WEEK 7: Last but not least

This week marks the beginning of the end. Throughout this past week I have been working on my last project of the year. Having definitely decided that I want to be an environment artist when I leave uni, I thought the right, and obvious move would be to go for the realistic environment project. End on a high.

Having completed the last project in ample time, I wanted to give myself a challenge. This project was challenge enough. A new 3rd person run & gun action game is being planned. One of the levels in the game takes place on the rooftop of a New York City building. I would have to create this rooftop.

From the very beginning the idea of what I wanted to make was excessive. Knowing what I could do in 3 weeks (thanks to the previous two projects), I didn’t think this would be a problem.

The first day of this week was spent gathering references of New York rooftops, I put together a simple asset list of a couple dozen generic rooftop assets I could model. Having seen what other students produced for this project I wanted to produce something a little different while still following the main outlines of the brief.

The next following days of this first week were spent creating a white box of the roof and painting over a few layouts I put together. I knew early on that I wanted to have a real feel of verticality, the reasoning behind a multi-tier environment. Another aspect that went into the layout of the rooftop was story. I wanted my level to be interesting, to tell a story as the player traverses the rooftops. I mentioned in previous blog post that a major theme I wanted present in my fmp is foliage. Again, I used this project to test the waters. While looking for rooftop reference I came across an image of concept art for ‘The Last of Us’. Ever since that moment I’ve been trying to recreate the mood and atmosphere that the images convey.

I would love to work for a company like Naughty Dog in the future, to work on games such as Uncharted and The Last of Us. I’ve heard from several people that it’s wise to target your portfolio to companies you want to work for, with this in mind, I wanted my level to feel like a level from the last of us from the very beginning. At the very least, I would use the game as a bench mark for the ascetics of my level.

Next week I will begin modelling and texturing the majority of my asset list.