Portfolio

Portfolio
EGD415 – Senior Portfolio: Art & Animation
Spring 2011 – Second Semester, Senior Year.



The Senior Portfolio class is exactly what you’d expect it to be. This class helped everyone gather their past projects to tune up and make presentable for a portfolio.

It was also a class every student had to pass in order to graduate. The class requirements consisted of these:
-A website to show off your work
-A Demoreel to present at Senior Show
-Business cards
-A resume
-A list of 20 or more potential employers.

My web development class paid off a lot, seeing as how I created my whole website from scratch. Here’s what it looks like: www.evanburrill.com

I’m pretty sure I handed in everything I should have, so I believe I should be graduating soon.

Job search Ho!

Carnero

Senior Team Project II
EGD410 – Senior Team Project II – Team Jealous Giraffe
Spring 2011 – Second Semester, Senior Year.
Position on the team: Artist



Like I had mentioned before, my original team didn’t get green lit and I had joined up with Team Jealous Giraffe to work on Carnero. The team was a lot bigger than Machina’s, and demanded a lot more work as well. The project had its ups and downs, but I was still able to get portfolio work out of it.

My role on the team was to pump out as many assets as I could, then hand them off to our lead artist to texture. This involved me doing 3 animated enemy robots and several environmental art assets.

Above is a trailer that Bryan and Keith created to be presented at our senior team show.

Team Members:

Producer - Alison Seffels
Lead Designer -Bryan O'Hara
Designer - Cory Livingston
Designer - Tom Triplet
Designer - Craig Ellsworth
Lead Programmer - Steve Beaulieu
Programmer -Chris Cheng
Lead Artist - Keith Tatarczuk
Artist - Eric Nardo
Artist - Me
Sound Artist/Voice Talent - Buzz Ambroseno
Sound Artist - William David John
Sound Artist -Logan Dwight
Quality Assurance - Justin Loomis
Quality Assurance - Chris Ferguson

Maverick N-Strike Nerf gun

Maverick N-Strike Nerf gun
Spring break
Spring 2011, Month of March



I decided to stay in Vermont for spring break instead of going back home to see if I could churn out a good portfolio piece. Not the best way I wanted to spend spring break, but I got something of value out of it.

It was fun project, although it did get agitating. Some of the geometry on the gun is more complex that one would think. It was nice actually owning the gun though, seeing as how I could inspect it with my own eyes when my reference pictures failed me.

This was also a project where I edited a lot of info in the normal map. There were lots of small details in the gun that wouldn’t make sense doing in Maya, so I’d copy and paste certain areas of the normal map and edit them in other sections.

I wanted to see if I could create the gun in a week, but I really only got the high poly and low poly done during that milestone. Whenever I had free time, I’d work on unwrapping, baking, and texturing it to a presentable state. I also time tracked it so I could get a better understanding of how long it takes to model something like that. Hopefully this will allow me to give better time estimates to future employers.

Tau XV8 Crisis Battlesuit

Tau XV8 Crisis Battlesuit
EGD380 – Advanced Seminar: Art & Animation
Spring 2011 – Second Semester, Senior Year.



Like with the first Advanced Seminar class, we could create anything we wanted. I had a Tau Battlesuit figure from the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game that I had an urge to model, and decided on that for my project.

Actually I had planned to create the pilot inside of it as well, unfortunately my lung collapsed twice within two months and it threw off my whole schedule. I had to re-adjust what should be due for our milestones, and decided the suit would be good enough.

I also modeled all of the weapons and accessories that come with the kit, just so I could customize different suits with unique weapon setups.

Senior Team Project

Senior Team Project
CCC410 – CC: Game Development – Machina
Fall 2010 – First Semester, Senior Year.
Designer: Justin Loomis
Producer: Justin Loomis
Programmer: Willem Kupper
Artist: Me

Just like the production classes, we form a team and create a game. The cool thing about this class is that it technically goes on for the whole year. The first semester centers on preproduction, the next semester centers on production. CORE was also able to implement itself into our class, which many people objected to, but it thankfully didn’t get too intrusive.

As for the game itself, we decided to use unity since our programmer was more comfortable with it. Since I was comfortable working with any engine as well, we rarely came into contact with major problems. Any problem we did come across we were able to resolve.

Our game is basically a top down shooter that would have had a unique Outer Space Victorian Steampunk aesthetic. I say would have only because I was concentrating more on churning out placeholder assets so Willem would have something to work with. I didn’t have time to really create Victorian themed assets because of the time spent on my Air Traffic Control room environment; however I did create quite a thorough art guide on what I wanted the art direction to go in.

As a team, we were able to create a working game that we were all pretty proud of. Unfortunately, our game didn’t make green light along with 9 other teams out of a total of 15. That means only 5 went forward. We were all pretty bummed out, but we’re happy with our new positions within the other teams. I’m now part of team Jealous Giraffe taking the position of artist for a UDK game.

Air Traffic Control Room

Air Traffic Control Room
EGD355 – Environmental Art: Assignment 2, Final Project
Fall 2010 – First Semester, Senior Year.

This was the second and last project of this class. We had until the end of the semester to make the best environment we can using everything we’ve learned so far. Since I had already done a modern type environment (the courtyard), I wanted to go in a futuristic route. All I knew was that I wanted to create a cylindrical room with some sort of central computer unit.

Not really having a clue what I wanted to actually make it, I decided on creating an air-traffic control room. Instead of there being windows, there would be monitors scattered around the room.

After a few quick sketches, I blocked it out to get the general shape and room. Then I started working on the high poly assets. This was the first assignment where I created high quality high polygon models to bake on a low polygon models. It takes a hell of a long time to do this, but it pays off really well.

Also, I got into some trouble with lighting. Some of my curved meshes wouldn’t calculate light correctly. However I did get some pretty awesome help from some guy (or girl?) named obihb on the UDK forums. He was able to help me figure out how to fix my lighting by reversing my UV channels on my mesh. Not sure if it’s the right way to fix it, but hey, it works.

The project never got finished, but it will be since I’m aiming to have it as my main portfolio piece.

European Courtyard

European Courtyard
EGD355 – Environmental Art: Assignment 1
Fall 2010 – First Semester, Senior Year.

This project involved creating a small courtyard with both an outdoor space as well as a small interior space. We just had to create meshes with a basic color assigned to them, no textures were involved. I decided to go with a European Victorian style theme.

This assignment helped us to understand blocking something out in a level editor (UDK), export it into a 3d program (Maya), and import the more detailed meshes back into the level editor.

Due to unforeseen events, I was out of a Saturday, Sunday, and Monday – days that I have plenty of time to work on my 3D assignments. This caused me to not finish in time. I still really want to finish the project too; it would make a great portfolio piece.