VFX Demo Reel

Ratchet and Clank: Nexus Posters

Below are a collection of posters that I created for several worlds in R&C:Nexus. 

Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault: HUD Design Concept

I had the opportunity to design a new HUD suite for Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault. While we didn't end up using this concept I thought it turned out pretty cool nevertheless. I really enjoy this type of stuff because of the constraints it places on the creative process. You have to plan and create with the players field of vision in mind and you have to deal with the limitations of the screen real estate at different sizes and screen resolutions.

And below is a HUD element we used in-game that I designed. The hacker mini-game was used for opening weapon pods. You had to press a button to lock down the white shapes (turning them green) in a number of different arrangements as the needle swept back and forth at varying speeds.

Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault: Phoenix II Exterior

The Phoenix II Exterior required a large set of tactics to make it work. The ship was a massive object but also had to look good up close as it was featured in many cinematics. In order to meet all of our needs I utilized skills from all of my areas of expertise including character, environment, and fx.

The Phoenix II

Modeled in Maya/Zbrush

Textured in Photoshop

Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault: Phoenix II Level

The Phoenix II level was created as a three stage hub for the players to return to throughout the game. The ship becomes infected with a virus and slowly degrades over the course of the story.

Sean Kwon and Nathaniel Bell did a large portion of the base geometry and basic textures. I went through afterwards and did a large polish pass finishing shaders, adding/cleaning up geometry where necessary including some interiors and props, building the skydome, and adding a suite of fx for each stage.

Phoenix Phase 1

Phoenix Phase 2

Phoenix Phase 3

Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One Vehicle Props

Built in Maya and Zbrush

Textured in Photoshop and Zbrush

Seaside Derelict Ship

Ornithopter Starship

  

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