Projects

This is the page to let you guys know what I've worked on and what I'm currently working on. Well, at least until I get an actual job and start signing NDA's. However, for now, as a soon-to-be-graduating student, there are a few projects I'd like to share with you...

Star Fox: Shadows of Lylat

I joined the SoL Team in January of '07 as a freelancer in charge of finishing textures. I am now offically a texture artist (listed as VinsanityV20), but has also since taken to modeling and unwrapping things as well. The project is a total conversion/mod for Freespace 2 Open Source, based on Nintendo's Star Fox series. While the official site only says that it's "coming soon", there are only a few assets needed to be completed before the first "episode" of the project sees it's release via download for free.

To see specifically what I've worked on for this mod, please check out my Gallery. Any asset created for the mod will feature a "SoL logo" on the bottom right corner of the piece...at the end of the quarter. Not for Week 5.

I'm setting up a special Gallery just for the stuff I've worked on here. In the meantime, I'm going to suggest you take a look at some completed models and Work In Progress shots. Just click one of these links and they'll take you to my photobucket account. They're by no means a replacement for proper renders, but at least I'll have something here till I get my page updated proper in May '08.

Cornerian Police Skimmer. (Currently a work-in-progress. Still gotta Normal Map this thing, and make a spec map for it)

Concept by SOL Team. Model by Andrew Strautz. Texture by Vince Vazquez.

Cornerian Bomber. Concept by SOL Team. Model by Joseph Sikorski. Texture by Vince Vazquez. Normal Map by Benjamin Suhr.

Prison. Concept by SOL Team. Model by Joel Reimer. Final Texture by Vince Vazquez

Toy Makers

This was done for the inaugural "Advergames" course at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Since it was the first, it was kind of...not..fully thought out, and a ton of students - both Game Art and whatever the Web Design programmers' major is called - were brought along for the ride! It was designed to provide an actual game for clients, which in this case was supposed to be the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, but that fell through.

The important thing is that my group ruled! I took the role of director and artist, where my co-director and the lead artist was my friend Carissa, our Lead Programmer was a genius named Mark, Carissa's boyfriend and my ex-roommate Eric was the last artist, and then there was one other dude who was useless. We all shared design duties, which became necessary as the project became more unique and ambitious from it's original "Incredible Machine" ripoff design. Mark basically programmed this thing by himself, and he's a monster for getting it done in the 5 weeks we had to finish it after actually redesigning the game 3 times. I mean, in addition to the front end, he had to code the different engines for all 3 minigames, in about 5 weeks. That guy is awesome, and the rest of the team owes him bigtime. After all, without code, there'd be no game. And unlike most of our classes, the point was to get a functional game out of this, so props to him.

I'm proud of how well the game turned out (especially when faced against most of the other games the class turned out...yeeesh), and extremely proud of the work my team put into this game. With the exception of our fifth member - whose name escapes me 'cuz he sucks -, everyone was professional and got a ridiculous amount of work done for this. And the game actually holds up as a browser-based web game to boot! Hope you enjoy it!

Chuck Norris' Last Champion

This was done for one of the first-year classes at the Art Institute. It was also the first class where I shared directing duties on a project, this time with my buddy Robbie. I was responsible for modeling and texturing Jackie Chan and Chuck Norris, as well as creating the Egypt stage. In addition to that, and general design duties (which admittedly boiled down to "rip off Smash Bros. as best we can"), I was the animator of the opening shots of Chuck Norris and the 4-way fight in the Egyptian stage, as well as Chuck Norris' Orbital Roundhouse at the end. I was also editor on the entire thing - my first experience with Adobe After Effects. Ahhh....good times:)

In retrospect, it's pretty terrible - we were after all first year students. I can honestly say this was the first time I unwrapped and rigged a model for example:) While the assets are bad, it's still a cute project, and one I'm proud of, so it's going on the site. Just keep in mind it doesn't hold up at all to anything else I've done since:) It's just for entertainment purposes.

Note: This is in no way endorsed, or acknowledged by, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, any of the Power Rangers, Abraham Lincoln, Samurai Jack, Ronald McDonald, Captain Planet, MacGyver, Jesus, or any of the other celebrities featured in this film.

Misc. Unreal Levels

Brown Town

After Hours

The Lot

The Lot is a medium-to-large scale Deathmatch or Team Deathmatch level created specifically for Portfolio. Made sure that if I was going to make another level, I was going to avoid the pitfalls that make my other two levels subpar. Chief among them, I was going to design this with balance in mind, unlike After Hours (which featured no level design really). And unlike Brown Town, this was going to be above ground, bright and show off some decent geometry instead of just simple little ugly things.

Enjoy!