Carlos Javier Arnau
Hello, I'm Carlos! I've always been passionate about new technologies, especially video games. This 3rd-year project provided me with the opportunity to experience working in a large group. Although it was quite challenging, I learned a lot of valuable tips and hints that will be very useful in my future. Additionally, getting to know the workflow and organization behind developing a video game captivated me and further fueled my desire to enter the real world.
As I previously mentioned, since little I’ve been very passionate about new technologies. As the time passed it was clear that I would end up doing something related to computers, but during my last year of high school my love for video games rose exponentially.
Being part of the art team during the development of Guardians of the Galaxy: Battle for the Universe from Pixel Playground it’s been a great pleasure. It gave me the opportunity to take further my abilities with programs like Photshop, Illustrator, Maya or Blender. As well as improve my team communication.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
During the nearly three months of game creation, I made various contributions to the project. I was involved in a wide range of tasks, including 2D graphic design and audio editing for the game.
However, during the last month, my primary focus shifted towards the marketing aspect of the process. I took charge of managing the team's social media accounts, sharing updates on the creation process, and generating excitement for the final version of the game. Additionally, I played a key role in developing the project's website, where we documented our methodology and showcased the team's progress over the past few months.
In terms of other tasks, I was responsible for creating the initial concept and model for the rocket raccoon character. Designed the first UI mockup, crafted animations, and sourced appropriate voices and sound effects that enhanced the gameplay experience. Lastly, I contributed to the conceptualization of various particle effects.
Overall, my contributions spanned a diverse range of responsibilities, allowing me to gain valuable experience in different aspects of game development.
Character Concept Art
3D Modelling
Re-Texturing
Readjusting animations
UI Mockup
Particle Concept Art
Audio assets: special effects and music
Social Networks and Website
Pol Farreras
Hi, I’m Pol; also known as “Polfa” or “Fakefa”. I’m passionate about game development, especially in game design and art. It has been very gratifying spending hours (a lot) with my colleagues in this project.
BACKGROUND
Since I was very young, video games have been a really big part of my life. I joined this career looking to be able to create great games like the ones I played as a child. Even though my creativity is the main thing I want to improve, I am also interested in the development process of the game part of the game and always try to learn more about programming.
During the development of GOTG I’ve learned to organize my time and work as a team with a lot of pressure and also improved my 3d skills.
CONTRIBUTION
Even though I’ve had different tasks during this project, my most important job was covering the environment's art and composition.
My main role was creating all the environments, or rooms, of the game. When the project first started, I was in charge of making the player shooter, but later on I joined the art team with the mission of improving the environments.
In the environment scrum I had to discuss how to make the rooms with the designer (which was the size of the room, its limits…), create props for the rooms, create the room and use the props available to fill them and finally paint them. The intention was to create a comic style environment which I think we did pretty well.
Props:
Rooms:
Additional:
Laura Isidro
Hey, I’m Laura, I love art, especially 3D art. This was my first time managing a small team and was kinda hard and challenging but in the end I learned a lot and enjoyed the experience to create the aesthetic we proposed at the beginning.
I always have enjoyed playing videogames, learning about technology and also art. During all my life people told me: to become a game developer you must be a masterpiece at programming. Later I discovered that that wasn’t true at all and there are more fields than programming like 3D art or design. So I ended up here.
During this project I found out that characters were very challenging and pushed me to develop my sculpting skills in order to achieve those different anatomies that are out of my comfort zone.
Currently I want to explore new styles and digital art fields and learning new softwares such as Marvelous Designer, Houdini and Nuke.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
In this project I was in charge of managing the art team and trying to unify the different styles and the quality assurance of all assets. In this project I was in many scrum groups such as player, enemies, NPCs and also environments
I sculpted, made retopology and rigg all the characters, and animated most of them. The textures were made by Sofia Liles.
