NOMADS ; Dancer Lunar Defense System

This project was an immense undertaking in many realms including scale, animation mechanics, mechanical intricacies, and shape language. Created as a part of my NOMADS personal IP world, “Dancers” act as mobile lunar patrol robots capable of both traveling at high speeds as well as controlled freefalling and being able to attack from above. Themes taken into account from the very beginning of the project were bugs, dance, robotics, military hardware, and modern space tech.

Teaser promotional shot.

An animated turntable featuring the design of the internally housed weapon system and processor.

Callout sheet 1 explains the parts system of the body unit.

Callout sheet 2 delves deeper into the body unit and strips it of it’s smart armor. Revealing the arms and motors.

Callout sheet 3 explains the logic behind “fragmentation wheels” and how they make for a more robust and durable enemy. Additionally, the dual thruster systems are shown in more detail.

“Inbound” is a piece depicting two dancer mates deployed to a specific undisclosed location, being tracked via MOTHER satellite system.

“Above!”

Refined design sketch 1

Refined design sketch 2

Refined explorations 3

An earlier design that actually had a lot of promise but was ultimately altered for feeling too much like a “batbike” and being smaller in the scale department than was the goal.

Early exploration 3. “Gemini Bike”. I actually really liked these early explorations a lot, they were uncommital, fast and loose, and just fun. the idea behind this one is it has the ability to split in half and uses a hardened, near indestructible cable to cut it’s enemies in half at high speeds. Anything I design always has to work as a potential toy I would want as a kid (or even now :P) and these early sketches did just that.

More explorations. I really loved the idea of a “hidden gun” (more toy dreaming..) and was pretty sold on the design to the right, having a sort of mouth and surprise element to it. While we got even weirder and more imaginative with the final design the seed of a hidden weapon had been firmly planted and ultimately made it tot he final product, albeit in a way I couldn’t have imagined this early on.

Initial sketches :)

Reference.

EGODETH 20mm Smartround

This project was developed during my time mentoring with Aaron Beck. I pushed in new directions previously foreign to me like animation, motion graphics, and CAD, while staying within a genre that I love. Being able to tell my stories in different axes has been incredibly rewarding.

Decals

Further refinement with some light paint over and and early graphics exploration.

While cool, this idea was ultimately scrapped due to being too complex for the message I was trying to convey. The idea is 3 hyper-magnetic “terminals” in the round create a huge crushing force around the target and compress it, hence being a scalable, distanced means of attack.

This idea ended up being the closest to how the final operates. While we ended up scrapping the idea of an “imposter shell” the mechanism for how the round separates basically remained the same.

A relatively simple idea within an an interesting premise. But ultimately it was decided outside of the shell, the design of the round itself didn’t create as much intrigue as was needed.

This was the first attempt and one of the more out there ideas. This is also where the idea of a high-resolution micro camera was born. The idea of a transparent sheath in itself is cool, however we wanted more of the round to be present both to quickly communicate to the audience what they were seeing and also to appear more lethal.

Reference.

Valorant Soaked Summer personal skin design project

This is a small collection of personal Valorant weapon skins I've designed in a 1990s watergun theme for the Riot Games concept art internship application. Being born in the mid-90s, this is a period in toy design I have always loved and missed dearly. Between the color pops, level of inventiveness, and fearless exploration into what was just cool and unapolegetic, I truly believe some of the best toy designs ever came out of this decade. This project also made for a good time getting out of my confort zone and experimenting with new styles, while simultaneously expanding my artistic wheelhouse.

Bucky.

Frenzy.

Stinger.

Design breakdown for how I imagined the roload animation to play out for the Frenzy.

Design breakdown for how I imagined the roload animation to play out for the Stinger. This is the only weapon to feature an add on/mod for for the sight. While breaking the uniformity of the set I feel it adds a nice touch to what we did as kids and how nothing was out of bounds.

This animation I envision being one of the most fun main because the user gets to pull a garden hose out of frame to “reload” the gun. It takes me back to playing outside in the summer time and using the resources we had around us.

