JR Improvement #3 - Concept

           This is the pixel-art building I made earlier in the semester, and is the last of the three upgrades for my projects. Like the burger, I plan to make this image higher-resolution, and modify it to fit the art style of the game. Alongside that, I plan to fix a few small perspective issues and straighten out the rather crooked-looking windows. Furthermore, I plan to add some decorations to the building to make it more lively, such as furniture, a door border, festive lights, and maybe even a sign for the top (providing that there is room and doesn't block too much of the roof).

JR Improvement #2 - Final Product

     
        This is the final product for my second project upgrade. Like the maze, I decided to upgrade and change the art style to match the art style of the game. It isn't always easy to turn pixel art into high-quality art, but I am very happy with how this turned out. Also, I changed the shading type on most of the objects from the side-shadow pixel style to the JR edge-to-middle sort of style, which looks more uniform with the rest of the image. The sesame seeds were simple, and don't have any shading, but if shading was implemented, it'd be difficult to spot anyway.

JR Improvement #2 - Concept

     This is the pixel art burger I made earlier in the semester, and the second thing I plan to upgrade for the final. Like the maze, the graphical style of the burger doesn't match the graphical style of the game. My plan is to "convert" this into the game's style, and make it into a usable art asset for this game.

 

JR Improvement #1 - Final Product

           This is the final version of the JR Maze updated for the final. I decided to go with the idea of changing the realistic looping textures with cartoonish ones to make it much less out-of-place. All of the textures were pretty easy to make (though, the ceiling texture turned out looking rather odd, but that isn't a big deal). They were all done in Photoshop using the Katamari-style simple shading, and it looks surprisingly good in 3D. A problem I encountered while modifying everything was that my new textures were non-looping, and weren't positioned properly. However, once I learned about Maya's Planar Mapping function, I was able to fix all of the textures. I was also able to take advantage of this by making books for the bookshelves around the maze, since they looked rather empty to begin with. In addition, they add more bright color to the maze, which really fits the style. Overall, I'm very happy with how the maze turned out, and I'm glad I was able to make this great upgrade.

JR Improvement #1 - Concept

  

    

      For my first of three (or four, or whatever is decided on) improvement projects, I decided to make another improvement to the maze I recently completed. Despite looking good with higher quality textures, and even though my game is in 2D, I thought that it would look rather out-of-place in the environment of the game. The two different styles of art clash significantly. To remedy this, I am thinking of using the practice I had in making and sizing textures to change the maze to the Katamari-like art style of the game (screenshot example of Katamari shown above). As the screenshot shows, the game uses cartoonish and simple colors, and has very simple shading to match. With this in mind, I am also going to make an even spread of the light sources to control and reduce the amount of shadows to better fit the art style. The blinn textures won't be kept, but I plan to add the same amount of variety to the replacement textures.

JR Maze - Finished Upgrade

       This is the finished upgrade of the maze. I decided to make the maze more colorful and lively by adding different kinds of floor/wall for different parts of the complex, along with furniture to make it more like a living space. I added tile floors and a new carpet pattern for peoples' rooms and the living area, along with a metal wall and concrete floor for the back/utility hallway near the top left of the first image. For the furniture, I used a mix of blinns and lamberts to texture them. The red chair may look a but strange, but I'm really happy with how the wooden furniture turned out with it's textures. I was hoping to add separate textures to different surfaces, bit the ability to add a different sized texture to each piece of the furniture turned out well enough. Each piece of furniture was built out of standard polygons, and a warped sphere was used to make the back boards on the big chairs and couches. I also removed many of the little gaps between wall and ceiling pieces, which made the maze look more polished.

JR Maze - Upgrade Research

          For my game of reference and inspiration for upgrading the maze, I chose The Sims 3. Despite being a completely different kind of game, I thought it would serve as a good reference for spicing the maze up. Since my maze is in a condo, I thought it needed some furniture and variance in the kinds of carpets the different residents have. The Sims 3 has a similar simple graphical like the maze has, and has plenty of examples of rooms and furniture pieces, so I knew it would be a good thing to reference while building furniture to the maze. I plan on utilizing the new dynamic textures in Maya to create different kinds of flooring for the open rooms. For the furniture, I plan to make chairs, sofas, coffee tables, shelves, and maybe even some lamps or TVs. The furniture shouldn't be too difficult to make, as it looks simple enough to build with the 3D Polygons in Maya. I'll use The Sims 3 as a reference to help me decide varietals and textures for the furniture.