Ryan Benno's Art Blog

City Speak

2012-01-08T23:09:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to do an update/sneak peek of the new personal scene I'm working on.

More to come!

Xmas gift

2011-12-21T10:16:00.000-08:00

Update!

2011-09-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

So I know I haven't updated this in awhile but let me recap what's been going on! Since my last update I've had a swarm of art tests that came my way, quite a few interviews and some freelance work as well. I've also worked at the wonder USC Institute of Creative Technologies in Marina Del Rey, on a project I can't talk about yet, but when it comes out, I'll be more than excited to show off the work I did there. But the big news is that, I have signed up with Telltale Games in San Rafael!

As of this last past Monday, I've been working there and I'll be apart of some of their exciting projects they have in the pipeline! Hopefully I'll be able to update that soon as well. I will be continuing to update my blog, once I'm settled in up here in the bay area. I've already got a few ideas and projects that have been scratching at me!

Hunted Animations

2011-06-24T14:22:00.001-07:00

I just updated my website going over all the things I worked on while on Hunted! That includes all my animations and props.

Take a look right here If you'd like to check it out: http://www.hellomynameisryan.org/projects/7-ryan-benno-project-art-hunted

Goblin Lounge

2011-06-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

In this scene I made a Goblin inspired interior and exterior. I wanted to capture the dirty and tacky feel of the Goblin's world. All the textures are hand painted, 256x256 as well as both pieces are combined under 5k polys. All the lighting and rendering were done in 3DS Max.

Textures

Deserted

2011-06-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

Finally, here is the finished version of the Deserted scene! Hope you all like!

No Lighting

Lighting Only

Wireframe

Hunted: The Demon's Forge Shields

2011-06-20T13:58:00.001-07:00

Now that Hunted is finally released, I'll start updating my site with my contributions to the game. I'll be doing a more comprehensive overview of my work, but right now, I'll be showing off the shields I created! I was responsible for not only making these shields (Modeling, Texturing, Unreal Materials), but making them work in game, rigging them, and breaking properly when they take damage over time.

I'll be posting more things like my animations, and other items I made like pick up items later as well.

Deserted: Billboard Ad

2011-06-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

So I'm back! After disappearing for a few weeks to work on an art test and I've returned with a new asset for the deserted scene. Here is the ad.

In an attempt to tell more about the scene and why the tractor is there, I came up with the idea for this ad.

Everything in this is handpainted. No direct photo reference was used in the texture.

Here it is all old, and beaten up.

Deserted: First lighting pass

2011-05-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

First lighting pass of a new scene I'm working on incorporating the tractor. Still need to add some bug/firefly effects around the lights, as well as a few other smaller pieces. I'm also looking at changing around the grass and, of course, the lighting.

As always, comments and critiques are welcomed!

In Game Tractor

2011-05-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

Here is the final tractor for the scene.

Tractor High Poly

2011-05-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

Working on a new scene and this tractor is the main asset in it. This high poly was modeled all in Max, Rendered in Mental Ray

Hunted: The Demon's Forge Screenshots

2011-04-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

So just had to put this up real quick cause these screenshots from Bethesda (on top of being pretty badass) show off one of my favorite pieces I made for Hunted, the shield as well as the mace and sword for E'lara. I'll be posting more of my work on the game once it's been released, but just wanted to share these!

I worked on both Caddoc's shield and axe here as well

Team Fortress 2 Hats: Heavy Tiki Mask (In Game)

2011-04-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

In game shots finally.

OMG! IT COMES IN BLUE TOO???

Team Fortress 2 Hats: Heavy Tiki Mask

2011-03-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here it is! Fully textured! Will have shot of it on Heavy in game soon!

Team Fortress 2 Hats: Class Tiki Heads Heavy WIP Textured

2011-03-27T23:33:00.000-07:00

So I know what you must be thinking. "Another change?? But I liked the helmet!"

Me too! Unfortunately, the helmet would be a huge disadvantage to Snipers since it covered the entire head, and frankly, it was just too large. So I went back to the drawing board (or in this case, cutting board) and cut the entire back part of the wooden head off as well as reduced the size by about 50%.

Once I got the mesh down I started UVing, texturing and getting it into the Source engine (which is no easy task, but definitely a fun challenge.).

Now these textures are still a serious work in progress but I wanted to at least show it off in engine and with most of it's base colors on! The next post will be the finished model.