This was the stage when I narrowed down the final set and the general ideas for their designs and how they would probably function in game. I ended up sticking mostly to these color palettes but could have made amendments at this stage if necessary.

These were the final sketches for all the potential weapon variations. To be honest adding colors at this stage was premature but I was having fun seeing how all the different ratios read.

This “Era” ref I put together to really create another level of subconcious support for the realm I was designing in. While not water guns, it’s all connected in unseen ways and I wanted that to marinate in my brain and come out later in the process. Plus malls are just nostalgic and I miss the hell outta toy stores.

Waterguns reference. What ultimately helped me create my best designs was directly picking one gun to design around and even pull a colotr palette from. Being specific and deliberate in the way I design helps me carve out a better end product that resonates with something real.

NOMADS character designs

These are two characters I’ve designed for my personal IP NOMADS, which depicts the world of near future lunar immigration and all that comes with it. Below you will find the process I used to create my final image broken down into hopefully simple to digest steps.

First I gather appropriate reference for both characters and take into account the tone, feel, personality, and function I am aiming to achieve. As of lately keeping my reference to a relative minimum has been serving me well in terms of staying true and clear to an overall vision.

While existing in the same universe, these characters are designed to be presented as a duo/pair. So playing off and contrasting one another is something I’m mindful of from the very beginning.

Character 1 initial sketches.

Character 2 initial sketches.

Character 2 pose and function sketches.

Character 1 level 2 exploration.

Once I’d pretty much nailed in a direction I wanted to go in, I began blocking out my designs in 3d and getting a feel for the poses and statures of each; finding things that maybe worked in my drawings that didn’t in the 3D realm. Ultimately leading me to think in different axis and omit some initial ideas I had in the very beginning.

Small worldbuilding details such as graphic and logo design are some of my favorite things to design in the process and it takes an idea to the next level and ultimately makes things a lot more believable, while also grounding the designs in their own distinct universe.

Some quick helmet ideas for character 1 along with a couple background props.

The final result after some 2d treatment and design reworks based off the feedback from my friends Kevin Kruse and Adrian Majkrzak. Rear views pictured on my portfolio page.

PM3-A4 High Altitude Care Package

This is the second and final concept I designed while mentoring with the incredibly talented Lars Sowig, using techniques applied and learned through his awesome Learn Squared course. I’d always wanted to design my own form of care package and thought the idea of a laser guided nesting system that takes the inner contents via a shell core, behind enemy lines, while being dropped from high altitude would be interesting. Thoughts of origami and transformation were always in the back of my head. Ideally this is something that would be earned as a lower tier killstreak, dropped from some sort of stealth plane.

Reference

From the get-go I knew I wanted to design some form of staged care package with a good degree of visual layering and nesting in regards to the inner contents. These initial ideation sketches allowed me to formulate how I wanted to communicate this idea.

You can see I felt like the top left sketch had the most promise, this is ultimately the general idea I went with to the finish. I liked the bottom right as well, however while functional, there proved to be far less opportunity to design in nearly as much transformation or layering.

These development sketches illustrate the initial look and feel I had in mind. In the beginning this was designed to feel and look more heavy and boxy than the final product. This is intentional as I wanted the player to associate the design of the prop with still being a care package rather than a missile or weapon.

These photobash mockups allowed me to get a better idea of what my final design could potentially look like. While I didn’t take all the features to my final this proved to be useful in finding what I needed to communicate and what was ultimately redundant/subtractive.

At this point I began blocking in 3D and really defining the shapes outside of photoshop and making sure things still played well together. This allows me to see the design from any angle I want on the fly which speeds up my workflow.

Lastly, as always, I wanted to create some world building and storytelling decals to give my prop some life. For me this typically pushes things the last 10% which helps things ultimately get sold and just feel way more cool.

CM8A2 Modular Loadout Platform

This is the first design I've created during my mentorship time with the incredibly talented Lars Sowig! Additionally, I also learned techniques from Lars' awesome Learn Squared course. The idea is the inner unit can be kitted out for different missions such as planting an explosive on a particular site, a medical unit outfitted with tools for a revive, and lastly a radiation detection unit. The displayed concept is the explosive device. What I had in mind was that this would be a higher up killstreak reward for a military themed FPS.

