Marc Hudgins

Studio Man Cave

2010-12-17T20:50:00.002-05:00

I've been inspired by Teri Windling's recent posts of various people's work spaces . I captured my man-cave in a panorama. Of note is the my completely ordinary drafting table that is special only to me because I've had it since the 8th grade in 1980. Also of note is the chair by the drafting table which was liberated from the University of Maryland computer lab sometime around 1985-6. Not shown is the walk-in closet (behind the closed door on the left) that I converted into a walk-in library because my book collection just got too big to keep in the room itself.

New Old Civilization Stuff

2010-12-15T18:35:00.002-05:00

Today a few more leaders were released as DLC for Civilization V, so I thought I'd share my concepts for them. I think these two leaders were among my better paintings. I freely admit that the lighting I suggest in them is challenging, and sadly I wasn't around to advise on the implementation for these 2. You can decide for yourself how well they translated: http://www.civilization5.com/#/community/dlc_december

Getting Started

2010-12-05T17:12:00.001-05:00

Wow, I actually had enough time today to work on a piece for myself. It's been a really long time. I think I have a long way to go yet to get where I want to be ( this is a bit generic, a bit stiff, and not quite the "me" I know is possible), but at least I finished a drawing. I'll be doing color on this sometime soon. I'm trying to commit to a 100% natural media approach (though a few Photoshop tweaks are reasonable).

It's Civilization V day (in Maryland anyway)

2010-09-21T18:50:00.001-04:00

Well, the fruit of over 2 years of my life (10% of my career!) shipped today. It was also the first title I've worked on that I didn't get to see through to launch. Kind of bittersweet. Still, the game looks great and all who worked on it can be proud of that.

In celebration such as it is, here are a few new pieces. I can't wait for the DLC stuff, as I think some of what they have planned was some of my better work.

Influence Map

2010-08-24T15:11:00.004-04:00

Seems a lot of my artist friends are doing this. I found it really interesting to try to filter it down to those artists who really influence me (as opposed to ones I admire or like, but don't necessarily find to be an influence). Size to some extent in the image reflects degree of influence, but I only really have a limited scale here, so don't give it too much importance (Mignola should have a bigger square, so should Man Arenas, Miyazaki and and Moebius).

Clockwise around the outside from the upper left: Alphonse Mucha, Winsor McCay, Man Arenas, Frank Frazetta, Moebius, Mary Blair, N.C. Wyeth, Roger Dean, Eyvinde Earl, Mike Mignola, Gustaf Tenggren, Kawase Hasui, Ivan Bilibin, Hayao Miyazaki; Center: John Bauer.

Get your own template here.

A New Beginning

2010-07-31T10:50:00.000-04:00

Well, looks like I landed a job! So I hope now to convert this blog into what I always wanted it to be which is a home for my work, not the work I do for others. I am proud of what I've done and continue to do for my employers, but rarely are my job and my personal inclinations in sync. Stay tuned.

Civ V

2010-07-09T20:09:00.007-04:00

Wow, I'm pleased that some of these have been given to me to show. I've been working on Civ V for a long time and I believe I've made some big strides in technique and abilities. These specific pieces were designed to visualize the leader's appearance and setting. Further work (orthographic drawings, detail drawings and reference samples, character studies) was developed to guide modelers and animators in translating these looser images into specific characters and environments. As the release of the game comes closer, I should be able to show more. Stay tuned!

The Way Back Machine

2010-07-09T19:38:00.000-04:00

The danger of digging through the archives is in finding old work that still holds some appeal, or that you feel expresses some aspect of your abilities that hasn't been demonstrated. As this blog is both a portfolio and a bit of an opportunity for me to tell the story of my career, I thought it might be fun to at least include something from my days at Sierra. The following are from my character designs for King's Quest 7 -our first "fully animated" game. These designs are the closest to my roots in traditional hand-drawn animation. They are specifically designed for others to draw and animate rather than to be translated into 3D models. A different kind of design thinking goes in to these kinds of characters. Simplicity, animatable forms etc are vital components. Please forgive the quality of the scans, I don't have the originals and these were provided from another source. I decided to leave them with all the warts -gives them a bit of that vintage flavor.

The Revolution Will Be Civilized

2010-07-08T14:17:00.001-04:00

I can't think of a project I have worked on that was more controversial than Civilization Revolution. The idea was to take all the fun of the series and distill it to a simpler, but equally challenging presentation for play on consoles. The art style followed suit by pursuing a more simple and stylized (dare I say Warcraftian direction). Of course this made the rather conservative and die-hard fans of the series LIVID. I think in the end we showed them how much fun could be found in the Civ franchise beyond the core game.

In my own work I think my newly found love of digital paint and the fairly rapid growth in my painting skills (take note, prior to this I was using markers almost exclusively) lured me into greater complexity in the images. Maybe overdone for Civ Rev, but certainly layed the foundation for my much more realistic and complex work on Civilization 5.

