Pt1 - Shrunken head in progress.

evolution

kite surf

terrain concept

This is some concept art of terrain for a new game coming out this fall, perspective is a bit off but gets the idea across.

Eastern Sunset

Characters designed for awards show

Some rough sketches for colorful characters

Open World Layouts and Design

The images below are from prepro planning for Skate 3. The

First three are high level world maps that I presented to producers and game designers. Everyone has different pictures in their heads for what their game world could be like and sometimes is great just putting down different layouts.  I also took into account having parts of the map set aside for DLC or downloadable content.  This part is similar to urban planning, to make a city feel real the geography needs to tell a story, e.g if it is a ocean town vs a mining town. 

The image below goes now into the maps above and is a layout of a individual district within the game world. With these gameplay flow through the district is key as well as spreading out contests or challenges. I brainstorm a lot with google earth and collage pics together this sketch is the outcome of that. And usually think of natural terrain that the city grew around first. In this case the river and mountains were there first then the city grew around the university and freeways.

The next two images go farther into the map, showing large lots or areas within a district these are now able to show actual gameplay and detailed game design. I usually bring these to area kickoff meetings. It is great to come to a meeting with ideas going, it can get people pumped up and I keep these loose so that they are not looked at as a final but as part of the brainstorming. 

EA Skate 3 Concept Art for Urban Spillway and Central Plaza

Above are two concepts for an urban spillway. The idea
was to create most skateboarding gameplay possible. Many real cities use drainage areas as parkways
for pedestrians. It makes the virtual downtown in 
Skate 3 unique, and gives it a modern feel.Below is a screenshot of the final urban spillway in downtown Port Carverton.

Branching off of the spillway are different lots of the downtown.
Below are some rough planning sketches for the central plaza. I had about 10 days max to design each lot, it was a lot of quick sketches and on the fly meetings with producers & designers. Many of the lots in Skate 3 had specific modeling schedules, a modeler may have seven days or less to model gameplay for each lot. If the design was too elaborate it could get cut and if not elaborate enough would be a boring location so was a tight target to hit each time. Often I was working on two locations at a time. So paying attention to the clock and working close with game designers as well as constant communication made the design of Skate 3 a success.

Below are two in game screen shots.

Investigating the Crater

pastel comp

        This is a rough comp for a cave, it is chalk pastel on black paper and some
photoshop.

modern skatepark

Modern skatepark concept for EA skate2.

prison boxing arena

           Concept for EA Chicago for the game Fight Night.

Astro Boy

This was art made for a film pitch for Astro Boy.

After Final Fantasy movie Square was looking to do other features.

 It was great fun working on something as stylized as Astro Boy.
 The film went through two other production companies before it was made recently by Imagi Studios.

lock up the booze...

shedding skin

In High School I learned how to make monster masks. And really got into Sculpting.  Working in 3d is a great way to get into and flush out a idea.  

New skatedeck design for EA Skate 3

If you click on it you can see it closer.

Skate deck design for EA Skate 3 game

Just finished this skateboard design for our marketing dept.
I sketched it much bigger (one and a half size bigger than average skateboard deck) on vellum and inked it by hand (can do this precise type work much faster 
by hand than on the computer) and then colored it using Photoshop.
Start to finish two days.  You can click on it to see it close up.

Gaia from Final Fantasy

 I did some New Years cleaning and found some older art, this was from 1998, it was for Final Fantasy Spirits Within, It is a chalk pastel on black paper drawing of Gaia, the energy of mother earth. In the film it talks about the earth as a living organism and how it controls the balance of all things on our planet.

Skate2 projects and Skate 3 mall concepts.

Skate2 concept for under housing projects.

                        Above was a sketch for outdoor mall for Skate 2. It didn't fit into the scope of the project but the mall made it into Skate 3, concepts are below.

                                  

Above is a the final gameplay and design layout.  I built the location in sketch up and was able with sketchup to workout the gameplay with designers and producers, I had a total of 8 days to design the area. From blue sky ideas to a production worthy design.  It also had to be designed so that a modeler could model it in set amount of time. So was a tight target and feel proud about a lot of the work.

360 sky matte painting

These are three 360 degree paintings for two EA games.  The images are only 256 x 2048 pixels.  At first I was painting at double resolution but once we were iterating in game I began iterating one to one.  It was difficult going from film matte painting to working in games, it forced me to aim for a great image working with a low resolution image. A lot of impressionistic "down at the pixel level" painting (the contrail was made with a one pixel brush).

Above shows how I started a painting for a camera move first I took screen

grabs of entire move, you end up with a strange shaped image. Then sketched out perspective.( a tool was written later that would spit out a giant shape stitched together that was a bit quicker).Below is a different shot but shows a more finished image also with a similar camera move.