics though UE's sequencer tool, which was quite a bit of fun.
It was a lot of fun working on Jacob and contributing across so many different areas of the character. Some images and videos are uploaded below, though video compression on Blogger can be a bit hit or miss.
I helped stand up Unreal Scripted Event work. While learning Unreal Editor’s Sequencer tools, I focused primarily on character-related scripted events, helping fix and polish SEs wherever needed.
Whats video game without dead bodies? I also created and setup a bit of the dead body content you'll find in the game.
Was a really fun project with a super talented team. As always, working on these characters is a highly collaborative
endeavor between multiple departments and some very talented
individuals. So, a big shout out to all the character-artists,
tech-artists, engineers, artists, vendors and directors who made it
possible!
2D character design for a professional wrestler in a future/cyberpunk world. One where athlete's augment themselves with the latest tech implants before battling it out in the ring! I had a blast working on this in David Paget's course, "Character Design for Film and Games" this summer! It finally got out of my comfort zone and I went full 2D in Photoshop. Learned alot with this piece. Looking forward to doing more! Hopefully my love of Professional Wrestling ( and influences ) comes though in this one.
Its been awhile since updating the old blogger and the past few years have been wild to say the least! :D Around September of last year, I found myself very fortunate to have landed over at Striking Distance Studios with a talented team that's working on The Callisto Protocol!
In lieu of there being no E3 this year, the big summer event was "IGN's Summer of Gaming". At the Sony's State of Play, SDS revealed the game-play trailer for The Callisto Protocol! It was such an accomplished for the team as it looks amazing!
Marvel's Avengers is out! This is something that I've spent the past 4+ years on! It was quite the project, with so many late nights, snacks from the fridge and practical jokes! Moving forward I'm going to miss my Crystal Dev family as it was such a career highlight working with so many talented & kind individuals. I had so much fun on this project and I hope the players have just as much fun playing!
Finally had some time to wrap up this personal project before starting a new job! Huzzah!
I really wanted to try my hand at interpreting a different take on Kaneda ( Akira ) with some modern day motorcycle gear. It's far from perfect, but It's given me an opportunity to learn some new skills & workflows.
Still working on the high-res mesh but finally got enough together
to show, a redesign of Keneda from Akira! Been looking at some Dainese
motorcycle gear for inspiration. Still so much to do: boots are still
blockmesh, need to tweak proportions, fix some fold logic, and do a
damage pass on the whole thing. So far, combination of MD, ZB, Substance
Painter, Maya/Arnold. The gloves were a fun asset to learn some new
workflow's for substance painter to Arnold.
