Resistance 2 Pride and Joy

This is our version of the Sabre. I don't have much to say except for this was and still is my favorite piece. It was my first ever vehicle and I can't thank everyone enough who helped me during the time I was working on it. Love this plane.

Yance

Iceland 2 Chimeran Interior

About 30 m below ground or something rediculous lies the Chimeran Node Interior. I struggled with this. I won't lie. Chimeran architecture is an artform all it's own! At this point during my career I was hell bent on "characterizing" my environments. I say that because we're often in a hurry to create our environments and get them polished up. It's the nature of the beast. We ship a game a year and we pride ourselves on that! With the Node interior I attempted an experiment to make the entire level modular. In my opinion it was largely a success! But it came with many growing pains for me as an artist. I knew I had to make it modular if I wanted to characterize my pieces meaning I would take a little extra time on each piece and make it really special. This of course would not allow the time for a lot of pieces to be made so I worked with my designer to sort of balloon straw the level into manageable pieces. Balloonstrawing a level means that we break up the work load by creating high quality rooms seperated by modular corridors or whatever. Though this seams like it would be wholely linear gameplay it's actually quite easy to provide choice or the illusion of it with modular systems. Many of the columns were done with nice high to low models and the floors were a combination of that and zbrush. I've fully integrated zbrush into my environment pipeline as of the day of this writing and it all started by characterizing my environment. Some people knock modular systems and it's really a matter of preference. I can't say it's the optimal solution for every situation. But the Node was a very special place with very special circumstances and limitations. In the end the art turned out great and the experiment was worth the growing pains.

Resistance 2 Iceland 2

Iceland 2 was a massive undertaking. Two-thirds of which I'm not showing you here because the rest of my team burned rubber creating it. There was an army base battle, a natural battelfield, and the Node. I was tasked with everything Chimeran in the environment for this level. We again had a large land mark called The Chimeran Node. I have to give props to my buddy Jason Anderson http://www.jasoncanderson.com for helping me along with this. We started Resistance prototyping this bad boy and I finished it up. I enjoy these projects because they're challenging and sometimes I feel like a magician because I'm working every angle to create the illusion of granduer while still trying to work under the limits of our engine and budget. The Node was made up of maybe 20 pieces. Each was constructed in a way to provide the optimum amount of reuse. Of course one can see that this is created from like materials and modular parts. But the hope was that we could make each piece feel a little different than the next. This way we could provide quality art in very little time.

Twin Falls Towers Interiors

I wanted to add a couple shots of the interior. I'm not sure these hold up to code but I'm fairly certain I got it pretty close;).

Twin Falls Gun Towers

Twin Falls came with a special project. A set of massive gun towers protecting the region. These were a lot of fun to produce and took some innovative thinking on our part. In the end I think we captured the right scope and scale. Unfortunately due to time constraints we weren't able to do all that we hoped for in the towers. Maybe we'll revisit them again.

Decal Work

During the final phase of production I was asked to do decals for our effects department. This for me was a wonderful opportunity because it really let me explore and learn something new. I did many different decals from explosions to bullet holes; and my personal favorite: blood splatter. The most interesting decal though was the bullet wounds I created for our soldiers and Chimera. I took special care in these because I really wanted them to look realistic. I did lots of gruesome research and with final reference I went into Zbrush and carved out several different gun shot wounds! It was some of the most fun i've had! From the sculpt I was able to extract every map necessary to give the wounds their proper depth! I never thought playing with blood could be so much fun!;)

