wip Skyrim inspired Mass Effect armor

Looks pretty good to me

I've started on my next big personal project: Skyrim inspired Mass Effect Armor. Pardon the sketchiness of my concept, but I usually try to get my ideas out on paper as fast as possible so I can get to the 3d modeling part that much quicker. I usually have a pretty good picture in my head of what I'm going for, so if I know that I'll be modeling my own concept, the concepting stage doesn't last very long. That isn't saying I'm good at it, just that I do it quickly... So, just finishing up the low-poly modeling on the helmet and chest piece, guess I'll be moving on to the arms and legs now. And here's a couple images to show my references:

Thank you, Google Image Search

And thank you, Mass Effect Wiki

Also, Kolby Jukes, and Jaemus Wurzbach. I WANT TO WORK AT BIOWARE SO BAD!

UPDATES:

EDIT: More updates!

updating my portfolio

So remember the Demutant (demon-mutant, it's a word I made up) from last week? I added some detail to the hi-poly sculpt, retopologized it, laid out the UVs, baked out the normals and ambient occlusion, colorized it, then lit and rendered it. Funny how I only learned about half of this stuff from BYU. ha. I'm pretty impressed with how well the Maya Hardware renderer performed.

I HAZ DROD DARGON

The Year of the Dragon

This started as a really dumb idea, then it turned into an incredibly dumb waste of time. This is what happens when I try to be funny. In case any of you are wondering, Yes I drew and painted this (with consummate v's), and Yes I graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts. I could say I was going for the "style" of an elementary school student, but the truth is I'm a really crappy artist. Not like this guy. Hope you all had a happy Chinese New Year.

The original line work, just in case you wanted to see what I started with

Also, Strongbad email #58 - Trogdor. Old and cheesy, but still very relevant.

some more mudbox doodling

If I ever imagined what a personified Monday might look like

this guy's face would probably come pretty close to it. 

And he's happy to see you!

This here orc/demon/mutant thing was partly a wind-down character exercise from an intense, week-long environment art test that I just submitted to Naughty Dog. And the other part was because I've been really inspired by some amazing artwork in TES: Skyrim. Eventually, I want to use this bust to figure out some retopologizing/baking tools. Expect a colored version in the near(ish) future!

Oh, and just to show where I started from, here's an image of the "basic head" model provided by Mudbox:

mudbox doodle and some New Year's ruminations

fish face!

inspired by Mass Effect (tm)

I was playing some good 'ol Mass Effect 1 over the Christmas holiday, and I've come to realize that my greatest goal in life right now is to get a job at Bioware Edmonton working on the Mass Effect series. Up to this point, I haven't really had any particular studio that I wanted to go to. I used to think that any studio at all would be great. But after going through the process of submitting a couple of art tests to some really cool studios that I didn't really want to work at, I felt like there was something missing...

"But Bioware is one of the most successful video game studios in the world, with several of their titles earning game of the year awards! You'll never get into a studio like that, especially with the skills that you have." I have actually heard these words coming from my own brain, and the fact of the matter is: the truth hurts like a b****tch. This part of my brain is obviously very mean, but honest and quite "realistic". I am not a world-class artist; I'm not even a Provo, Utah-class artist. But even if I'm not that good right now, there's still a possibility that someday I could be, and my negative attitude for the past little bit was not helping me get there. That's what passion is for. And that is the thing that I've been missing.

So if you have yourself a few New Year's resolutions that seem a bit far-fetched, DO NOT give into those negative thoughts! Turn those goals and dreams you have into daily To-do events. Be Relentlessly Positive. That advice is from Day[9], a great Starcraft 2 shout-caster, and also a surprisingly effective life-coach. But anyways, I'll wrap this post up with some lines from the Holstee Manifesto:

This is your life. Do what you love.