It was one of the most feared predators of its time, and now it has been immortalized in photoshop! "Allosaurus" took almost three days to draw. Imagine putting yourself in the shoes of whoever is holding the viewpoint.

The Desert Stalker shares similarities with traditional beasts of fantasy and sci-fi origin, although it was initially approached with a less-is-more design strategy: no wings, less spikes, less armor (the head is the only armored area on its body). The result is a bulky creature that I hope stands out from many traditional designs yet still remains the alpha-organism in its region.

This drawing originally started off as a simple self portrait, but eventually morphed into a visual adaptation of a strange dream I had about eating cursed fruit from trees. It is probably my most colorful and vibrant drawing to date.

I wanted to draw my own twisted version of the crazy cat from Alice and Wonderland. I have been told that it is reminiscent of American Mcgee's "Alice". I was in no way inspired by that game as I have never played it.

The character is pretty much stuck to the floor for the rest of his life and has only one light source. I wanted to create an uncomfortable and slightly claustrophobic image. I used mechanical pencil.

This was one of my first photoshop paintings, done back when I was still figuring out the basics of the program. It is a portrait of a relative of my aunt's girlfriend. I had a heck of a time getting her expression down, but I think it turned out okay.

This portrait was done in mechanical pencil and took a day to finish. This is probably one of my favorite drawings because it ended up looking like the actual man himself and I think I captured an interesting expression in the eyes.

I was told that "General Fai" the Infantry General of the game needed a new heavy duty tank, similar to the "Overlord" tanks in the game already. Well with some inspiration from Dawn of War and a design similar to the Overlord tank itself, the Battlefortress was born.

The Russian Industrial site was actually from an old sketch I did long before I even joined the team. Now 2 years later with me and my friend, The_Hunter, at the helm, we decided to bring the old relic back. The Industrial site is not supposed to look like a civilian factory, but rather a bunker designed to withstand bombardment. Which explains why there are no large windows or smoke stacks.

The Kodiak Main Battle Tank is Russia's first deployable tank in Rise of the Reds. I designed the tank behind the real life T-80UM1 tank and added some new components to it. I showed reference pics to the modeler Oleg, who offered up some ideas of his own. Once the model was completed to my fancy, I textured it to completion. The_Hunter finalized the Tank by adding shading around the turret.

The RPG Tower was another of my favorite designs. When The_Hunter approached me to come up with some designs for his "Component Tower" ideas, I showed him some of my designs, including a spotlight/air raid siren known as the "Gazer," and this baby - the "RPG Tower".

This design comes from two things - First, the main body build derives from ED-209 from Robocop. I always thought its shape was imposing and threatening so I took it and made it my own. Second, I always loved the way revolvers rotate, so I slapped some rotating ammo drums on the Grenade launchers to create the RPG Tower for Russia.

As our progress continued with "Rise of the Reds", we realized we were still using the old Russian Logo from when the project first started. So one day I sat down, created a new logo in Photoshop, and showed it to my friend (The_Hunter). He modeled it in 3D, and I textured the final product. On this logo I went for a more Battle Field 2-ish design, mixed with the gritty, industrial theme of our Russian faction.

This is the design concept that got me into Rise of the Reds! This old relic was an original design for the Tremor AGAS (Advanced Ground Artillery System) - the Russian superweapon. Originally the team was planning to create a dome-like housing with doors that would open to expose the cannon. Not knowing they were already working it, I proposed this completely different design. I didn't find out about the dome concept till after I was accepted into the project.

The Tremor AGAS cannon is housed underground, once it is summoned to the surface, an elevator will bring up the mammoth cannon and it's blast doors will open.

Lighting, Shading and Texturing

The Works
I have learned much from this class, more than I actually anticipated. To really encompass how much I have learned in this class, to put it simply, we learned a completely new 3D package from a polygon cube to a fully lighted and textured scene. This class did exceed my expectations, when I first entered the class I had expected to use 3DS Max or Maya, not XSI. Before this class I did not even know about XSI nor did I know how to use it and by the end of the semester not only did I actually become comfortable using it but I eventually loved it as well. I could go on and on about its features, but all you would need to know is that these features make this 3D software shine from the rest and I'm very exited to learn more from it – especially UV Unwrapping! From the skills I developed, lighting was one that I vastly improved from when I first came into the class. It was way back in high school when I last messed with lighting, back then I was only taught how to place lighting and nothing more. I ended up just adding one big "sun" light, added some lights to light-creating objects and called it a day. In this class I've learned to take it a step further and actually use the lights to "paint the scene" by adding fill lights, rim lights and simply add lights for the heck of it. These methods and procedures have not only changed my way of thinking but has also given me references for whenever I create a 3D object or scene with lighting and even a new map. I now take these things into consideration and I can only say I am very satisfied with the class.

Light Placement
I have 12 lights on the scene, all placed specifically to light up certain areas with the purpose of creating shadows and light. Fill lights and small about of rim lights are seen in the scene. I've added two volumetric lights with a hint of dust in the air giving it a gesture of a dusty environment. The yellow tint given to the lights give a sense of worn out light fixtures and further compliment the dusty environment. Overall I'm very satisfied with the results though as always, more could be done to improve it. "An artists work is never finished, it is simply abandoned in favor of another project." I never learned where that came from but ever since I had heard that, it has stuck and even now I've begun to understand the meaning even more. I did run into one problem however

The Tree is just a concept piece. It took me about 20 minutes using a drawing tablet with Photoshop.

The creation of this detective office was inspired by the movie Chinatown, which is one of my favorite mystery movies. However, the office of the detective in the movie had a very clean, tidy office; it conflicted with my idea of a detective that suffers from paranoia and is somewhat self-destructive. The detective I wanted to portray in this scene is one that's obsessed with the case first and foremost, and will not stop pushing himself until he solves it.

The objective for this project was to create a humorous add for an original product. I was originally going to go for a "Universal Power Supply," but I heard some classmates talking about a completely different subject that somehow gave me this idea instead...

In "Lighting, Shading, and Texturing" with Jeremy Roden, our objective was to model a single scene, and spend the rest of the semester refining that same scene.

I struggled with finding a good direction to take this project for a while, but in the end, I settled on giving the room a "boarding-school" look. I feel there is a lot of improvement that could still be made, but I ran out of time.

I guess that's what school is all about... Learning... One of the major things I keep learning is that I must manage my time better, or I'll always struggle to finish things on time.

In my "Level Design" group project, I helped create an underground inverted pyramid level with a temple in the center. I created particle effects for torches and braziers, and I built the lower half of the temple.

These screenshots are not of that level. Toward the end of the semester in "Digital Imaging," we were given the opportunity to produce several creative pieces that could be any kind of "digital" image. At this point, I was somewhat overwhelmed with my work so... I decided to take my previous artwork for the semester and stick it up on the walls of the level I had made earlier...

It turns out I spent at least as much time on this as I've spent on any other project... But I've now created a separate gallery from the original level. This room is modeled after the interior space of the temple, but I've made changes. Also, for what it's worth, I didn't just copy/paste the picture frames - they're all different sizes ;-)

This is a picture I took of my wife's uncle... What makes this picture interesting to me, is how I was able to take an ordinary looking picture and give it a sentimental and artistic feel.

The camera I used for this picture was .3 megapixel or so... very crappy... So I have been experimenting with how I can make the pictures I take with it look nice. This is by far my most successful attempt to date.

What I like about this image is how the black & white works with the patterns and facial expression to make it feel old - I feel like I'm looking at a picture from the 1920's. Except it's a picture of someone I know, taken only a few weeks ago...