Yance

Twin Falls Idaho 2

Hey Everyone,

So I did a lot of detail and foundation work in the town for Twin Falls. I was in charge of shoring up the streets and foundations and giving the sidewalks a makeover. Every power line, pole, stop sign, streetlight, fire hydrant, man hole, street lines; you name it I placed it and most of it I built and textured. I found myself really telling a story with the town of Twin Falls. We really wanted it to feel like a 1950s zombie flick with monsters! We got all the zombies we could ask for but we really tried to play up the existence of the Mother Spinner without giving her totally away. As I said earlier I made a brand new library of blood decals that were used to tell stories in small chunks through out the game play (Zombie bride murder suicide? Used Car salesman anybody?). It was a great way to stay motivated through, what can be, a tedious process of set dressing. If you look at the ground which we found people often do you'll see large cracks in the sidewalk and streets hinting at the presence of something big!!! It was a real opportunity for our team who were very passionate about getting the environment to feel era appropriate! I did a building or two but specialized mainly in signage as you can see above.

The first building you encounter is a Chinese restaurant and the flickering Chop Suey sign was inspired by my buddy Steve. Who quickly did an awesome crayon drawing for me on a piece of scratch paper which I had him sign and it remains posted behind my desk to this day! We tried to come up with a campy result with several of our signs and "CHOP SUEY" flickers to be "CHOP U";). Cheese!!! Along those same lines if you're playing through the town I also did custom lettering for the Diner which flickers to "DI*E*":).

The second image illustrates the first major retail building I did called "Oglesby's." It was designed to be a dimestore but the gameplay called for a larger building and we turned it into a Dillons or a Ralphs of today. The custom 3d sign was a nice challenge! I hadn't done a lot of signage like this before R2 so it was a great experience!

The last picture shows the gas station. We all loved the gas station because more than any other building we felt it captured the period for our environment. I wasn't responsible for texturing but I built it from scratch and it was a real good time because we knew once we got that piece in there it would totally help set the mood. I built the large sign "Gooch's Gas" for the gas station and again that required some custom lettering.

Thanks for reading!

Yance

Twin Falls Idaho 1

Above are three screenshots from the Suburb portion of Twin Falls. I was in charge of the game play houses which were the only houses you actually entered. I built all the game play houses and textured them. I left college not having pursued any type of architecture degree because I HATE MATH. But I've quickly found that as an environment artist I have to be pretty well rounded in a variety of disciplines including architecture, landscaping, lighting, and plumbing (shout out to Grandpa!). The houses were a unique challenge because in a virtual world we work with different rules . . . some of those rules can be bent; others broken . . . but not here. Nope houses are houses and these had to be structurally fit and also satisfy game play requirements.

You'll notice the top picture is an unfinished basement. I purposely made it that way because I liked the feeling of it. With the spinner webbing it was creepy and spooky especially when it was filled with waist high water. Unfortunately what I didn't take into consideration was the fact that we have no sheet rock and if you have no sheet rock the fundamental structure of the basement has to make sense or the house doesn't hold up. I was complimented many times on both the insanity and dedication it takes to make basements in a virtual world up to code. Big thanks to Marcus S. for the encouragement!!! Love ya' man!

The next image shows a kitchen I worked on. This was a special place where Mommy, Daddy, little Ricky and Susan got ambushed by a couple of grim zombies!!! It was also the set of a cut scene and I payed extra special attention to the story in this area. I developed a brand new set of blood decals for Resistance 2 which were used extensively in Twin Falls as well as other areas of the game. I'm not going to lie to you blood spatter is an art. People build careers on studying them. You can literally discover a story with just how the blood sprays. In any case if you're in this kitchen look for the story because I took extra care with this family.;)

The third and final picture shows a family room. I built an awesome TV for these rooms along with fans and other props. It was a real treat dressing these houses because not one of them is the same and each one tells some kind of horrific story that these people went through. We had several limitations on these but I managed to make them very detailed and feel "lived in." These were a lot of fun to detail. I love set dressing and this was the ultimate because I had four giant houses to detail!

To see a detailed run through check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TfpnJ2Vx0c by overlord73.

