Project Millennium
2020- 2023
Project Millennium is the spiritual successor of my old Half-Life 2 mod “Lost Hope”. It draws from the same inspiration such as Otomo’s Akira universe, as well as Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell, numerous fictional cityscapes, some elements from scifi classics such as Alien and Bladerunner, and of course a healthy amount of brutalist architecture.
I have spent a lot of time creating and finetuning the hand-drawn/outline rendering setup, using only techniques that are available in game engines (so non are made using Blender’s GreasePencil or Freestyle lines).
It’s essentially a post-process shader that uses sobel filters to process a bunch of buffers/channels that have value differences which create the lines.
I intend to eventually get this rendering style running in real-time in a game engine, but for now will keep exploring and prototyping this universe in Blender, as its quick and not as limiting as using an engine.
Project PeaceKeeper
2013- 2020
This project started the moment I saw the ISS get obliterated in Gravity (2013). I was convinced I could rip a space station apart, at the level of detail shown in the movie, … and in real-time.
It was a great way to get comfortable in Unreal 4 and eventually 5, but I never got around to actually blowing the space station up.
Aliens: Nightmare Asylum
2024
This was a personal project I did to get more comfortable using Blender.
I had a lot of fun playing around with the different smoke and fire simulations, finally sculpting something using Blender instead of zBrush, hand modelling motionblurred water droplets (lol), and compositing the image inside Blender (instead of Photoshop).
The xenomorph was only really sculpted for the angle it is mostly viewed from, and doesnt even have legs or a tail...
Pick up the Aliens: Nightmare Asylum graphic novel if you have the chance! It's one of the prettier Alien comics, and certainly is my favorite.
Lost Hope (HL2)
2004-2010(?)
This project was started a few weeks after I finished playing through Half-Life 2. With some early concept art setting the scope to “overly ambitious”, and not having any real experience making game assets, I felt ready to start.
Looking back I could have set more realistic goals, and started with a smaller project, but I regret nothing.
I loved learning the tools needed to make this, loved working on it, and it paid off by providing me a portfolio that earned me an internship at Guerrilla Games.
