Trilogy Studios

Daybreakers / 2006

This was Trilogy’s in house IP that was developed over a span of 1.5 years. Coming off of 2 years of a WWII military shooter (Medal of Honor Pacific Assault) we wanted to do something different and new. We combined the action of a FPS with the character development of a RPG, to create a Sci-Fi/Fantasy landscape that has its foundation in a dystopic world set 30 years in the future. It was an exciting time for development, utilizing new next-generation asset creation techniques and working with a small team of 5 artists. It was a dream job where I was both the Art Director and Concept Designer –  able to develop the visual tone, inspired by the deep lore developed by our creative director. Unfortunately, the project wasn’t picked up by a publisher and we had to move on to less expensive projects. The following images illustrate a sequence from a Visual Bar for the game. (I’m working on getting in-game video footage) Next, the illustrations show a range of elements for the game and the basis for initial geo/texture work.

◦      Responsible for:  Art Direction/Concept Design, original prison design and majority of modeling/texture/lighting, terrain, sky and clouds.
◦      Unreal 3 (xbox360, ps3, pc)

Kung Fu Panda World / 2010

This project spanned a little over 1 year in production and was co-created with Dreamworks Animation. It was a children’s MMO, based on the Kung Fu Panda franchise that featured environments, characters and visual themes from the first movie. I directed a team of 8 artists, creatively led our outsourcing partners to illustrate the majority of the backgrounds and worked closely with both Trilogy’s and Dreamwork’s design department leads. The user experience was played through 960×560 window that scrolled over a larger background. The characters were designed to use multiple vector pieces that allowed users to chose colors and clothing designs. The following images start off with a sample of the line drawings that were the basis of all illustrated backgrounds. Next are various in-game backgrounds followed by 5 pieces I illustrated myself.

◦      Responsible for:  Art Direction, all background level design, interactive object direction, Holiday/Event Theme development, FUE illustration, final level adjustment and illustration touch-up.
◦      Proprietary Flash Game Engine (pc web client)

MTV VLES / There.com / 2008

Trilogy worked closely with There.com over the period of 2 years building unique IP utilizing their MMO engine. There were a handful of visual demos that were created to showcase some of Trilogy’s own ideas. Our first project was for MTV, creating an update to their Virtual Lower East Side MMO. This was a faithful recreation of cool bars and hotspots in New York.  Following this, I created a Shrek demo that helped us solidify our relationship with Dreamworks, moving us forward to do Kung Fu Panda World. The initial version of the engine had very little in way of shaders and lighting – I utilized some old school techniques of painting the lighting into the texture maps to tie the world together. The first screenshots are of Shrek’s swamp area…the ones that follow are at night illustrating what a Holiday Themed modification (4th of July) would look like. The second group are 3 unique environments that are based on the same layout; Virtual House of Blues, Nascar Themed Bar and a Sports Bar.

◦      Responsible for:  Art Direction and creation of all 4 environments, geo, textures and lighting.
◦      There.com Graphics Engine (pc)

GreenApp / 2011

This work was a short term demo that was created to get funding for a full project. The client wanted grounded fantastical world with camera movement inspired by the “Game of Thrones” intro. Created in less that 3 months with a 3 artists and 2 engineers. The 3D component was designed to reflect the progress the user makes when using the mobile app out in the real world…as the user makes better purchasing decisions that lower his carbon footprint his virtual “Garden” is populated with more beautiful terrain, trees and flowers. We wanted something that would be extremely immersive and give the user a “God View” of his world, while keeping the view optimized for the Unity webplayer Facebook. The video illustrates this.

◦      Responsible for:  Art Direction, level layout creation, lighting, object placement, terrain, floating waterfall and morphing terrain development direction.
◦      Unity 3D (webplayer/ facebook)

Hot Wheels / 2011

This was a fun opportunity, making an MMO for the Hot Wheels franchise. We wanted to capture the originality of this unique universe, by making the cars the avatar and integrating the various track designs into the play-space. I led a team a team of 3 artists to create a handful of animatics to pitch the idea to Mattel. We presented 3 ideas: 1) a garage for your car collection, inspired by the plastic wheel case that has been used by Hot Wheels enthusiast for decades. The design uses a central “Hub” that allows the users to cycle through their collection and chose which “Ava-Car” they wanted to present them in the world. 2) A major feature of this world is driving around and exploring and chatting with other users. The design of this world is futuristic, vibrant and mechanical – inspired by engines, drive-trains and ambient animations. 3) the last environment was a block-in of a floating city that had tracks leading to various areas inspired by themes like desert, snow, volcano and water. The last 2 demos were created and rendered in Maya. Mattel thought the ideas and demos were unique and inspired. but unfortunately scrapped the project. The demos represent about 2 weeks of work.

◦      Responsible for:  Art Direction, world design, construction and creation in Maya and lighting.
◦      Maya Demo