Hey everyone:)
It's been a few month since I last posted any update on my Train game environment. I keep planning to finish the project but life keeps getting in the way. Over the last two months I have packed up all of my stuff and moved to Liverpool to start a new job as an Artist at Firesprite Games. During this time I was without my PC for a month whilst I got everything sorted which meant that my personal work came to a grinding Holt. It's been a stressful move but so far it has been really worth it and the job is great.
I am now all settled in to my new place and new job which means that I have no excuse to not get the project finished! Last week I made a Trello board with all the remaining tasks that needs to be done for the project to be complete. There are a lot of tasks to do and I won't be finished with the project until the beginning on November. I have set myself the challenge of working on this project every night and weekend until it's done as I think I have been working on this project for too long now. You can see an image of my Trello board below with some of the remaining tasks:
Over the last week, I have started working on the project every night and I have made a few props in this time which you can see below.
Here, I have made the yellow railings modular kit that I can place in certain parts of the level.
I have also made this platform modular piece.
I then went on to make a AC Unit to place around some of the walls, I'm also going to make some pipes and cables to go with this.
I then made the pillars that going in the middle of the train tracks, I'm going to make a rust texture and vertex paint this on to the prop in game so I can get more variation to each pillar.
With these cardboard boxes, I will set them up in unreal so that you can change the colour and the dirt amount, that way they can be a nice modular pack that will help fill out the scene.
Moving forward, I will start to update my blog more on this project and in the next two months there will be a lot more work from me to show.
You may of also noticed that I added a new portfolio piece focusing more on concept art rather than 3D environments. This is a project I did during my work dinners which you can see below:
After, I have finished my train scene, I will be starting to do a lot more concept art projects and trying to improve my skills in that area so that I am able to do the full workflow of games from the concept all the way through to the final game engine level that you can play around. I think by doing this it will make more hire-able in the future and it will improve my overall skill set. I have always been interested in concept art and it's what I originally wanted to do as a job before I started doing 3D environments, I am now hoping to use the skills that I have learnt in 3D to help me produce my concept art pieces. In the image above, I started with a 3D block out and then painted and photo bashed over the top to get the image. The one good thing about doing this method is that I can see the overall image in around 10-20 hours of work whilst if I was to model this, it would take me a few weeks to see the final result. By doing proper concept art first rather than just quick sketches that I normally do, I will be able to check and make sure the scene works before I spend weeks of my life making it into a game level.
When I first started at Firesprite, I was lucky enough to make friends with two really good concept artist who have helped me a lot with the concept side of things and given me advice and feedback on my last piece. You can check them both here:
https://www.artstation.com/jonashassibi
https://www.artstation.com/vernonzwlee
That's all I have to say for now and within the next two months you should see my train project finished.
Thanks for reading:)