Futuristic Couch Potato Warfare

I had a quick 'vision' where a, let's say, over weight couch potato had an advanced arm chair complete with rocket launcher and hover engines (think 'Back to the Future' skateboard).

I knocked up this sketch in a few minutes. My concept art skills are to be desired but I maytake it further and produce a 3D version

ZBrush - Human Anatomy Sculpting (WIP)

I finally took the plunge and began creating my first complete character. I want to learn about the human anatomy and how to correctly sculpt the bone and muscle formation.

I created the base mesh in ZBrush using ZSpheres. This was my first experience with ZSpheres and I have to say its a very intuitive tool that can give fast results.

I'll post regular WIP updates as the character progresses :)

Games Republic Showcase Competition Win

Text taken from the Games Republic website:

Game Republic Student Showcase 2010

The Game Republic Student Showcase 2010 was held on Tuesday 25th May 2010 at the University of Huddersfield. The Showcase was an amazing opportunity for final-year and postgraduate games course students from any higher education establishment in Yorkshire & Humber to showcase their work to the biggest developers in the region including Team17, Rockstar Leeds, Sumo Digital and Just Add Water.

Prizes are awarded for 1st, 2nd or 3rd place in four categories: the Game Design, Game Technology, Game Art and Best Team - the latter also providing a work placement for the winning team, which in 2009 resulted in placements at Rockstar Leeds for five University of Huddersfield graduates, with one graduate eventually given full-time employment.

What we won:

1st Prize Best Team Sponsored by Rockstar Leeds

1st Prize Game Design Sponsored by Team17

2nd Prize Game Technology Sponsored by SumoDigital

Winning the competition was a dream come true and I can't wait to begin the placement at Rockstar Leeds. I have some experience working within the games industry already after completing a summer placement in 2008. The amount you can learn is huge so I plan to make the most of this opportunity.

Crobot Wars - Games Republic Competition

My team are nearing the completion of a playable vertical slice of Crobot Wars. We finished university on the 7th of May and I have to say it was a resounding success (marks permitting).

We have been nominated for the Games Republic competition, which this year is held at the University of Huddersfield on May 25th.

I'll take some photos from the event and post them up once back. After spending the year cocooned in Leeds, it will be nice to see student work from other university's. Fingers crossed we can do well but it's a great opportunity to network either way.

From a personal point of view this competition spells the end of an era. The time has come to look for experience and further my abilities.

Here's some of my final artwork I produced for Crobot Wars.

Crobot Wars - Arena Nearing Completion

Texturing of the arena is nearing completion. Its taken longer than expected but then I guess that's game development for you. Further detail needs to be added to the central focal point and large TV screen.

Once the texturing is complete I hope to produce some high quality game art, both to go alongside the game and for my personal portfolio.

Bugs arise once integrated into the games code within XNA. In the three weeks of the project remaining time will be spent fixing the bugs as well finalising the arena and player-controlled machine.

UDK (Unreal Development Kit)

After hearing a number of industry professionals saying 3D artists should be able input their creations into a commonly used 3D engine I decided it was time to learn.

As the Unreal engine is widely used and they provide a free version to users it made sense to try it out. Due to time constraints I can't experiment much right now but its first on the list after I complete my degree. As I'm walking into Unreal with no experience I tracked down some great tutorials from 'Eat3D' to help.

I'll keep you updated :)

http://www.udk.com/
http://eat3d.com/

Crobot Wars - Final Artwork Experimentation

The arena is really coming along and the majority of it is textured. After some tweaking, which I tend to do until the early hours, I'm happy with the overall look, which probably comes down to increasing the saturation and contrast of the textures.

After getting the majority of the texturing done I took a break and threw together a mock-up of some final artwork I plan to produce using the arena.

I'm happy with the results and once all the assets are completed, I will definitely complete a final version of this image complete with post production.

Crobot Wars - Texturing Progress

For my finals my team, Gazebo, are creating a 4 player arena based futuristic shooter using Microsoft's XNA development kit. It will be playable on both the Xbox 360 and the PC. Players will control a mechanical crab like vehicle with over the top weapons.....hence the game title: Crobot Wars. The aim is to produce a dual stick shooter that's both frantic and exciting, we have a time scale of 2 months......yes, 2 months!!

My role within the team is lead artist, therefore I'm producing the majority of the 3D content and artwork.

The image you see is my current progress with the 3D arena. The model itself is finished and I'd say the texturing is 70% completed. I tried to keep the polygon count as low as possible with the entire arena hitting the 13,000 polygon mark. To improve my skill and efficiency in Photoshop I planned to push the majority of the detail with some nice textures.

Sam

My first post :)

I figured it was about time I started a blog to coincide with my design work, acting as an ongoing diary/sketchbook I plan to update it regularly with new and hopefully improved content.

I'm currently in my final year of university where I'm studying 'Games Design' at Leeds Metropolitan University. Over the next few months the majority of my posts will cover the work I create for my finals and then they will no doubt move onto my determination to land my first job within the games industry (touch wood).

Please check out my portfolio for completed works: http://www.samholguin.com/

I'll try keep this thing updated and interesting,

Sam