Wait, who's this now?

Before I go on about the modeling process, I should probably talk a little bit about what I'm modeling.

For those who don't know, I was artist/art director on a Nintendo DS game called Hands On! Tangrams. My brother, Matt, worked on the game with me, and we each did the art for two of the game's levels. One of Matt's levels was the Space level, which had a puzzle representing a rocket-powered robot, which could be seen after the puzzle had been completed. Everyone just fell in love with the design for this robot character. He appeared front and center on the box art for the game's first print run using Matt's original art. For the game's second printing, the box art was given a complete overhaul to better reflect the game's content. The robot stayed, however, this time appearing with new art drawn by myself so that the two characters on the box would retain a consistent art style, which was an issue with the original box.


Matt's original robot art.

Box art for second printing.

This robot had quickly become the mascot of Hands On! Tangrams. When it came time to start designing the game's spiritual successor, Hands On! Pattern Blocks, we knew we wanted a game that was more story-based as opposed to Tangrams' simple activity-book feel. And when it came time to choose our game's starring role, everyone on the team knew it had to center around this robot.

Early in the development of Hands On! Pattern Blocks, the robot was given a name: Orion. Pattern Blocks would contain a fairly large cast of colorful characters, and this time, instead of individual artists all working on different levels like in Tangrams, we created a more consistent art pipeline and had Matt do the initial character designs for all of the characters. I would again serve as art director on the project, but I would also be handling animation duties for a few of the characters. I developed a 16-color in-game sprite for Orion based off of Matt's concept art, but as I began to animate him, a lot of my own influences came out when trying to figure out how this character would move around in space. As a result, I think my interpretation of Orion ended up being a bit more "soft" and flexible.

So, at this point, we are far into the development of Hands On! Pattern Blocks, and all of Orion's 2D sprite animations have long been finished. Most of my duties at this point involve aspects of project management and testing, since the bulk of the art has already been completed.

This little side project of mine was born out of the desire to continue to create art with the game art still fresh in my mind. It's not something intended for the game itself, but could possibly be used for promotional materials or something like that. This won't be the first time Orion has been visualized in 3D--fellow IO artist John Little created a model in 3D Studio Max a while back to be used for a 3D-printed sculpture. That was done toward the beginning of Pattern Blocks development and is based more on Matt's original art, while the model I'm planning on making will be based on the style that evolved from animating Orion and will be built with animation in mind. It might be interesting to compare the two once it's been completed.

So, hopefully that will clear up who this little robot guy is. :)

Back to Basics

The main goal of this mini project is to get back into 3D modeling after being out of it for few years to focus on sprite animation. I believe the last time I really spent any quality time with Maya was back in 2007 while working on some character animations for a game prototype in the early days of Island Officials. After we moved over to Nintendo DS development, we've been mostly focusing on 2D art. And while I love 2D art and animation, I don't want to let my 3D skills continue to get rusty!

Unfortunately, I've found that every time I leave Maya alone for more than a few months, I need to spend some time re-learning it. And this is probably the biggest gap I've had since I first started toying with 3D modeling back in college ten years ago. It's almost a bit intimidating going back after so long, but part of me misses it, too.

I decided to start with re-introducing myself to Maya 7. It's an older version, but it's the last one I used and the version I currently have access to. I know that Maya's seen a lot of changes since then, but I figure that if I have an opportunity to learn a newer version of Maya or another 3D package, it would be easier to locate the functions I'm looking for if I'm first able to refresh myself with what I was once so familiar. Plus, it's less of a barrier to actually creating the work if I don't have the added pressure of learning a new program, and right now it's all about creation and improving techniques that could be applied to any 3D package.

Fortunately, in my first day or so of modeling, a lot more has come back to me than I was expecting, so that's a good sign. :)

I decided to start with a basic box model and take it from there. I'd like to go into my thought process while creating this model going forward. But for now, here's a really rough version of the model!