Category: Animation for Creative industries

CV Inspirations

My CV

My original draft was too plain and didnt read comfortable, I changed text allignment adjusting font after some feedback

 

Cover Email Research

I researched the artstyle, engine and themes that trend within Billy Goat Entertainments’ games, finding that they developed in Unity for their previously released titles, all of their games are heavily exagerated comedic games with a stylised artstyle. They aim to bring simple enjoyment to their players.

Cover Email

Cover letter bullet points

Relevant skills

2D Concepting

Character Modeling

Modeling Modular Environment Kit intended for game design

Texturing Using substance painter and photoshop

Topology

UnWrapping

Unreal Engine Node use for effects such as smoke, complex shaders, fog

I am very interested in working with games, and follow a lot of game development and would love to work on an interesting project

Artstation link

https://www.artstation.com/avact

Refined Cover Email, I realised I needed to write more and target the studio more

To whom it may concern at Billy Goat Entertainment, I am Eoin Bourke a second year animation student looking for placement, I have always enjoyed games and would love to help create. I particularly like working in a stylised style like ‘Parcel Corps’ which I admire from your recent releases, and enjoy working in. I feel I have the relevant skills to work with you My key skills being

-2D Concepting and 3D blocking

– Character Modeling

-Modeling Modular Environment Kits intended for game design

-Texturing Using substance painter and photoshop

-Topology

-UnWrapping

-Basic Unity skills and use

 

Core Softwares throughout my development pipeline I’ve used while working alone and with games design course

– Pure ref, I will gather references to help decide on theme and style then work on my concept work after I create reference board to work from while modeling

-Procreate, I will create my concepts to use as reference, refine style for the project and work from

-Blender, I will block out using poly modeling to test how strong the design is then refine with sculpting and retopology, as well as any rigging and animating any effects

-Substance Painter, Primarily where I do my texturing and baking

-Photoshop, Any texture map tweaks or final render edits

-Unreal engine, Visual effects, scene set up, creating real time effects and complex shaders.

 

I also feel I’m a strong communicator and work a lot in teambuilding from my work experience where most areas required strong communication in group work, tutoring, Campus Ambassador and working projects within my Animation course.

I hope this letter finds you well, thank you for your consideration.

 

Email: Eoinbourke@gmail.com

 

Artstation Portfolio https://www.artstation.com/avact

 

Showreel Inspirations, I just noted down things I wanted to take from each showreel I found online

-Relaxing music, stills and camera pans to show off models as well as animations entering wireframes.

-Upbeat editing cutting back and forth between work while staying fairly short

– Display of programs used, model colour palletes textured and basic renders shown

My Showreel

 

Final In engine result

Modular kit

Texture work

As theres too much to go over I am just highlighting One peice of work from each area of the house

Living room texture example

Garage Wall texture example

Bathroom wall texture example

 

Reference List

Final game made by game design students

https://ulster-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/bourke-e_ulster_ac_uk/EV9saOFsLVFMm3lgV3ct3LUBEtIx8mROtQHenmF3w3ciwg?e=QB6kb0

Initially, I was very excited about this project in collaboration with the game design course, we came up with the game Estate of Disrepair, in which the player takes the role of a builder who has just been sold a house in an earthquake-prone area, the player must repair elements of their house while it falls apart around them. During the initial concept of the game, we worked out the animation team roles very quickly and I ended up working on the environment design. While working with the game level designer a level was drafted up very quickly based on this I started creating a modular kit since I knew changes to the level would be made during development. 

I started my work by modelling walls based on references of general damage on old walls and specifically wear caused by small earthquakes and worked from there starting with the living room as it would be the main area of the game. Before starting I discussed with the game design students and animation students about the scale and specifically game design students how they would be implementing the mechanic of the walls taking more damage initially they told me the environment kit would not need to be on one texture sheet for the main area of the house, just as I finished the main area of the house and was working on the bathroom I was told that I would need to change my textures onto one UV sheet, which I did only to find out immediately after they wanted it back the original way. I found these communication issues very frustrating as I had to redo old work consistently with a little warning before deadlines despite having an initial plan. It also made me unsure of how to implement baking the bricks into my walls which I was going to do per what Rachel Dixon taught us during her lectures on modular environmental modelling but as I kept having to make changes I ended up putting it off way too much and instead just used a lower poly version of what I had originally intended to bake in the final product I should’ve, worked out my time better to make my original plan work. I did have a lot of fun creating the modular kit for the house and exploring different methods of environment creation. 

While texturing dmg For the damage I created a smart material and using masks and generators I applied it to each texture, knowing that the game designers were using red emission from what I had seen of the game I didnt want to break the art style too much with the damage and knew clarity would be maintained. 

Research

the creation of modular kits used in games such as House Flipper, 60 Seconds and Fortnite by looking at the portfolios of 3d artists who worked on some of the games and their in-game assets (Fortnite 3D Assets), and earthquake damage on different materials to reference throughout my project 

 

Skills I improved

-Environment modelling, my previous environment modelling had been quite rough and wasn’t intended as a modular kit it was also made with other group members compared to this module. Where I have learned

–Texturing, Due to quite a few delays in work and having to redo work, I grew quite familiar with making and using substances smart materials and adjusting them per model.

-Team Communication, Keeping the team up to date on my work and working based on their input on my work

Throughout this module I had to learn new processes which I enjoyed as well as working with animation students I hadn’t had the opportunity to work with before, despite a lot of frustrations with communication on the game design end I am proud and mostly happy with the assets I produced and feel I have improved in several areas from previous submissions. 

Our game is about a builder that lives in a shoddy house and once an earthquake hits the building starts to collapse and he has to keep the building stable by fixing broken spots until the earthquake is gone.

 

Creating the style guide for the game – We had to take into account tone of the game and how seriously or comedic the game was meant to be taken and on assesment we went for a more light hearted style

Key attributes of our style

-Visueal clarity for the player

-Simplified soft textures

-Worn look to make the house feel poor quality

-Maintain genre conventuality to target the correct audience of players

 

My slides

I also put quite alot of effort in helping group members who struggled with the understanding the assignment and creating a list of what we would need on the presentation via discord and keeping members up to date on work as well as organising calls for the group to make sure everyone was on track and ensure our work mainted a similar style, to maintain working on a similar style while we were still working on stuff I put examples under style guide headings of how it could end up looking, however any current consistences I hope will be solved when we are all working on the same files

-Process

Substance layers using height maps to texure

I used base textures then put blur slope with custom texture noise to get the effect I wanted Ive seen made this a smart material to use a base in the future where il just need to change out some textures to get the effect I want faster

Style break downs and what they acheive slides I created to help the group consider our options as we were quite indecisive intially

References and inspiration – We looked at many styles that were bright and colourful to contrast the ironic sitaution the main character finds themself in the game

Material I learnt from and used to develop the style guide

I looked into using substance designer because I wanted to broaden my skills and have seen cool stuff done with it, however it felt like too much to start for one assignment but I was inspired by videos I watched about it