Starlord modeling, rigging and many animations refine
Rocket modeling, rigging and animation
Mele enemy modeling and rigging
Ranged enemy modeling rigging and many animations
Sentinel (modeled by Fernando Almendro) rigging and animation
Subjugator modeling, rigging and animation
Uatu and Aaron modeling rigging and animation, they have same model but different textures
Ulana modeling and rigging and first iteration of animations
Howard modeling and rigging and first iteration of animation
Groot modeling rigging and animation
Environment
As scrum master of environments I was directing the general view of the rooms, defining color palettes and painting kree floor textures
Sofia Liles
Hey there! My name is Sofia, I’m a young English/Spanish 3D and 2D artist from Mallorca, and part of the art team that made GOTG Battle For the Universe! I feel very lucky to be able to have been included in this project alongside my peers who have put so much time and effort into creating something special.
Since I can remember art has always been a passion of mine and my parents always encouraged me to pursue it. Honestly, it’s one of the only real passions I’ve ever really had but I didn’t really know what direction I wanted to go in.
Growing up in a small town in Mallorca I never really knew of all the options there were in the industry and I had always been interested in video games, growing up with a little brother we were always glued to the playstation or the PC, I still remember playing Rayman and Crash Bandicoot on the PS2 as kids, but art for videogames had never sprung into mind until a University came to give a presentation on the courses they had available, as soon as they said Video Game Design my eyes widened new possibilities.
I had always admired how beautiful art for videogames is and how amazing it would be to create something like that, so, I immediately started looking it up and realized I enjoyed more than the art portion of the industry, I loved math and physics in school and programming seemed very interesting to me so I enrolled in CITM, ultimately though, I find myself happiest when I can sit down listening to my music, express myself and see myself forever evolving creatively, which I would consider my goal to be, seeing how much I’ve changed and adapted my art through this project has really given me a small taste of how this industry works and shown me that I want to pursue a career in video games where I can constantly adapt to different projects.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
For this project my main contribution was texturising all the 3D characters and character concept art, although I helped out in other areas such as environment art and a little bit in props. I was also involved with different scrum groups including Player, Enemies, NPC, Environments and VoiceOvers, mainly for 3D Model art for every group but also for 2d art creating decals for Environments, Environment art and provided voices for The voiceovers
I started off this project as the concept artist for all the characters, including turnarounds, exempt from Starlord:
After finishing concept art and asking the lead artist and scrum groups for their opinions , we decided to go forward with modeling (done by Laura Isidro) and texturing the characters:
I am showing the improvements we made to Starlord just to show how much we evolved in three short months (don’t worry it gets better).
We quickly realized that this was not going to be anywhere good enough so got to work and tried again:
We quickly realized that this was not going to be anywhere good enough so got to work and tried again:
Rocket was one of the last characters we modeled and textured so we had learned a lot by the time we created him, I believe there was a first model but was quickly redone to suit the style and fell in love at first iteration of the second model created:
Plus it wouldn’t be rocket without his mingun, also textured by me. Originally the bullets were orange but were changed to blue.
Teenage groot:
We have 4 NPC’S: Ulana, Howard, Uatu and Aaron which will be shown respectively
Now, on to the bad guys. We started off with the melee soldier:
The shooter type:
Sentinel:
Subjugator:
An the boss:
I modeled and textured one of the chests
Floor decals for level rooms :
And lastly the logo for our game:
Marta Llurba
I am a creative artist aspiring to be a great 2d animator and 3d model artist. I am constantly working on personal projects to improve my artistic abilities, although I still need to work on my time management.
I have always been fascinated by animations. I loved the storytelling aspect as much as the characters coming to live. As someone who loved to write and tell stories, finding a new way of telling stories, such as animations and video games felt like a new door opening.
Growing up I didn’t put much attention into learning animation or video games, for 2 reasons. The first one was because no one ever told me it was a career I could take. The second reason was because I was always told that the entertaining industry was not really worth it. There were always better jobs that would give more money, or there was always someone better than me as an artist. That created fear that I didn’t try to overcome until I was not sure what to do with my future, and decided to follow my younger self dream.
I have been proud of having the short but intense experience of working in a 25 people team making a game. I have learned a lot, no only with the technical aspects, but also I have been able to learn about my own limits and behaviors working in a big project with a big group.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
My role in this project started as a concept artist for the environment. I worked on the first iterations of the environment, and then I moved to character animation, mostly working on Starlord, but also doing the melee enemy, and the NPCs animations.