Yance

Welcome to Resistance 2

Today I'll start posting some screenshots of Resistance 2; our sequel to Resistance: Fall of Man. Resistance 2 was a massive production for us at Insomniac Games. It was both challenging and exciting because we had a lot of issues to think about and new things we wanted to try! I did a lot of environment work for R2 so I thought I'd post some of the highlights for you guys! I worked primarily on 2 levels: Twin Falls and Iceland 2. They were needless to say complete opposites of each other. Twin Falls Idaho was a throw back to 1950s small town suburbs and that was quite a treat for someone who grew up in a 1980-90s Kansas small town suburb! On Iceland 2 I was dedicated to a massive Chimeran Node both exterior and interior and I'll get to that in a bit.
I'm very proud of the work we did on Twin Falls. We used a lot of reference and we did our best to stay true to the small town feel of this tragic city overtaken by the Chimera. In our universe Twin Falls is the location of a set of Anti-Aircraft batteries that the Chimera were trying to destroy. It was hopeless to move their giant ships into the heartland without first destroying them. What follows is the work I did in the town and the town square! If you haven't played Resistance 1 or 2 yet they're quite good and worked our butts off on 'em so if you ever have an inkling to blast some aliens Resistance is your chance! Anyway off to some screens! Thanks for reading!

Yance

Iris Supercomputer 3

These are 3 screenshots of the supercomputer interior that I worked on. I built, textured, and animated everything you see in the environment! I'd also like to post this video of the clank segment by JONOVID so you get the full experience!! Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1mFCM79vX0

Yance

Iris Supercomputer 2

This shot features the opening to Iris. After fighting your way through several ships and venturing deeper into the ice the player encounters this entrance. Everything but the ice is mine; built and textured by me. This was my breakout moment. I was put in charge of an entire section of a level. The best part is that it was designed entirely around Clank, Ratchet's sidekick!

Yance

Iris Supercomputer 1

Iris was a very large project for my team. We had a lot of specific game play areas that needed special attention with very little time for error. This opening shot shows a large amount of my work. Everything I built I also textured. Iris is a giant super computer that is encased in a large comet flying through space! We had no real way of conveying movement. So I built a sky dome with scrolling uvs to help give the feeling we were on a comet! The idea was a bit vague due to the size of the level. In the image above you'll see of course the sky dome. I also built the large building in the background which was supposed to symbolize Iris' casing. The dark blue ice trees in front, the ship to the right (you might recognize because Slag has come to take Iris!) and the godrays! The godrays (or sun rays) were really fun because it truly was a unique custom piece just for this level and i thought really really sold the opening shot!

Yance

Slag's Fleet 4

This is my pride and joy of the level. I built this whole ship and did about 90% of the textures for it including the decks and the hull below. This ship had many design specifications that required a special kind of crazy to get it to work and it was, in my humble opinion, the best game play segment in the level. In this segment you would hijack this ship and ride it around the fleet while other ships (of similar design which I built) would come up along side you and fire cannons onto the deck!! On top of that more robot pirates would jump down to you and it was quite a lot of fun!!:)

Yance

Slag's Fleet 3

This image demonstrates the scope of the level. I was put in charge of creating several planetary bodies for this area. What you see below is a planet I modeled that is massive; damn near to scale. I've become quite well known for how often I break our systems by pushing the limits of our tech! Shout out to Rachel and Chris for keeping me up and running! You guys are the best!

Yance

Slag's Fleet 2

This shot shows Slag's Flag ship which I built. There are a few textures that belong to me mostly the lights and the canopy pieces at the front of the ship. This level also had a lot of modeling logistics that had to be worked out in order for the gameplay to function. Slags ship was a monster with multiple points of attack and "arena" gameplay on a much smaller surface than we normally use.

Yance

Slags Fleet 1

Hey Everyone,

First off happy Valentines day to everyone! I subjected myself to Confessions of a Shopaholic among other things but I made it and we had fun! I wanted to post some more screenshots today for you all. This first one is our opening shot for the level Slag's Fleet. This particular opening shot was difficult due to the starting location of the player but we eventually found a happy medium! Slag's Fleet took place in space while in orbit of a giant planet INSIDE A NEBULA. It had many challenges but was definitely a great learning experience:).

