The Next Chapter: Graduation

Hello Again,

It has been a long and grueling trail but the end has been reached. I am officially graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh with a Bachelors Degree in Science.

So what comes next? Recently my efforts have been put towards fixing up my home life, applying to companies, and enjoying the break I have not gotten in my years of working for the school.

My next chapter has begun and I'm thrilled to begin writing it;  from job leads and industry opportunities, to personal challenges to continue my growth as an artist, and to continue my growth as a game designer.

That is all for this post and be sure to stay tuned in for new works and challenges of my own doing.

Cordially yours,
Jordan "Wham-Shell" Franklin

Winter 2013

Its been a great Quarter Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have made some good progress over this quarter and its time to have a wrap up of all that has happened.

my first jump was in a class called team game production where we work on a student concepted project for  6 - 9 months. our last project which was just finishing up at the end of this quarter was Modus Operandi where you take the role of Detective Morris who is looking for clues on the bloodshot killer.  My contributions for the project were in the design of the HUD and main menu. I also was the Concept and Design lead for the past 3 months on the project.

However since the project was coming to and end our teacher had students pitch their ideas for next quarter... and my idea was picked! It is an environment piece set in a desert trade city. I wont go into much more details until it is more fleshed out but I will show you all some of the concept work;

Concepts I worked on

Clothing Concepts

Points Of Interest ( Rough)

Overhead Map

Concepts done by others

Environment Concept

Priest Concept

Guard Concepts

My next accomplishment was passing Pre - Portfolio here at college. I feel satisfied that I passed but I still have to get through one more quarter before I'm in the clear.  Here are some of the renders of my work;

Camera 1

Camera 2

Camera 3

Camera 4

Camera 5

Floor Piece

Floor Piece Wireframe

Gate

Gate Wireframe

Statue

Statue Wireframe

Bomb

Bomb Wireframe

And for my last hurdle I finished my first Facial Animation.  We were tasked in creating a facial animation from a 10 second sound file of our choice.  not much else to explain except for watching the finished product;

That sums up Winter Quarter but be sure to check back for more updates and leave any feedback or comments!

Cordially Yours,

Jordan "Wishmaster" Franklin

Global Game Jam 2013

Happy New Years!

This is a very exciting post because not only is it my first post of the new year but with it I bring more of my work (moreso the work of a team).

I personally attended the Global Game Jam of 2013 at the Pittsburgh Location, in which each group was given the task of creating a game within 48 hours. this is our game:

The whole experience was phenomenal and a great way to see how things will go for the rest of my professional career. We went through some tough times, some sleepy times, some nervous times, and some fun times. the game is about a creature making his way back home. The world is deadly to you and causes constant damage, however the lanterns lights provide protection. here is a link to the main page where you can download and play the game:

Tether

if you don't have time to play it then here is a video of the gameplay:

Overall I hope to continue working on this and making it something more. That is all for this post but stay tuned for more work from yours truly!

Cordially Yours,

Jordan "Wolverine" Franklin

First Level

Greetings Adventurer,

Today's post is a video of my FIRST level in UDK. I did not realize til the end of the class how hard throwing together a level is by yourself. It was an awesome learning experience though, especially watching your planning and fruition come to play. I designed my level to be a one player platforming puzzle. it turned out being a platformer with much needed attention to the puzzles...

all models, textures, and kismet functions were done by yours truly.

Comments and Critiques of the level are welcome. Til next time.

Cordially Yours,

Jordan "Pumpkin-King" Franklin

What a Character

Hello Patrons,

This post is dedicated to a few videos of characters I have done for classes and such. I will say before you go any farther that my character work is not up to par. However I need to get into showing all my work since that is how you get good critique, right? all the models, textures, skins, and rigs were done by me. I also did all the animations EXCEPT the shaman(that was provided by the teacher).

 The first video is of a character I had to have interacting with a vehicle in the environment.

This next video is another character I had to make interacting with the environment.

The last video is the character I worked on for Character Modeling. 

Comments and critiques are always welcome as usual. If you have any questions or want more information you can contact me by email. 

Well that is it for this post, Next post will be something inside of the Unreal Development Kit! make sure to stay tuned.

Humbly Yours,

Jordan "The Dancer" Franklin

Sketch Practice 4

Bonjour,

its time for more artwork I wrangled from my sketchpad! below you will see a range of different things from cartoony characters to poses from the website Pixellovely. I will try to include a little description under each photo and what I was thinking/doing at the time. I apologize for the scanners awesome power and causing some of my drawings to be faded. If you would like to delve a little deeper into any of these ideas feel free to contact me,

Dream I had featuring me as a zombie superhero

Skully

Pose Practice

Mask for Character

Character Ideas for game

Wilderness child

That's all for this post and I hope you enjoyed the artwork. Comments and Critiques are still welcome.

Specifically Yours,
Jordan "Salem" Franklin

Sketch Practice 3

Hello again minions,

Here is some more artwork I dug up from the depths of my doodle folders. One is just me practicing some female faces since I still have trouble grasping beauty, and the other is some sketches I did for a cancelled mod dealing with zombies(if you couldn't tell). I also included a skeleton I was doodling for another long lost project as well as an old environment mock up for a 3D project(that I will post about later).

Comments and Critiques are always welcome and I will keep digging to present more along the way~!

Respectfully Yours,
Jordan "RoxInSox" Franklin