This concept started out as a vague idea for some form of explosive, plantable prop the player would earn as a high tier killstreak. The overall look wasn’t dialed in at this point so I sketched many ideas. Some had promise, other’s were trash, but that’s how I found out what worked and what didn’t.

Initial reference

After fleshing out these initial ideas I found out what would be the most intriguing, fun, believable, and ultimately work the best given the style, pacing, and nature of the type of FPS I had in mind. With this said I ultimately went in the direction of designing something with a decent level of intractability and layering in the design. The idea of layers are something I wanted to implement as it communicates value and brings more intrigue once delivered. This also made for some awesome explorations in shape and silhouette change.

After sketching out these designs I ended up going with the case based design as I felt it had the most entertaining function while still grounding itself enough in the medium and seen as being relatively portable and usable. Further exploration can be seen below.

Dialing in some of the above ideas at this stage was the most fun. At this point I was actually thinking the inner palette could have different, changeable variants such as a med-kit version as well as some form of radiation detection kit. While this didn’t make it to the final concept it was a cool avenue to consider and explore. Once the overall design was mocked up I began concepting the more real look via photobashing and some light paintover for more visual clarity.

After my photobashed mockups were completed I began my 3D blocking phase to develop the actual feel, scale, and size and function of my prop.

I’m also a huge fan of world-building and brand/graphic design, so this is typically always an area I’ll spend time on so as to get to max believability and cool factor for both my designs and potential audience/player base. Pictured are some decals I designed for my world.

A closer, final look at the user manual decal and HUD design:

LA Tropic 1994 pt. 1

This is a breakdown the first piece of my 3D triptych, LA Tropic 1994. This is a personal worldbuilding project centered around the 1990s Los Angeles crime and bankrobbing scene. Inspired by films such as Heat and the original Point Break, this project allowed me to both create a story in my own voice while also drawing elements of films I love and taking my own spin on it. Created using Blender, Maya, Substance Painter, and Cycles.

As always, I start by collecting a lot of reference for each of my individual props.

At this stage I begin modeling my props for a high to low bakedown. I Started in Blender and ended in Maya as I like UVing in the latter better.

Once the texturing stage is complete I begin staging my props and building my scene.

When staging my scene I mess with my camera and see what I like best. For this particular piece I had a top down shot in my head from day 1. Ordinarily I wouldn’t go for something like that, but seeing as this is a cinematic project I envisioned it as being an opening scene slowly panning out giving the audience context. I might animate it in the future.

I also experiment with various environmental lighting setups and begin putting in my own lights. For this scene in particular I designed it to have a mix of cold and warm lighting and give an early morning feel. I try to keep in mind how much can be altered in post processing.

A lighting moodboard is also created for my final stage. While having a similar theme these two films are lit very differently and ultimately convey very different tones. Being mindful of this while ultimately remembering my ultimate personal vision and goal is important.

After postprocessing and color grading using techniques learned through concept art, this is the final result. I keep backups and variants so as to ensure the least destructive creation process.

GANGWPNZ personal IP

GANGWPNZ is a personal IP I’ve been working on outside of school depicting the day to day aesthetic of my crime-ridden, dystopian future world. In which multiple gangs and their personal styles and cultures are reflected through their weapons which have been either found or seized by rival authority in the area. Below you can find the process I used to create this project.

GANGWPNZ collection.

From here I'll begin building out what I want the gun to look like. Creating new pieces when needed and reusing old pieces from my ever-growing personally made kitbash library! Deciding what needs to be modeled vs just drawn is also decided at this stage.

Before building anything in 3D I silhouette out a bunch of designs. Finding one or two that I like the most, both in terms of shape language and potentially somewhat believable function for the particular brief and direction.

