Game Design Portfolio

Theirs

Theirs is an ongoing concept for a fantasy game that combines a 2D side-scrolling RPG with shoot n' loot mechanics. I've focused primarily on concept art along with refining the game's world and overarching narrative.

Character Designs

Pose & Attack experimentation

Comparing the design processes of the two main antagonists; the Manipulator and Havrill. The two play wildly different roles in the story, so it's interesting to see that reflected in their design process.

Level & Environment Concepts

Boss arena concepts

Environment concept for Resh'il, the land of monsters

Resh'il's environment is effectively a large crater from an ancient magical explosion. It's been an interesting challenge to strike the right balance between desolation and civilisation, particularly working with monsters as the subject matter.

Sandrone

Sandrone is a fan character rig I've made based on one of the characters from Genshin Impact. I was interested in modelling this character as they haven't yet been seen in game, and from other fan models I hadn't seen an attempt at the accompanying mech. It has given me a lot of experience with stylized 3D shading and more advanced rigging setups.

Sandrone art & Katheryne model by Genshin Impact, for comparison

Breakdown of Sandrone's shading setup

Geometry node setup for outline

Diffuse textures for Sandrone & the mech

In addition to the base colour, both models also use several grayscale masks to define things like metallic parts, where the rim highlight appears, or emission.

The mech also uses 2 normal maps to improve shading in some key areas. These maps are painted by me in Clip Studio same as any other textures.

The most specialised and difficult mask to create was the face shadow mask on Sandrone. Here's a few different ideas I experimented with in an effort to improve the shadows on her face.

The solution that ultimately worked was based on a method involving setting a driver to the rotation of a scene light. I was initially pretty abrasive to it as my goal was to keep the model self-contained, and felt it wouldn't be easy to transfer to other programs and raised the question of placing more than one light. After making the rig more advanced however, it occured to me I could use a bone to drive the effect, and then give the bone a rotational constraint to the lights, which I felt was a good enough compromise.

Some test poses

The dress was one of the most complicated parts to rig just because it extends below the knees. It had to be able to bend around each leg, but not always to the same extent at a given time. I experimented with multiple setups including using a central controller, IK constraints and some complex driver expressions involving if/else and max statements.

Wireframe/Albedo/Render

Sandrone is constructed in Blender 4.0
Her model consists of 16,577 tris. Her mech is 14,598 tris.
Textures were drawn using Clip Studio Paint.

Blue Ring

Blue Ring is a rig for an original boss inspired by Splatoon. The base concept was for a giant mechanical UFO that would double as both the boss and the stage. It was an interesting experience creating a non-humanoid character rig and was my first time experimenting with drivers and animated textures.

Original concept art & reference sheet

Adding the decals

Some render experiments + the inner UFO

Blue Ring's boss fight is divided between a topside battle against a wave of enemies and an underside shoot 'em up segment where you can damage the boss. The inside of its panels each have a weak point that when destroyed, will expose more of the inner UFO and alter the arena shape for the next topside phase.

Close-up shots of panel back & inside featuring painted normals

The panels were made to resemble the back of a TV monitor, with the story being they were retrofitted using the giant screens seen in the backgrounds of Splatoon's single-player levels.

Diffuse/Metallic/Roughness/Normal/Emissive/Opacity maps

Blue Ring's textures were drawn in Clip Studio Paint at 4k to match with the model's size and purpose.

Blue Ring was constructed in Blender 2.9
The model is comprised of 14,816 tris.

Pokémon Lab

The Pokémon Lab is a fan rendition of the eponymous buildings found in the Pokémon games. I experimented with modular techniques and stylized environment design.

Environment/Asset sketches

Asset list

Asset Collection

Blockout process

Prop construction

Basic lamp rig

Prop placement

Some basic diffuse textures for walls & floors

Prop Diffuse maps

Corresponding painted Normal maps

Some plush prop ideas based on my own "Pokemon" designs

Node setup for the sky. A value is keyframed and used to transition overtime between sunrise, day, sunset, night

The Pokemon lab scene was constructed in Blender 2.9

The scene is comprised of 151 assets (oddly apt)
There are 109 unique assets I constructed for this
56 texture maps across 18 materials