Team Fortress 2 Hats: Class Tiki Heads 2 Paintover

2011-03-23T21:37:00.001-07:00

Another paintover of the tiki mask

Team Fortress 2 Hats: Class Tiki Heads

2011-03-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

So I planned to show off a paintover of my tiki head hat concept I worked on earlier. My ultimate (and daunting) goal is to do one uniquely to each class. Here is the Red version of the tiki.

However, a friend suggested a much better idea.....

Gotta work on it a bit more, get it away from the shoulders and maybe play with the jaw a bit too. I'm also plan to model some hands holding the rope instead of it coming out of his mouth.

Update soon!

Riot Games Art Test

2011-03-14T12:04:00.001-07:00

Here is my recent art test I did for Riot Games. Goal was to recreate an existing model from League of Legends asset with higher rez textures (Diffuse, Normal, Spec) and a higher tri count as well (Somewhere between 2500 and 3000 tris.) It also had to be handpainted as well on the diffuse. All final textures are 1024. The mesh was modeled and unwrapped in Maya.

Naughty Dog Texture Artist test

2011-02-11T18:54:00.000-08:00

Just had the great privilege to work on the Naughty Dog Texture Artist test. This test really made me think outside the box in terms of texturing, which introduced a new workflow of creating textures. Working from a base photo, I would edit it and create a "blockout" of sorts. This photo blockout, I would than bring into maya/max, where I'd create a 3d blockout that focused on the depth in the photo. That 3d blockout, I'd use to in zbrush, sculpt, than project to get normals, AO, Cavity, etc. Depending on the type of texture it was, I'd do a combination of things that would involve combining the maps from zbrush with the blockout photo, as well as adding hand painted qualities to it as well.

Tpage layout

WIP: Hand Painted Brick Texture

2011-01-11T14:40:00.001-08:00

Working on my hand painting skills. My first time doing 100% painted textures. Liking the results so far. Just doing the base colors and shapes. I'll be adding more highlights, color and lighting once all the bricks are formed out.

Twilight Zone Inspired Train

2010-05-21T01:02:00.001-07:00

Kind of an interesting source of inspiration for this piece. I've always enjoyed the harmonica music in the Twilight Zone during some of the episodes about backwoods areas or westerns. So as I was hiking the other day, we came across some really pretty areas that reminded me of that type of music. I decided to start working on a concept piece from there. I'm keeping it black and white in homage to Twilight Zone.

Gritty Facade: Eraserhead

2010-05-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

Had about an hour to kill, So I decided to create some more graffiti for the gritty facade. Hopefully a few of you out there will get this and get a good chuckle out of it....or just throw up.

Custom Zerg Wall Structure

2010-05-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

So since the Starcraft 2 beta has been released along with the editor, my friend Joe Thompson and thought it would be a cool idea to create a custom Zerg structure we think might help with the Zerg forces.

The idea for the wall will be to work as a barrier. While it can be destroyed, any melee type units will be hurt by the spikes in front of the wall and may cause one of the poisonous pods to burst and spray poison at nearby friendly units.

I plan on modeling, texturing and when needed, creating the shader for it. it. Once the full game is out, we plan on integrating it for others to download. I put a marine next to it just to show for scale.

Gritty Facade: So far

2010-05-13T11:41:00.001-07:00

Added a few trash bags. I plan on putting some reflection maps on once the scene gets closer to completion. And a fence with some graffiti. Brownie points to whoever can guess who all three characters are.

While I'm focusing on the gritty and dirtiness of the textures in this piece, I've thought it might be an interesting concept to make the graffiti more comfortable and familiar to contrast that.. Adding something that's reminiscent of childhood memories. I'll be posting more soon!

Gritty Facade: Vending Machine

2010-05-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

Here is the "I'm with Coco-Cola" soda vending machine fully textured and in Unreal 3. The texture size for the diffuse and normal are 1024x1024 and the spec is 512x512. The model comes in at 456 tris. I plan on putting some reflections in once the scene gets closer to completion.

Gritty Facade: Vending Machine Zbrush

2010-04-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

Just the highpoly model of the vending machine.Here is the reference I used as well. Sadly, I didn't have time to model the guy and his awesome mullet.

2D work

2010-04-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

Here is a mixture of some of my 2d work. Some sketches, some graphic design work, some from Illustrator and some colored bits too.

