Dark District I

So. It's been almost a year since my last update. I'm not sure anyone still visits to see this post but a couple weeks after my last update I was injured in a large hit-and-run car accident. I've spent the last 9+ months recovering and it's only very recently that my back has been well enough to do work outside my job. During this time, I worked on a sci-fi mobile game at Kabam called Dark District for about 6 months. Here's a selection of work from it with more to come later.

I did a broad variety of work for this project: concepts for environment and building designs, 3D models and textures, skybox paintings, and a few promotional images. Below is a skybox for an industrial environment.

Godfather: Brooklyn

While updating my portfolio a few weeks ago, I discovered that I never posted any of my work for The Godfather's Brooklyn expansion. I was really dissatisfied with my work on this release when it initially launched but came to like it months later. I did the neighborhood background plate and two racket buildings (Brooklyn Bridge and Greenwood Cemetery). The lower right corner is empty because the user interface covers that area. The factory, firehouse block, and estate were done by other artists. The shoreline is plain so that waves could be animated over it.

Dragons of Atlantis: Cloud Outpost

Over the last 2+ years, I've primarily worked on The Godfather: Five Families. Occasionally I'm asked to help out with another project for a little while.

This is the Cathedral I did for Dragons of Atlantis' Cloud Outpost. It offers some kind of health boost or healing property.

Below are the thumbnails I did for the Cathedral. They're pretty basic.

On a related note, my time on The Godfather has come to an end. I'll probably be asked to contribute a few pieces of art from time to time but I've been moved to another game team and look forward to sharing art from that game later this year.

Kabammers

Here's a page I did of some coworkers at an all-hands meeting. Lower left of the right page is Mclean Kendree, who used to be my intern and upper right of the same page is Eddie Lucero.

Below: BART sketches. I don't draw on BART as often as I used to because it's harder for me to get seats at the times I normally ride it and I get tired of drawing people looking at their smartphones, which is 95% of everyone on the train at any given time.

Godfather: Chinatown

This has been sitting in my unpublished posts for 2 months. I guess it would help to publish.

I did initial concepts for Godfather's 6th estate, Chinatown, back in November of last year. However, I had to pass those concepts off to a few other artists since the project straddled my trip to India and Paris. When I returned they passed me back what they'd done while I was gone and I painted the 4th levels of all the buildings and went over everyone's work to make them all look like they were painted by the same hand.

Here's the level I painted (level 4). The buildings are 95% my own paint and the background plate was done by John Brassell.

Below: Concept sketches for Chinatown. I proposed that instead of having 10 different buildings that correspond to different functions (like we always did with our expansion estates) we instead make each floor of a building or set of buildings correspond to those functions. This way, we could maintain a more realistic, cramped, New York City feel.

Below: These are the more polished sketches I passed off to be modeled in 3D right before I left the country.

Below: Color comps for possible Chinatown moods. We picked the middle left comp and they did the final estate painting based on it. As you can see, they stuck pretty close to what I left them with.

Below: This is the breakdown guide for the modeler. He needed to know which elements were separate pieces so they could be upgraded in a modular way and rendered out separately for the artists to paint over and export.

This was a very strange release for me given that I wasn't present for a month of the production. There wasn't a single bit of artwork for this expansion that wasn't touched by my hand. I went over everything in the neighborhood view as well (not pictured), which included a background plate and 4 racket buildings. I had to adjust the background plate to fit the style better and expand the view. The racket buildings needed to be adjusted to fit the background plate again too. Overall I was pleased with the results.

Godfather: Atlantic City

Here are my contributions to the Atlantic City neighborhood expansion for Godfather: Five Families. These were done in summer 2012.

I created the look of the estate. I painted the estate background and three of the levels: 11, 10, and (I think) 7. I painted the beach barren so that waves could be animated over it. Jason Courtney designed the buildings themselves... he was switched to another team mid-project and I took over where he left off.

And here are the color comps I painted for the estate:

And here's the final color comp, which is a composite of two of the above:

Porto Casimir Thumbnails

I normally don't share concept sketches that aren't done for work but as I'm not doing sketchbook studies as often as I used to, I thought I'd share these thumbnails I did for an upcoming personal project. Maybe you'll see one of these as a full illustration in a few weeks. These are of a fictional city called Porto Casimir.