--As for character art, I switched over in 2006 and was the first 'exclusive' character artist at Suckerpunch. Prior to this they had animators modeling characters and rigging them while texture artists textured them. There was still a long haul from where i jumped on to the end product. Tons of iteration on pipelines, logistics, organization, pedestrian protocal, technology, etc. It wasn't until probably the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2008 that we settled into a set construction rhythm (up to the end we'd continually get features or better scripts or shaders).
--This was a challenging project for me. We had 2 character artists for most of the project and our deadlines were sometimes exceptionally short. Due to the overall scope of the game and Design challenges, we had to be clever about how we reused assets during the construction process. In the end there aren't many pieces i haven't touched in some manner and there aren't many pieces i personally did that weren't also touched by the other character artist. The touchup and iterative process was more a question of who had time to do what and when, as opposed to individual asset ownership.
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I'm only going to show a couple of images here of my favorite pieces from Infamous and a few videos of ingame assets.
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This first image is the second full character i created for infamous complete from start to finish:
Trish - fourth quarter 2007
DETAILS:
-roughly 12k triangles
-2.8 MB texture budget (diffuse/spec/normal/AO + some custom shader masks)
*There are several diffuse maps since each major piece had to essentially
have it's own set of textures for re-usability
-I did not make the shoes
-Programs Used: maya, mudbox, photoshop
-this image is using proprietary shaders in the maya hardware viewport with 1 light
added
-construction time: 4 weeks
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This is the First Sons conduit. He's fed this sort of gas that alters his physical nature and enables him to be a conduit for channeling powers. His body was started from a basemesh created by someone else for an asset that was never used. The proportions are as intended by the concept to portray the conduit's physical distortion from gassing as well as a nice silhouette change to help differentiate him from other characters on screen. I sculpted and textured everything on this character.
First Sons Conduit - fourth quarter 2008
DETAILS:
-roughly 13k triangles
-1 MB texture budget (diffuse/spec/normal/ao + some custom shader masks)
-Programs Used: maya, mudbox, photoshop
-images were done at home w/out the correct proprietary shaders in maya hardware screenshot with 4 lights
- video footage of character in game
-construction time: 4 weeks
here's some in game video, captured from a ps3 using a video camera! it's very hi-tech
VIDEO:
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RANDOM VIDEOS:
Below are some other video captures of a couple other characters I did. Unfortunately because of proprietary rigs and tools i was not able to recover the files at home and show them as stills and wireframes.
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Junk Gang Conduit:
The first video is of the Junk Gang Conduit. He started out being a 3 week project but halfway through there were some design complications. The concept artist rethought the concept and I was able to pull this guy together in time to meet the deadline. I gathered a few pieces from existing models and modified them along with adding new content to come up with what you see. We knew what we were going to do for effects from a previous worked on character (the Trash Golem) so i was able to implement the physical fx pieces for our fx guy to setup. The junk spiders you see coming out of him I created for a later deadline.
VIDEO:
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Trash Golem:
This next video is of the Trash Golem. This piece was a fun collaborative back and forth character to work on. It was initially block concepted out in 3d so the animators could know how it was going to open and close and move. It went through a few iterations of that phase before it was handed off to me where i filled it out and hefted the silhouette a bit while keeping to the functionality and needs of animators and designers. I worked with the character AD, designers and fx guy to coalesce this piece into it's final form. Initial construction was 5 weeks but there were 2-3 weeks long afterwards that were spent wrestling this beast into budget (initially not really known, and after animations/fx/implementation were finally added, we had a good notion of where it needed to be).
the final result is somewhere around 14k triangles w/out physical fx pieces.
VIDEO:
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Alden Trash Monster:
This last video i have from Infamous is of the Alden Trash Monster boss bridge fight. This thing was originally created in first quarter 07 for a proof of concept demo for Sony. It has been tweaked and optimized several times since. The head has had 2 or 3 iterations and this final one was done by the other character artist. After we finalized the look of the trash golem we stabbed at this guy again to match his look more to the Golem itself. I don't remember how much time i spent on this character. It was the longest iterated single character in the game outside of the main character. It's budget was pretty insane too. It was treated as it's own environment area loadout basically so there was a lot of space.
VIDEO:
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-all images, from stills and video, in this post are from Sucker Punch's - Infamous for PS3
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