Photography work

2010-04-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

Here is some of my photography work I've done over the last 6 years.

I find photography to be incredibly necessary when working in a medium like 3D. Photography helps out tremendously with constructing composition, lighting and silhouetting.

Gritty Facade: Base Mesh 2

2010-04-23T20:27:00.001-07:00

Played around with a bunch of different props and ideas, but I think I'm gonna be settling with this. I'll add some weeds and dead grass around the building later on.

Gritty Facade: Base Mesh

2010-04-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

Here's what I have so far for my base mesh of the building. Still need to add a lot more individual assets to the scene.

Gritty Facade: Concept

2010-04-15T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hey there! Finally, gonna get back on board with actual modeling and texturing! So with that said, I'm gonna be working, not on a full scene, but a gritty urban building front facade. Here's just a quick sketch of the basic idea. I plan on adding trash, graffiti, and a bunch of other things along the way to the final model! I'll post the base mesh pretty soon.

Irrational Level Builder Test

2010-04-08T11:13:00.000-07:00

I recently had the great opportunity to work on a test for a level builder/artist position for Irrational Games (yay!)

The premise was to create a 2 year old abandoned city, focusing on a city block, that included vertical and open gameplay as well as being able to tell a story in that environment.

The idea I came up with was, playing the UDK default robot character, you'd explore an evacuated city that had been taken over by a parasitic plant that sent out mind controlling spores and had those affected by it start sending people for the plant to feed on.

I spent about a period of 5 weeks working on this. During the 5 weeks I was asked to do some revisions as well on the opening interior. I used UDK with assets from Gears of War 1 to build the scene. I made a few small custom assets and materials as well, one being a window with real time reflections.

Here are some screenshots and the walkthrough video of the final version.

Better quality video here: Link

Winners in the Make Something Unreal Contest

2010-03-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't updated in awhile! I've been busy finishing school this month, going to GDC, and working on a level builder/artist test for Irrational Games. I'll be posting some videos and screenshots of it in a while.

But I just wanted to post about Deadman's Tales being a winner in the Make Something Unreal Contest. Along with the other Game Wizards' games Boiler Plate, Milligun, and Killing Time, Deadman's Tales won second place in the Educational Category, and was the only school in North America to place in the top 5 prize winners. Congrats to everyone at Ai-LA!

Seaside Castle: Final

2010-01-13T11:22:00.001-08:00

It's finally done! Added all of the foliage, waterfalls, the flags for the tower and did a final pass on lighting as well. Everything in the scene is a 100% custom made. Rendered inside of UDK the final scene, minus the UDK terrain, has a total tri count of 129,578, and an instanced tri count of 37,256.

Inspiration:

Lighting

Wireframe

Unlit

Seaside WIP: Almost there!

2010-01-10T19:24:00.001-08:00

Almost at the home stretch now with this piece! All the major pieces are done! Just need to add small detail assets like plants, waterfalls, flags and a few other odd bit things! I finished up on this bridge piece earlier in the day.

Rendered in UDK

The big towers were finally integrated into the scene. As you can also see, I've added custom sand and water as well. I definitely wanted to give the water it's own feel to assist with the look of a sunset.

Seaside Castle: WIP 6

2009-12-29T20:27:00.000-08:00

So I finally finished the tiling texture on the walkway. I hand painted this 512x512 using photo references. The base texture, AO and normals were handmade. I also added a roof piece in the back.

Tiling Texture:

Seaside Castle: WIP 5

2009-12-26T22:53:00.000-08:00

Here's another updated version with some actual pieces of the castle now! The skydome is temporary. I just wanted something to help out with the color instead of just having a black background. I'll make a more finalized one later on.

Seaside Castle: WIP 4

2009-12-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't updated on this scene in awhile, I've been busy with finals, other side projects and enjoying my first week off of Christmas break. But I'm back to work on it and made rigid rock modular piece. I also made a second version of the grassy hills that is more flat to give it more variety.

Deadman's Tales is a finalist for Best Art in a Game Mod for Epic's Make Something Unreal Contest!

2009-12-22T11:23:00.001-08:00

Make Something Unreal Phase 4 Best Art in a Game Mod Finalists

Today the finalists were announced for the MSU Competition's Best Art category and Deadman's Tales is in it! The team and I are extremely excited about our chances to progress and are honored to be mentioned along side some other mods with fantastic and beautiful art!

