Thanks to my good friend Tom Wolfe (not the author) I now have a gallery page up. Take a look to the right, see it there?

PorterShowcase.

Click that link and it will take you to my gallery. He is working on a way for me to post commentary on the images so I can do shot breakdowns and discuss who did what. Here’s the basics though:

Halo 3
I was working with a group in Microsoft called FASA, working on Shadowrun. Once that wrapped up, the entire team was let go. Luckily I was able to spend an additional 2 months with MS looking for a new home in the games division. The work you see in the Halo gallery was my time with the group. Initally I spent a while building small objects and doing various things to help with whatever was needed. You want a tarp on that crate? Sure thing.. let me run a little cloth sim on it to make it look correct. Anyway, a great artist named Dorje Bellbrooke, who was one of the concept artists on Halo3, was working on skyboxes. Skyboxes are used to fill in the background and make it look like the world is much larger than it actually is. Well, he was swamped with the amount of stuff he had to do, so they moved me over to help him out. He had quite a bit of art done, but needed someone to do finishing work on some pieces and setup work on other pieces. The multiplayer maps in the images are all my work (except for the actual level geometry) and regular level skybox stuff is partly Dorje’s stuff and partly mine.

Train Sim 2
I was vehicle art lead for Train Simulator 2. Most of my time was managing people and therefore the artwork was not mine. What I did do was manage an international team of artists. I was responsible for making sure that texture budget, poly count budget and the look and feel for all the pieces were consistant and accurate. Occasionally I was able to actually get my hands dirty and build my own stuff, but it was rare. Once the trains came in, the task of preparing them for the simulator began. We had very specific animations that allowed the bogies, wheels, couplers and pantographs and the link to behave correctly. I had to set up most of those animations. I also did all of the LOD’s for the vehicles. We had to be very careful with poly count. When you have a consist of 180 covered hoppers around 3 seperate engines, you have to agressively LOD to keep the frame rate in check. I will post one of my documents on how I had to work with the vendors so that the process can be seen.

Shadowrun
What can I say about this project. There was a bait and switch that happened to me here. When I signed on there were some amazing artists that worked there. The concept work that was being displayed was astounding. Some extremely talented guys that I wish I had been able to work with more all left within several weeks of my coming on board. The art direction changed, and what you see in the gallery was the result of having to completely redo the art work based on the new Art Directors edict. I disagreed with the look and feel, did all the guys that left, but ultimately my job is to deliver what I am told to deliver.
I am unhappy with what I had to produce and I realize that it doesn’t show well. However, I can say that I lead a very good group of people who worked through some very challanging times with very little praise or respect. I am forever in the debt of my team. Mona Abdelnaby, Kunoichi extraordinaire! and Terry Simmons, who I liked to call TerryByte because of the volumns of work that he produced. Without those two people we wouldn’t have accomplished the impossible.

Misc.
Previous to working on the Shadowrun and Train Sim projects I had several years of canceled projects and worked on contract work. This work will be in the miscellaneous directory.

WIP
This will be what I am currently working on, or learning projects like the Zbrush work I have done using the polysphere in Zbrush. I am also working on high poly modeling to show what I am capable of, rather than the sum of the project that I have worked on dictating the content of my site. Once these pieces are completed, they will be moved into the new section where I show the final product of my work.

There will be more content coming: tutorials, new art, personal stuff and a little snap shot of what I am doing.

Thanks for coming along.

Well,
I have a friend helping me with the gallery page. It should be coming soon.
In the mean time, I wanted to share a picture of what could have been. I am still very irritated that you guys didn’t get to see how awesome TS2 was going to be.

Black 5 Cab Interior.

Rick and I lamented most about not working on a British route that was going to ship with the title. The way we were going to make up for that was to give you guys a Black 5 and a Passenger coach to do World of Rails activities in your area of choice. On the American side of steam we were going to ship a K4 and passenger coach as well.

This was to be a way to giving back to the community. The ability to have a British route was going to be a sticky one, because of how the rail industry is handled across the pond. The rail companies owned the rolling stock, another company owns the rail lines and a 3rd party owns the right of way. It would have been a logistical nightmare to get all that done, especially with all the other things we were attempting to do.

Passenger coach

Needless to say, I am still blown away by the decision that was made, but now it’s time for me to look at the next thing and figure out what to do from here.
I like to think of this as an opportunity for me to expand my horizons and learn something new. I have some ideas that I think will be of interest to people here. Not sure how long these things will take before they come to fruition, but you can bet I am willing to work on it to find out.

Hello, welcome to my new blog, portfolio and tutorial page.  I am hoping you will enjoy the content that will be coming in short order.

Thanks