In one of the deliveries, I was part of the particle team, creating the models for the active abilities.
Concept art:
The first step was doing all the concept art for the environment. I did various sketches of the environment, until I founf the one that fekt right. After doing all the concept art, I was in charge of the environment. My role was the art part of the rooms the player would be in. With the concept art of the room as a reference, I started working on the tiles of the floor and the walls, making sure there were enough variations to make any shape of room.
This environment was discarded after the Alpha, since it looked too crowded with all the textures, the enemies and the player, but it was a good start to get a visual image of how the environment could work.
The first step was to make all the base tiles, so 1 floor and one wall, and from there, started adding other types of textures to not make it feel too repetitive, and started doing more complex rooms to add corners, or specific tiles to accomplish the more complex room designs.
Lastly, for this part, I did the decals, which came the inspiration and base for the final decays.
This last texture was the 2nd iteration for the floor, using some diorganized pattern using the color palette we had at the time.
Another thing I did was help with the intro of the game.
I did some blockouts taking as reference different environments from the movies or comics of Marvel, specifically the Hala environments, and I decided to go with the 2nd option. Then I made the frame and Anna did some changes, like the skye and tree colors.
Rigging & Animations:
Most of the time was spent in the Starlord animations, since we did various iterations to make them feel good, since it was going to be the main character used by the player, therefore the most viewed animations. In total, Starlord has 14 animations.
The process for the Startlord animations took almost 2 months of the project, and I did a total of 8 iterations, from the first model of the character, up until the last animation done.
The NPC had simple animations, only an idle, and Ulana had a welcome animation as well, to not feel too repetitive.
I did the first rigging of the NPC to have a base for the animations.
Another animation that I made was the rework of the melee animations. I just improved some aspects of it. Unfortunately I had problems with the computer and lost the files of the animation in Maya.
3d model of Abilities
I was part of the particles team. At first I was in charge of helping with 2d particles, but soon I was given the role of the 3d active abilities. In total, there where 5 particles. Only 2 of the abilities have textures, since the other ones had a base color that could be added in the engine, and the particles programmers could change the color easier. Groot's Seed and the Wings have textures because those abilities have more than 1 color, therefore, needed to be a different texture.
Retextures
Another additional work was retexturing the props, since at the last minute there was a color palette change from the leader and we had to retexture all the props, I was part of the retexturing team.
This is just some of the props I retextured using Blender. In total I did over 20 retextured props.
In addition I also helped in the HUB, doing some last details, adding decays and textures.
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Anna Metreveli
Always cultivating knowledge. I am a punctual, organized, cooperative, and reliable person; always open to working as a team. I have been living in Spain for 14 years, now finishing my degree at UPC.
Passionate about the intersection of creativity and technology, I am seeking to make my mark in the exciting world of video game development.
Always loved creativity, but technical aspects interested me no less, therefore when the time came to choose which way to turn I was overjoyed to find a way to combine both in videogame career.
In terms of goals, my overarching aim is to continually improve and refine my abilities. I aspire to provide art that breathes and attracts attention, creating an atmosphere and conveying the feelings and clarity that are needed.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
My main roles included covering most areas that needed 2D art: I was part of the UI, particles, NPC, and storytelling as well as character scrum groups. When the project just started off with concept art, later moved onto UI and particles, and by the end of the project created animations for the introduction, credits, and trailer animations.
When it came to UI design, I helped create intuitive and user-friendly interfaces. Discussed the placement of elements, visual hierarchy, and readability to ensure a smooth user experience. Also when working on particle art, the intention was to explore ways to make them visually striking and appealing while also considering performance optimization. For character concept art, I researched the personalities, backstories, and unique traits of each character to bring them to life on the canvas. And in the animations, I tried to follow the comic style and time limitations to be able to combine them and create animations that suited both.
Concept art:
UI:
Trailer, Intro & Credits Animations.
Oriol Via
Greetings, I am from the art team, specifically 3D artist, I have yearned for modeling since I had finished the last year as I had developed a great interest on it, but I didn't have the chance of harnessing my skills until these project, thanks to it, I have improved a lot, but I am yet far from satisfied, and I am looking forward to rapidly increase my skills further, as these first act comes to an end.
