Game: Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a role-playing video game developed by Red Entertainment and Matrix Software, and published by Ignition Entertainment for the Nintendo DS. It will release on October 27, 2009. The game is set in the 19th century. Players take control of main character Eddy, son of a legendary English adventurer, and the adventure begins as Eddy and a cast of fellow Londoners set off on an adventure that takes them through London and the rest of the world. A central theme in Nostalgia is flight. Eddy makes use of a dirigible in his travels. When playing, you move about the world through the air rather than walking around on an overworld map. Your air ship also comes into play during battles, as in addition to fighting standard party-based command battles when exploring dungeons, you also engage in air based battles against other air ships.

Nostalgia Exclusive Launch Trailer

Game features:

Ambitious, fully 3D polygonal graphical engine offers dramatic, sweeping camera angles and impressive vistas rarely seen in a DS title.

Cohesive, anime-inspired art direction that effectively captures the game’s turn-of-the-century charm.

Travel to incredibly unique, non-traditional RPG locales via airship including London, New York, Cairo, Africa, and Russia.

Features two distinct combat engines: One is a brisk, turn-based close-quarters melee between your party members and monsters; while the other offers thrilling, large-scale airship battles. In addition, your battle skills are scored at the conclusion of each conflict, inspiring strategic mastery.

Handy in-game notebook feature keeps track of people, monsters, airships and items you’ve run across.

Plenty of user-defined customization, allowing the player to trick out his or her airship with various weapons, armor types, and special skill attacks. The player can also choose character-specific skills from a branching tree for a more personalized experience.

Explore a variety of diverse, engaging dungeons that include brain bending puzzles and tricky Indiana Jones-style traps.

Optional quest system inspires players to approach the adventure from a less linear perspective, extending the life of the gameplay experience.

I'm Looking For Work/Internship!!!

Golly gosh! It's been quite a while since my last post, sorry guys!
I've been ultra-busy with my major project for 3rd year uni lately. The good thing about that however is that I have a bit of new design stuff to show. Awesome!

So apparently all this hoobla over my NES coffee table has caused quite a bit of publicity for me and it has come to my attention that apparently the Herald Sun is going to be writing an article about my coffee table in the Tech Liftout of tomorrows news paper (holy fucking shit! AWE-SOME).

Which gives me the perfect opportunity to upload a whole pile of design works and stuff now, so hopefully tomorrow when everyone in Melbourne reads the paper, some person in some design studio somewhere in Melbourne (dear lord please let it be some awesome studio like Qube Konstrukt or Iloura) will read my blog, see my current work and think "hey, this guy is cool, we should totally hire him or something!"

IF YOU ARE FROM A DESIGN OR VISUAL EFFECTS STUDIO IN MELBOURNE AND THINK MY WORK IS UP TO STANDARD PLEASE GIVE ME A HEADS UP! I AM LOOKING FOR WORK OR AN INTERNSHIP VERY SOON! RAWR!!!!
- I am currently in my third year of BA:Animation & Interactive Media (Multimedia) at RMIT University.
-I am proficient in Maya as well as well as After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, Flash, Dream Weaver etc. etc.
-I am preferably looking for a 3D modelling job, since that definitely seems to be my strongest skill.
-I live in Essendon, about 20 minutes out of the city, I only have two days uni this semester, and once I have completed that (with flying colours hopefully) I will be looking for full time work in this field.
- My email address is khdownes@hotmail.com

Anyway, while I'm here, I better show of some of the stuff I have been working on lately. I'll put everything in chronological from most recent to least recent.
At the moment I am making a motion graphics piece about the history of video games for my major project for uni.
Here are a few of the models I have been working on which will be part of it (p.s. Most of these models aren't quite finished yet, there's still a bit more detail to add to them):
First up is an Enzo Ferrari which will represent the move to more realistic graphics towards the end of the piece:

Next is the Super Nintendo I modelled yesterday morning, I'm still trying to figure out how to adjust the luminance depth pass in Maya to create depth of field in after effects;

I also modelled a NES earlier in the week, there's still a fair bit more detail to add to this model yet:

Just a quick render of the Playstation 1 I modelled today (really need to figure out those problems with final gather that create the crappy smudge look around some edges):

Here's a little vinyl toy-style mario kart I made, he's only a simple model because he is only going to be on screen for a second or two:
That's All I have to show for my major project work so far, I've been working like 13 hours a day every single frkn day of the holidays doing about 25-30 models all up, but these are the only ones I've textured so far.

So, onto some older work I have done.
This was a simple little character I did for an animation project last semester for uni, his name is Derek!:


Last year we had to design a brochure for one of the classes based on a company called Ideolab, this was mine (that's my awesome motorbike there too, it took like half an hour to get the damn number plate off to take that picture!):

Here is a website I did for a programming project last semester too:
Here is some motion work that I have done in the past too!:
I did this last year for a motion graphics project, here is the youtube link: Visual Effects Project: Dream

This is a fun little short film that me and my friends made last year called Cops on Bikes, it follows two renegade bicycle-riding cops called Hannigan and Callaway as they venture to bust the biggest drug lord on the west side; Don Vido.
I can't say the story itself is all that crash hot, but it was a good chance for me to get to play with filming, lighting and editing etc. and playing with colour grading:
(here's the youtube link: Cops on Bikes)

And last of all, here are a few drawings that I did a while ago:
This is a T-shirt I made last year when my cousin Ben died, in memory of him:

And this is just a random drawing I had done a while ago about loyalty and friendship: