Hellchick V2: The Fun Stuff

It's been a long, long time since I had the chance to do some all out hard surface modeling, so to prepare I spent a lot of time just watching these vids on the making of Vadim Bakhlychev's Recon Elite model for the latest Dominance War. Repeatedly. This thing is a masterpiece. I don't know any other way to describe it. Vitaly Bulgarov's gnomon DVD was also a huge help.

I started the hi-res stuff yesterday and I guess my wrist isn't used to the abuse of hours and hours in front of Softimage anymore because my wrist is bumpin! Here's what I've got as of tonight. Still plenty of work to do along the back of the first leg section, but I'm pretty pleased with where it's going so far.

Catching Up...

This is a throwback to the Quake 4 days: Paul Richards was gracious enough to draw pages and pages of kickass Hellchick concepts for me to model a few years ago. At the time I was probably too busy playing World of Warcraft or eating Doritos (maybe both) to finish it so I've decided that it's time to pick it back up.

I also asked Paul about modeling his Dominance War entry, which I would still love to do, but at this point I felt that coming back to Hellchick would give me a chance to prove some things to myself. She's been modeled by quite a few people over the years so I'm going to deviate from the concept and give it some of my own flavor. I also want to push it more towards the skillsets I would like to develop. I'm going to go a lot heavier with the demonic organics, and will probably add more tech to her than she currently has because those are the two areas where I really want to shine.

In the end I will be referencing all of the work Paul did for her, along with some of his other Quake 4 Strogg stuff with the hope that it keeps a distinctly, "Pauly" type flava.

Here's the first pass rough in. It's still missing plenty of parts, and I'm still trying to nail down the proportions/horn configuration.

Wolverine Levels

My level art from X-men Origins: Wolverine. I assembled these levels using individual assets created by the many talented artists on our team. My job was to bring all of these pieces together into a solid composition that looks great but is still functional with regards to gameplay.

We're generally given a vacant level by the design team made out of blocks which represent the playable space. From there it's deciding the look and mood of the room, dressing the environment with models, lighting the maps, all while keeping gameplay and performance in mind.

Big thanks to Gus and Dinges for dealing with all of my questions and showing me the ropes. I'm real proud of the work we did on this game!