I must beg you apologies, reader, as there is not yet much to tell about me, but certainly, with time, these will no longer be such a hassle.
Despite that, allow me to ink a few things about me. I never had a great interest towards anything in particular, I couldn't seem to find a reason that would stick well to me, as a matter of fact, I got into this career without even really knowing why, but that changed when I did my first classes of 3D environment, which is where I learned that modeling was what I wanted to do. I am not yet the best, and I have a lot of work to do, but thanks to these projects and my university now I have an objective.
On these projects I have improved my basic skills and developed even further interest in modeling, but not only the environment, I am looking forward to all there is in 3D, and with enough effort I know I will achieve my peak.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
In these games I have been in many departments within the art team. I went from props to characters and animations, I also have textured and rigged a little. Some of my works needed a second iteration, while some others did com out grate, regardless of that I have been part of the 3D modeling team on every apartment a little bit, but where I have done the most work was in the 3D environment, where I was put in charge of the whole HUB of the game.
Hub first iteration
Hub Second iteration
Hub Third iteration
Hub 4th itineration (Atlas texture update)
Hub 5th iteration
Hub final
Related assets made by me
Hang Xue
Hey everyone, I'm HangXue, a Chinese student studying in Spain. In this unfamiliar environment, I'm open to new things, I like to explore different cultures and fields of knowledge, I'm always looking for something that I like and that makes me feel relaxed, I often wonder if there's any happiness that can be obtained so easily, other than games, which are a combination of technology and art and design. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to explore it.
I was introduced to video games when I was a kid, playing retro Arcade games, which I thought were incredibly fun at the time. After some years I grew bored with Arcade games and then I got our first PSP and later PS3, I found I was more attracted to the aesthetics and artwork of the games than the design and mechanics. Art is a very important part of a game. I love things that look beautiful and I love the visual impact that beautiful things bring to me.While I was playing the game I was also thinking about how this wonderful thing was made and when I arrived in Barcelona I discovered this professional course and decided to start exploring the secrets behind the game.I want to work on my own or in a team as an artist to enhance the aesthetic and visual effect of a piece.I can also be able to acquire knowledge of game design and programming.
BACKGROUND
CONTRIBUTION
In GOTG, my role is that of an artist, specifically as a 3D modeler, 3D texturer and 2D graphic designer. I worked on the level environment art and the Hub environment art for the project, as well as the artwork for the project website. I learnt a lot of new knowledge and solved a lot of questions that I hadn't solved before. My goal is to become proficient in the art process of a project and master it, and secondly to create more and better artwork.
Environment Art
Between the Vertical Slice I and Alpha II phases of the project I worked on the artwork for the game's level environments, focusing on 3D modeling and texturing for the Props. The main props I completed during phase 1 were: Main door, Secondary door, Chest reward, Columns, Boxes, Explosive barrels, Door controls, Table with screens, Windows, Pipelines, Bridge, Cables. During phase 2 the art style has been changed. I re-did some old props and I added some new props which are benches, screens, Lockers, balcony, railings, camera, boxes, wall panels, etc. It is not difficult to see them in the game.
Hub Art
Between the Alpha III and Gold phases of the project I worked on the artwork for the game's HUB environments,focusing on 3D modeling and texturing for the Buildings and Props.The main areas I work on are the training areas of the HUB and some contributions to the overall scene.In the first phase I did the first iteration of the training area and they were the original design, in the second phase I made some adjustments to some props and building and added more buildings and props, in the third phase we worked on optimizing the textures and optimizing the Atlas Uvs.
Web Art
Between the Beta and Gold phases of the project I also worked on the artwork for the game's website, focusing on the Graphic design and visual effects.In the phase 1 i created some comic style designs of the planets in order to use them as logos for each sub-page to represent the different pages.I also created comic style wireframes and visuals to showcase our team members.In the phase 2 I created comic style starry backgrounds for the pages, as well as comic style headings for each sub-page, which are available in two versions, one with just Typo for use as a heading only, and one with backgrounds and textures for visual effects in some of the project files.