Yance

Imperial Fight Festival Screenshot 3

This is the interior for the building in the previous shot. This was our grav boot challenge for the festival. There were different saw mechanisms which I constructed and textured. The player has to run down a gauntlet of saw blades and barriers and exit safely. The trick was that the player had to do it while magnetically attached to spinning sections of the tube. It was a real trip! Again they reserved me for the more technical modeling aspects of this level that required not only aesthetics but functionality. This level was tough but fun! I was an architect and mechanic all in one!

Imperial Fight Festival Screenshot 2

This shot shows a giant building I constructed. This building was a facade housing one of the most fun challenges in RCF! However I still wanted it to be interesting even though it was behind you for most of the opening segments in the level. On top of constructing the building facade I took a little time and built the radar dishes for the roof and animated them to spin slowly to provide nice movement for the background!

Imperial Fight Festival Screenshot 1

Imperial Fight Festival was a fun level riddled with complex gameplay mechanics. In RCF we constructed certain segments to fall back to 2d gameplay. The camera would lock and you'd have to platform through an area. The shot above shows a giant ferris wheel in the background that I constructed utilizing that very specific gameplay. It went through many changes to make it fun and playable but in the end I thought was a huge success! I also constructed the two towers to the right of it. Those are swingshot . . . swings! Hehe. Again I did very little texturing for this level. Mostly just construction.

Sargasso Screenshot 3

This is the gelatonium plant! This is the interior of the big building in the previous shot. I modeled everything in this room. Textures were done by my buddy Nathaniel. This room had a lot of gameplay requirements which required constant tweeking. It was a great first experience!

A video showing the interior by DerfsonicGaming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF8h3pTZEjo

Sargasso Screenshot 2

This next shot shows the first building i did for Ratchet and Clank. There is also a couple cranes placed in front of it. The building was a unique challenge due to the specific game play inside so i started from the inside out. I didn't do any of the textures for the structures in this image. I was in charge of modeling only for this level.

Sargasso Screenshot 1

Hey everyone,

This is our opening shot for Sargasso in Ratchet and Clank Future. I worked on the trees (occluded by rocks) and some vines and grass placement in this scene. We had a great time working with color and atmosphere on this level and it went through several iterations before we decided on a very lovely color scheme and time of day. I think it comes across really nicely and the rest of the level follows suit!

Sargasso

Hey guys,
So here is a collection of screens for Sargasso which was one of the levels featured in Ratchet and Clank Future. It's basically a dinosaur world, so we had a really good time thinking about how it should look given the life that would be inhabiting it:). Sargasso was my first venture into the world of Ratchet and it was then, and still remains a challenge to get the right mix of cartoon and stylized construction with regard to the real world. Everything in Ratchet is a little over the top and a little skewed to some extent, and it's always fun trying to find the right balance so we maintain a fun and colorful world without pushing it past the point of believability and functionality. At least that's my take. As I said it was a challenge (albeit fun) but I was hired primarily for Resistance due to my hyper realistic modeling and textures. I'm a perfectionist and I always try to be very methodical when creating real world objects and environments. As I always say, "Our environments should be invisible because if they're distracting our audience in some unintended nature something is wrong."
With Ratchet we can be a little more free when it comes to construction and suspension of disbelief. For me this has been a pretty big hurdle to overcome, however I think I've succeeded in multiple ways. The screenshots below aren't new, but they might be new someone who has not played Ratchet. If you haven't then you really are missing out on a lot of fun. You could see this as a shameful plug (take it as you wish). I truly believe at Insomniac we work really hard for that extra aesthetic umpf! and with Ratchet we made a leap in tech and aesthetic construction. We "NextGen'd" Ratchet if you will. Anyway, lets get to the screenshots. I present to you Sargasso: