This was my first game jam. Since I work on weekdays we only had 2 days on the weekend to crank out as much as possible. I got a lot of good feedback on the graphics so I wanted to go over my process of creating the art for this jam. It was a lot of fun to work in the tight deadline and overthinking went out the window.

My first goal was to gather lots of reference so that I had a strong visual target. I love the program pureref that allows me to quickly build up a moodboard where I can see lots of images together. I separated images into 3 categories of UI, Ships, and Space Stuff. This can be used to generate lots of ideas sort of like a visual brainstorm

Next its time to get modeling. I used maya for this project but also love 3ds Max. Blender looks quite promising as well. It doesnt really matter what program you use. Its all about execution of your poly pushing. I think of big shapes first, then medium. I worry about the small details later. Make sure to prioritize your shape hierarchy!

Next its time to hit up those small details and make this thing come alive. I use zbrush for this detail pass. I create a high poly version of the model and then use sculpting and alphas to add lots of detail. I will use this to bake later and get all that detail into the normal map for texturing.

Now its time to bring it alive with textures. I use substance designer and painter to do this. Designer allows me to create tiled textures and patterns. Painter allows me to paint all kinds of detail on the mesh. This is the part where you can add lots of personality and story to the object. One of my favorite space artist is Chris Foss. My favorite ships of his always used bold colors, but also felt very believable in scale. I wanted some nice grime, but not too noisy. Just enough to make it feel alive. Starwars also does a great job of this. Painter is an awesome program that allows me to bake my high poly to my low and create all my PBR (physically based rendering) together and preview them on my object.

It took me about 8 hours to figure out a good pipeline to get these things cranked out, but once i got it figured out i was pumping out a model about every 2 hours. It was so satisfying to pop them out, commit them and @gale-swift would just set up the functionality with prefabs. We had great teamwork and it made the process a pleasure!

We recorded the whole process so if anyone wants to watch how we spent our time check out his twitch channel!

https://www.twitch.tv/galeswift

And if you havent checked out the game yet, try and get that warp core powered up before you are overwhelmed!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-reactor-2

If you would like to see more of my art you can check out my artstation as well!

https://www.artstation.com/darkrusader

Thanks for checking out our game!