Dion Aryana - Entry 2024 | TD Generalist

This was my take on a dwarven forge. It was inspired by LOTR, I really love the concept of enormous sprawling cities all hidden away below ground. It is also very Norse themed with every symbol, rune, or carving taken from rock carvings, a lot of time in photoshop and a couple renditions from Jonas Lau Markussen who is absolutely amazing at what he does and I cannot stress how much his art helped me.

I made this project in roughly 1 and a half to 2 months to try and squeeze in one more project before the Rookies submission date. it is unfinished but completed to the best of my ability under time pressure as its super hard to find the time to work on personal projects between work and other responsibilities. I experimented with blender as it's a software I have left almost untouched since I picked up maya and Zbrush upon starting my degree. although that led to some complications in the rendering stage as some very vital parts of rendering are quite different to set up in blender leaving me to fix a bunch of issues that pushed rendering further and further back it did also help me learn a bunch about the software. This was also my first time using USD and Substance stager, which are both incredibly powerful in their own right and I'm incredibly happy I got the opportunity to learn them. Specifically USD I cannot explain how much use I got out of USD from setting up the variants for spears/halberds to the lights and textures being almost perfect from switching between software, only running into minor issues which I could fix within minutes. I even popped my scene into unreal as I planned to try and render it in every mainstream software to try and push its limits but I ran out of time before being able to finish that goal. 

I actually planned to Only make this hammer asset before the deadline, I poured my heart and soul into trying to make it look authentic to what Mjolnir might look like based off descriptions in the Edda's, with my own spin, a lot of Jörmungandr depictions in the mural areas of the hammer and a snake grip holder I figured was a nice nod to their inevitable fight in Ragnarök. Once I was done I really wanted to stage the hammer and started planning until I eventually lost all control and made an entire scene instead which I almost managed to squeak out on time. If I was to do this project again I think I definitely would have put experimentation on the back foot, it is okay since this is portfolio work and has helped me learn heaps about certain software. But in a work setting cutting it this close to the deadline and having a 80% completed project is definitely not what I want.   

Dnd is something I really fell in love with near the end of my degree, and it's been my goal to try and recreate scenes from that campaign that I am currently a part of. this scene in particular is how I imagine our campaign sits at the end with one of our characters committing to the use of dark powers and a vampire skull resting on the desk

This was my first project that I properly attempted after finishing my degree at MDS. I learnt so much there but I looked back at all the work I accomplished and felt like it demonstrated a lot of knowledge but no real polish or areas where I shine. I feel like this project in particular really opened my eyes to how much quality textures truly change the quality and appearance of a project