Reference 1

Reference 2

Valorant weapon design process

For this project I started out by creating functional silhouettes I had in mind. From here I sketched out what a few of them might look like in a 3/4 view. I really wasn’t happy with how these turned out and ultimately decided to cut out the break-top designs as the reload animation felt too similar to Brimstone’s molly reload. Once settling on a design that echoes the H&K M320, I created 2 orthographic views. From here I created a simple 3d model for the 3/4 player view.

compact revolver process breakdown

For this design I began as usual by sketching out a number of aesthetically pleasing silhouettes. At this stage I added base colors and simple lighting to see how the designs were reading with more detail. After choosing compact1 I decided to create a basic model in Maya to draw my linework over. While I didn’t use 3d in my last weapon I created I decided, considering factors such as size and simplicity that I would be able to create a basic model and draw over the mesh faster than I would recreating the 3/4 perspective in Photoshop. After drawing clean linework I proceeded to lay the base colors and and ambient occlusion and highlights as I usually do. Leaving texturing, decals, and wear for last.

Anti-tank rifle creation process

Below is a breakdown of how my process works. First I begin with creating a 30-50 aesthetically pleasing silhouettes. From there I will add relatively simple linework to each. At this point I will select the most promising 3-5 and adjust minor functional details accordingly to both function and expected art direction. After this stage I will select the final design at which point I detail the render accordingly. Starting with base colors and from there adding ambient occlusion and and simple lighting. Leaving texturing, wear, and decals for last. Examples include the standard rifle in addition to 2 alternate spray can field-worn camo palettes. Logos art directed with my amazing girlfriend who I am learning graphic design tools from. If you’re an art director, or just someone stopping by hoping to be inspired, hope this helps:) Trying to make things clearer and more digestible.

Compact Service Pistol process gif

My process for a final weapon concept. Starting with linework I drew in Procreate on the ipad, then perspective tooled how I desire. From there fill in the base colors and then light and phototexture the final detail in. I am thinking of building my own kitbash library of weapon pieces in Maya and saving out a consistent camera angle. This way I’ll be able to build many combos of weapons and paint over the renders. But for now I want to be able to achieve the same effect in 2d software.

Standard smg process gif

Assault Shotgun process gif

Stick rifle concept process

Below are the alternate options I designed for the stick rifle. These are back in the days when I would just paint every little thing. Nowadays I would have blocked it out in 3d and rendered it out in different angles. Proof of how workflows evolve.

MRE concept process

Thought I should start sharing more of my ideation process that comes before my finished product. Initially I designed the casing to come in two nesting layers as a form of shock absorption when making contact with the ground, but that didn’t make it to the final. For the most part the initial design made it through to the end product.

Remote control bikes

Bümerang and Vyper! Couple remote controlled bikes I’ve been working on for my neo Japan world I’m building. The idea is contestants enter their builds into a motorball/battlebots type competition in which they’re allowed to equip their builds with one “special” ability. The first can extend and contract it’s chassis and wheelbase allowing for a change in torsion. Coupled w the ability to pivot each of the wheels from 90 degree axles it’s supposed to be able to drift underneath things at fast speeds, using the sidewalls of its tires. The second has a folded up hidden arm with a universal mount for a weapon of choice. Tried a new workflow. Had a lot of fun.

Process

Breakdown of a recent illustration I completed.

Colorized sketching 02: Line art

Lately I’ve been exploring the power of embracing more pronounced line art within my work. Included are three characters from the same world initially created as stand alone pieces. This is a unique, fun way of working for me as it is a quick turnaround and it can be utilized in both sketch and final formats, depending on how far you decide to take it; love the versatility.

From left to right: Yama, Laborer, Chihiro

Colorized sketching

I think I like the idea of having “Isaac’s signature art style” But in reality being confined to one single style is limiting, and quite frankly can get boring. Colorized, more messy sketching is something I like, and can do relatively quickly. It’s fun, has a lot of room for development. Do I see it as the style in which I broadcast the entirety of my work? No, not yet.. There are a couple guys I follow who get really far with this, and I can see myself doing that, almost more cartoony, but more important to me is asking myself what I want to be known for further down the line, when I’m more developed. Maybe they all come to a single sort of fruition.