Some level I designed

I haven't posted in forever. This blog should be something that shows my progress as a 3D artist but I'm not doing a good job updating it with new stuff. But I have an idea of what I'm going know to put up next so I guess that's good. And I'll be doing that soon in the next couple of days.

Last quarter I took this class called Advanced Level Design and I feel I got a lot out of it. In 12 weeks, we were tasked with thinking up a level for a type of game, researching games of our chosen genre, drawing level plans, writing a design document, creating models, creating textures and putting everything together to make a level in Unreal. I even did a little scripting which I'm putting to use in another class. What I really like about the class was learning how to think "modularly". I think the class was more about design then creating art but I increased my understanding in both areas.

So I made a desert level for a game I dubbed " The Order of Vulcan." I looked at the areas of Jordan and Israel for reference and inspiration. Petra in Jordan was particularly wonderful reference. I "created" The Order of Vulcan in my first level design class. The level I designed was supposed to be one of the final levels for the game. I imagined the game being a action-rpg game similar to Zelda and Final Fantasy. The player would be a sort of James Bond of the ancient world working for a secret society called The Order of Vulcan. He would travel the ancient world with crazy ancient technology and even crazier futuristic technology. Vulcan is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Hephaestus. They were both the gods of technology, metal, blacksmiths and other stuff. Hence the name. It's more than a far-fetched story, it's pretty ridiculous. But what game doesn't have a fun, asinine story?

All the models and textures(except the sky and trees) were made by me. Since the class was more about design then art, not all models and textures are at the quality I want them to be. There are some weird graphical shadow artifacts here and there too. I really like how the cliff-sides came out though. Anyway, I plan on fixing a lot of the artifacts, re-texturing some stuff and overall just bumping up the quality to make it a nice portfolio piece.