Seaside Castle: WIP 3: Lighting test 3

2009-12-10T11:26:00.001-08:00

Playing around with the placement of the cliffs, added a new pillar/walkway, and of course the lighting as well! I'm still not happy with the grass, but that's for another time!

Seaside Castle: WIP 3: Lighting test 2

2009-12-05T14:26:00.001-08:00

Got the diffuse and spec on the cliff!

Seaside Castle: WIP 3: Lighting test 1

2009-12-05T02:17:00.001-08:00

I wanted to take a look at the normals of the lowpoly cliff and play around with the new UDK's lighting!

Seaside Castle: WIP 2 Cliff Zbrush model

2009-12-04T16:25:00.000-08:00

Continuing to work on this scene. I made a tileable cliff that will be placed around the scene that will hold up the castle and also be the base in the sand. I played around with the new Zbrush 3.5r3 brushes and found the polish brushes to be extremely useful when trying to create fine rock curves. I left the top of the hill untouched and will rework it when the low poly is made.

Seaside Castle: WIP 1 Tower

2009-12-03T14:30:00.001-08:00

I've begun work on a new scene. A seaside castle of sorts. This piece here is going to be in the background. I wanted to try and get the textures down for the roofing and concrete of the castle, so it all fits together of course. I'll be posting more in a bit!

Unearthly Challenge: Broken Wall

2009-11-13T13:16:00.001-08:00

Currently, working on an Unearthly Challenge piece with a few friends. The first asset I worked on was this foreground broken wall piece. Inspired by Uncharted 2 art, I tried to focus on the really old, broken and poorly constructed feel of the asset. Originally made in Zbrush, with a low poly built on top after and Unwrapped using 3ds Max. The finish version shown here was imported and lit using UDK.

Inspiration

Zbrush model

UDK Render

Old Southern Tree

2009-11-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

Working again with Zbrush 3.5's new ZSpheres, I wanted to see how well I could make an organic asset, such as a tree! The final low poly version was imported into UDK, with diffuse, normal and specular maps. Used a custom Unreal material to add more bump and specular to the detailed bark.

UDK Render

Zbrush model

Lit in UDK

Zbrush: Sea Monster

2009-11-12T11:43:00.000-08:00

Very shortly after the release of ZBrush 3.5, I started experimenting with ZSpheres 2 and it’s sculpting. One of the first full realized models I created was this monster. I painted the textures entirely in ZBrush as well. Not intended to be in-game model.

B-17 Bomber Engine

2009-11-12T11:15:00.000-08:00

Zbrush

Low Poly

Ancient Mud Wall

2009-11-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

A small group of friends and I got together for a day to whip out an Unreal 3 map. I was assigned to make an asset. This piece took about 4-5 hours to finish and imported into Unreal with a custom material.

Theater Entrance

2009-11-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

Some other pieces I made in a group project that went along with the theater ceiling decroation.

Theater Ceiling Decoration

2009-11-12T09:45:00.000-08:00

Inpired by a ceiling decoration found in the entrance of the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, CA. Since this piece would be used on a large scale with the player possibly getting close to it the whole piece had to be created out of smaller modular pieces.

Team Tentacle: Tank

2009-11-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

Originally indeeded for a scene, this tank had two separate modular parts that were crutial to the telling of the story in the scene.

Original concept by Patrick Loughman

Old Fashioned Root Beer

2009-10-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

This scene is inspired by a Gears of War concept. A group of four that included Patrick Loughman, Ryan Dao, Carlos Beltran and myself worked on this piece for three weeks. I created decal and tilable textures as well as assets and the lighting. All the planks in the destroyed building are modular.

Team logo made by me entirely in Illustrator.

Phantasy

2009-10-19T18:06:00.000-07:00

This scene was inspired by a background layout from Disney’s The Black Cauldron. Everything in this scene is 100% custom, made by Patrick Loughman and myself. On top of making most of the key assets, I also did most of the Unreal materials, including the flickering emissive mushrooms. Alll assets were made in Max, Zbrush and rendered in Unreal 3.

Projects: Legion

2009-10-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

Legion was a Unreal Tournament 3 steampunk art mod created by
30 students in about 3 months in the Game Wizards’ production team at the Art Institute of California -Los Angeles.

The project was able to have custom animations, characters,
particles and all the assets in the level are student made. I worked as an environment artist, working in the end game room.

