11/08

Tony Hawk: Shred

filed in interactive, motion

As a UI Design contractor for Robomodo, I worked on Tony Hawk: Shred, for the PS3, XBox 360, and Wii. Working with a defined style, I created motion graphic loops that play as backdrops to the game's menus (see video, upper), designed a number of game screens (see load screen, lower left), and made a whole bunch of icons.

I was responsible for implementing the screens I designed in Flash (with programmer support), and I also had the opportunity to design and model a number of in-game 3d UI assets.

4/09 - 05/10

LEGO Games animations

filed in motion

LEGO Games is a line of board-game style products arriving in 2010 & 2011. Manifest Digital is responsible for the online experience accompanying the games, which includes animated walkthroughs explaining how each game is played.

After conceptualizing and storyboarding with a team, I am responsible for the lighting, texturing, animating, and some post-production on nearly 20 LEGO Games over two years.

LEGO Games website

2/10

Glaug motion graphics

filed in motion

I stumbled upon a book of mecha drawings by Shoji Kawamori. I'm not an anime fan, but they were quite awesome. Glaug had orthographic drawings, so I decided to model him out. When that was done, I rigged him up, and... well, I had to make something cool at that point. Check back in 5 years and maybe I'll have finished the other testing protocols!

11/08

Moodboards and Motion Comp (Unannounced Title)

filed in interactive, motion

At Midway Games, the UI group begins each project with mood boards, followed by static interface mock-ups, and finally motion mock-ups. The work seen here highlights my contributions to one unannounced title, and prominently features the game’s main antagonist, a Blackwater-type corporation named Marava.

Our first round of mood boards aimed to immediately immerse players in a darkly ironic Marava advertisement, rather than introducing the game’s own branding (lower left image). Our second round departed from this early concept, instead focusing on high-tech internal Marava interfaces (lower right image, motion comp above).

Ultimately, the game team chose a style incorporating elements from several mood boards, as seen in the animated mock-up.

10/08

Midway UI Paper Doll

filed in interactive

The paper doll project was a demonstration of the UI team's technical and design capabilities. After several rounds of static mock-ups, we went with a design I created, humbly titled:

"The Layman's Guide to Identifying and Analyzing the Customizable Individual."

While created in Flash, the paper doll runs best on an XBox 360 - thus, a video capture is to the left. I am responsible for the overall style and most of the visual assets shown.

8/07 - 8/08

Blitz: The League 2

filed in interactive, motion

A game for the XBox 360 and Playstation 3, Blitz taught me everything I will ever need to know about creating graphic "grunge" -- from mud splatters to brush smears to rust and decay.

More importantly, it taught me a great deal about working with a large team on a lengthy, complex project. Design is one thing, but timelines, budgets, executive reviews, quality assurance testing, and inter-office politics are quite another.

Blitz was my main project at Midway Games for a full year. I designed screens in Photoshop, animated and applied functionality to several sections of the game (with programmer support), and created dozens of icons.

Check out the interactive section for more images.

12/05

06-07 M-Planner

filed in static

Every year the University of Michigan publishes a student planner, giving several thousand free to incoming freshman and selling many more. The cover is selected by student voting.

Once selected, I created corresponding back and interior covers, and the overall theme was continued throughout the planner by others.

I spent a good bit of time in the maps archive of the graduate library, scanning Ann Arbor seals and imagery from old, illustrative maps.