In Short

There are a couple of new UI projects on my portfolio and I will be looking to start some other projects soon to keep it updated and fresh with content. Links to the projects are below. Now that I have graduated from university the next projects may be a little different from what has come before, more of what I want to focus on. Finally, there may be a few changes to social media and other platforms as I start to focus more on UI design and look to get a job within the games industry. Be sure to check out my new projects if you haven't already and continue reading for more information on what's next.

Links

Projects Complete - Now available on ArtStation!

If you haven't been following the recent activity on my website there are a couple of new projects to take a look at. The first being a quick look into a concept for a World War 2 Battle Royale, focusing on more of the in-game UI rather than the menus. The main aspect of this project was to explore the usability and how to display information on-screen in a non-obstructive way. There is a lot of information needed as a player playing a battle-royale game and with it being a popular mode at the moment it was a good way to test my self. Along with this, I also wanted to look into ways in which the player uses the UI and how I can speed this up, allow it to become muscle memory for the player. This lead to the implementation of an equipment wheel within the inventory screen allowing for quick switching between items without having to go into the boxes of items seen within some games.

The other project that I was working on is a game concept called Operation Blackout. With this project, I wanted to look into how different aspects of a game can affect/ change the UI design style. Some of these were the story, different game modes and player counts. So the main one is the story. I feel that the UI needs to reflect what is going on in-game and with this, the UI I have created is dark, modern and minimalistic. All values that would be shown throughout the game's story. But it can also be affected by the story in other ways, like when an EMP or hack happens within the game the UI is affected. Or a UI that is more built into the equipment a soldier is wearing, without a helmet visor there is little to no UI or 3d objects in-game like compasses can represent UI instead. Differences in game modes can also change how the UI is portrayed as the information needed for the player in the story and multiplayer can differ. The main thing that shows this differentiation in my work is whether a minimap is being shown. This leads to things like player count, in a single player game the user interface doesn't have to show much, if anything, to do with other player characters. Whereas when other players are added the player needs to know what is happening with their self along with the players around them. Be it, position or status like health, it affects what is needed to be shown to the player most commonly in the HUD.

You can see more on this in both these projects by clicking the links above. For the Operation Blackout game concept I also created a design document which can be found here:

https://danielrhodes.artstation.com/projects/zA9GR2?album_id=1097038

New Projects & Updates

So now that I have successfully completed my Games Design course at university I will now be looking for a more permanent job within the games industry. With this time I will be going on vacation for a little while, so there may be little updates on what's going on for a while. I will still be looking to keep my portfolio up-to-date with new content and new projects. With this sense of "freedom", I will be looking at creating projects that I really want to do. This means there may be some different styles of work that will be uploaded to my portfolio in the future and I look forward to sharing more soon.

That's all for now. See you soon.

In Short

This week I have been finishing up my VFX project and moving over to finalising my military environment project. Not much else really, it's been all focus on that over this week. If you're wanting a more detailed look into these two projects though, keep reading...

Progress Update

So let's talk about the main thing I have been doing over the weekend. Completing my VFX project. I have had some real fun creating this and it's a project I have seen as something I can have a laugh with. If you haven't already, watch the video above to view the final animation along with a really quick breakdown on how it was created. Warning: The voiceover in this video has been slightly broken. I will be looking to fix this at a later date.

You can also view the project document through the link below:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gccDNf3DBawG4N9EAJTlmWnaHSg1bn_O

For this project, I also looked a little more into learning Adobe After Effects some more as the composition of the render was created and edited within this software. I will be looking to use a lot more of this software soon in terms of UI motion graphics and in future projects.

Now with one project finished all focus has moved to my military base project where I am creating what I am calling a game prototype. Two main areas are being focused on with this, that being a mostly finalised GUI experience & level one gameplay including a playable environment with animations and gameplay. Currently, I am finalising the GUI experience and will then be moving onto polishing the rest of the gameplay. I am hoping to have most of this done by the end of this week and have something a little more visual to share with you next week.

That's all for now. See you soon.

Here we go again

So I have two new projects I am working on and I’ll be showing you what they are as well as a quick look at the progress I have made so far. 

First, we have my CGI animation project. My idea with this is as follows. I want to create quite a funny animation that is based towards the world cup and all the hype that “it’s coming home” last year.  For this I am going to have a small humanoid robot moving across the screen, kicking a football and holding a trophy. The idea is that this robot (England) would be the main focus, with the camera zooming in and following him. Then a sudden change with the camera switching to an “army” of other similar robots (other countries) chasing the first. I want to have a bit of fun with this project. Below is an image of the backdrop I have taken for this animation to take part in, just to give you more of a visual reference.

Next up, we have the main project I will be focusing on for the next 2-3 months. A small desert military camp environment mainly focused around a firing range. Based on modern military and will be using a collection of different modular assets, such as sandbags, to help build up the scene. I then want to take this further and use this environment to showcase a small game concept that includes a seamless blend of in-game minimalist UI and real-time animation at a weapon bench. Using the M4 I created, I will create some animations for attaching a range of different attachments to the weapon along with different camouflage options. I will be using Unreal to showcase all this and I want to make this a short playable experience to make my work more intractable. This is gonna be a lot of work and I have started by blocking out my environment (see post’s main image). 

With all this said I have a lot of work to do, so back to it. See you in my next post - hopefully, next week.