Something that I put on hold. Was able to put a couple of hours in it today. Hopefully, I can get through the whole model soon.

So here is the work of all that compositing. I think this could use some AD and critiquing. I’ll probably go back and re-touch it a bit – balance out some of the hot spots and add in some highlights and shadow. It’s a good foundation for some building on.

So just a bit about how I work. Typically, I’ll start with a series of thumbnails. Then pick the cream. Narrow that down. Draw up a “finalish” sketch and start the model from there. Once the model is complete, in my mind, I’ll start to texture. Since this particular project will be 2D in it’s final output, I use this set of procedural textures that I’ve been toting around since college. Again, also because the final output is static 2D art, the procedural texturing allows me to do simple planar mapping which saves loads of time. From there, I light the scene, pretty basically for this instance, and start my renders. After all the renders are kicked out, it’s pretty much all painting and compositing in Photoshop. It’s where I work out most of the kinks. So these are the pre-composite raw renders out of Maya.

Added a piece for the player level and some end pieces to the bars for the health/mana housing. Spent about half an hour on it. Screwed some stuff up early on and had to rework it.

So I know this is minor, but force of habit develops discipline. The only real change is a braid type border around the health/mana bar housing.

So I added a housing for the bars and got rid of the extruded tips. I’ll probably put some detail on the end of the bars and add some framing to them as well before I start a texture pass.

Just another attempt at a piece for my UI. This is absolutely a WIP. Again needs some critical thinking and revision, which I’ll probably do tomorrow night. Dirt pass of the player portrait.

Some stabs at a flyer for BCM.

So again, looks like I’m off track. This time for a good cause – Katy’s new business. Thought I’d share this for anyone who’s watching..

And… The Black and white version.

So there’s been a lot going on as of late. A somewhat impairing addiction to Dragon Age (love that game) and of course work. So I’ve taken it upon myself to concept some of my own UI elements. These are mainly tests and something I’ve usually done for every project I’ve been on. At work, I do the direction that I’m mandated to do and in my free time, I do the concept that I feel strongly about. Not to say that they don’t occasionally go hand in hand. This is the action bar, the UI element that the player will interact with the most throughout the life of the game. It could be argued that it’s maps or the quest log, but I figured action bar would be a good place to start. The concept is to make the UI feel “forged” with a very raw,worn look. I looked at a bunch of other game reference and saw that most games try this, but ultimately don’t succeed. The reason is really simple – lighting and materials. Everything I looked at felt very photoshopped. So I broke out with maya and mental ray and put this together. For a first pass, I feel it’s fairly successful, although I think it still needs some revision and critical thinking. Anyhow.