At the end of the three month production schedule we had
industry professionals and G4tv come and view our presentation.

G4tv clip

Projects: Boiler Plate

2009-10-19T17:27:00.001-07:00

Boiler Plate is an Unreal Tournament 3 steampunk art mod created by
40 students in the Game Wizards’ production team at the Art Institute of California -Los Angeles.

During production, I was the main vehicle artist of the team. I had to work with a Phil Horowitz, our technical artist, to get the Stingray, our reskinned vehicle, into the engine and working. I also created a test vehicle that we used for animations, a hoverboard and a statue asset placed around the level.

The Stingray got an honorable mention for Best Vehicle in the Make Something Unreal competition.

Projects: Deadman's Tales Assets

2009-10-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

The mermaid fountain I used to set the humorous tone I wanted for the game in pre-production. It was modeled inside of Max with a holy poly version made in ZBrush. The normal and ambient occlusion maps were projected using xnormal. The concept behind the fountain was that it was taken by the pirates in a raid at one time and while they obviously loved the female appearance of the mermaid, they thought it would be amusing to have the water sprout out of her nipples. So they sealed off her mouth, where the water originally came from and made holes in her nipples. I encouraged the art team to come up with details and backstory to assets when appropriate.

Projects: Deadman's Tales Pre-Production

2009-10-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

During an 11 week pre-production schedule, my team had to prove that the game not only could work artistically, but that it could work technically. This required making two maps, one for art and one for tech. The first four weeks were spent creating a working domination game and cinematics. With only a team of two artists and myself, we were able to accomplish this with myself creating the entire level, making a few assets and the cinematic. The art map was made in under 4 weeks by a team of 4 artists with myself overseeing their work as well as all the level duties. This included importing/placement of assets into the engine and level, materials, lighting, and cinematics. The screenshots below are of the art level. This turned out to be a great learning process for when it came to actual production.

Projects: Deadman's Tales Level Design

2009-10-19T16:35:00.000-07:00

Our main goal was to create a map that matched the cartoon and stylized feel of the art and characters. The gameplay and map needed to encourage fast-paced traveling and constant action. Vertical gameplay, including roof jumping and multiple building levels were also needed. The level team made a new map every week for the team to playtest through. At one point, there was a struggle trying to get the map size just right, so in about two hours I created a BSP blockout that would eventually be help create the final map.

Another challenge that came up was a balance between art and design. At time durin the playtesting phase, the map would play great but wouldn’t lend itself to the art sense and direction we needed. Other times the level looked great but played horribly. Eventually we found a great medium between the two principles.

Projects: Deadman's Tales Lighting

2009-10-19T16:04:00.000-07:00

The challenge of lighting this entire level became a trial and error process. My idea for the lighting scheme came from the sense immersion I felt from the night time lighting in Pirates of the Carribean attraction. In keeping with the stylized and cartoony feel of the art direction, I also knew that the lighting would need to be colorful and saturated as well. This proved to be a challenge to balance both of these contrasting ideas. I also felt that the starting areas for both teams needed to have distinctive lighting as well. The pirate side was lit with cooler, more
sickly colors and the civilian side was lit with a variety of warmer colors.

Technically, I knew I couldn’t use a lot of lights if the map was to play at a high framerate. Creating lightmaps,using a directional light as my base helped tremendously. During the production phase we had the lights set on their own separate streaming level so it would be easier to make changes to. When baking the final map, the lighting level was integrated into it with no performance issues what so ever.

Projects: Deadman's Tales Overview

2009-10-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

Deadman’s Tales is an Unreal Tournament 3 mod created by a team of 40 students in the Game Wizards’ production team at the Art Institute of California -Los Angeles.

Based on the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction concept art by Marc Davis, Deadman’s Tales is a team domination multiplayer map. A unique end game cinematic would play depending on which team wins the match.

I came up with the initial concept, pitched it and over a nine month pre-production and production schedule, worked as both the Project Lead as well as Art Director. I oversaw both the creation of assets, from concept to finished as well as level and game design. Managing duties included tracking the progress of tasks and milestones using the scrumm process, organizing art asset packages, and supervising lead artists and designers.

Other production duties included lighting the entire map, creating all the matinees for the end game cinematics, creating blockouts and gameflow of the map using BSP or placement of art assets, importing assets into engine and applying/creating Unreal materials to those assets

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