Odd Man

2010-07-08T14:00:00.000-04:00

There is something about his piece that I really like. I think it is its utter simplicity. It represents a style that I still can do, but never had much opportunity to pursue. I am currently working on a large personal project that I hope retains some of the qualities in this piece.

New Tools!

2010-07-08T13:49:00.001-04:00

A long time ago I bought a suite of tools from Adobe. Mainly for Photoshop and After Effects, but they threw in Illustrator as well. I had had a really frustrating time years before with Illustrator, so I kind of "forgot" that I had it. A few years later I saw some Illustrator workby an artist that I admired that seemed to mesh well with where my personal work was going at the time -all flat and stylized. So I busted out Illustrator to see what I could do with it and to my surprise mastered it very quickly. I did a lot of personal work with it and continue to hold it in my arsenal today.

One place I really got a work out was in doing forum avatars for my guild's website. It started by making images for me and my wife, but then everyone wanted one. So I ended up doing toon versions of somewhere over 60 guildies. We even opened a Cafe Press shop so we could buy mugs and tshirts. It was a lot of fun. I did a few custom pieces as well ranging from illustrating a crafting guide to a few special tshirts.

I've Been Working on the Railroad...

2010-07-08T13:38:00.000-04:00

If Pirates was a character-driven feast, Railroads was it's antipodes. Nothing but terrain, buildings and trains (I should say that there were a few characters to put together, but I will give credit to Dennis Moellers for really bringing my rough drawings to life). Still, the challenge of working with nothing but hard-surface designs was a pretty big change for me, and one that although initially challenging, made for a great education and in the end, a very satisfying result.

The most complex challenge wasn't so much in the drawing but the ideation. The buildings had limited and uniform foot-prints yet had to telegraph their identity clearly at a glance. There were also numerous technical challenges to work out in the design from how buildings mapped-out to create unique towns and cities as well as how the trains interacted with many of the buildings. Beyond that, I wanted to capture the flavor of a charming table-top railroad with iconic and toy-like designs.

Getting Civilized

2010-07-08T13:19:00.000-04:00

Although I did work on Civilization III, my contribution to it was small. Civ IV however marked my transition to full-time Concept Artist. I pretty much pioneered the position at Firaxis and I like to think it was my success at the job that demonstrated its value and lead to the hiring of many more concept artists, making the position as foundational as any other game development position at Firaxis.

I did TONS of unit and leader designs for this project, here is a small sample.

Sid Meier's Pirates

2010-07-08T12:33:00.001-04:00

To this day, this is the game I am most proud of. I came in as lead in a time of development crisis. The project was being redesigned from the ground up and needed a visual design to reflect the new direction, but we also wanted to salvage all we could from what had been done to date. I had a very short time to re-vision the project, work up a style, re-organize the art staff and get the project back into production ASAP.

Talk about wearing a lot of hats! I was the art lead, the concept artist and the user-interface designer and implementer -and I still got home in time for dinner!

I didn't know it at the time, and I took some flack for it, but I was on the same design-philosophy track as the Team Fortress 2 guys were. I was trying to find ways to get over a classic illustration look in our pallette and rendering, while working with friendly, stylized forms. We did pretty well considering this was Firaxis' first real foray into real-time 3D, and we knocked it out in record time with a lean staff. I still feel that this game is a great example of what solid game design and hard-nosed determination can get you.

Here's a heavy dose of Pirates!

Moonlighting

2010-07-08T12:10:00.002-04:00

A number years ago we joined our local CSA. One day while out picking tomatoes with the proprietor, Rob Wood, Rob says to me "I hear you can do art on a computer...". Well that was the beginning of a fruitful and gratifying relationship with Spoutwood Farm. I have volunteered my spare time and abilities to help get out the word about the CSA's offerings and mission. I've been their web master and advertising designer for the last 3 years or so. My work for Spoutwood has given me a nice balance in my creative endeavors, working with a subject and tone that is very different from my day job. Here's a small sample of some of the work I've done for them.

One job, many hats

2010-07-08T11:57:00.002-04:00

I've been in games a while now. I got hired originally because I am a classically trained animator. Hand drawn animation was the state of the art at the time. Over time things changed and I changed with it. I made the transition into 3D with everyone else, but I found the one edge I still have is my roots. My training and experience in drawing, painting and design have served me well and made me a useful guy to have around.

Over the years I've been called on to design and implement interfaces and to lend a hand to marketing when packaging, advertising or web content was needed. The following are a few samples where my illustration skills, my 3D skills and my 2D design skills all had to work together in an area other than "in-the-trenches" game development.

Where we start, is where we began.

2010-07-08T11:06:00.001-04:00

Just over 10 years ago, I found myself stranded in Seattle, with no job and a pregnant wife. I had been designing and art directing the Babylon 5 game for over 2 years and my portfolio was old and worn. I decided to task myself with building some new pieces to show just what I could do, with an emphasis on world-building and concept design. The result was a project I called Si. An Asian flavored fantasy set in a world of clouds and floating islands. I think they still hold up pretty well.

New Stuff Coming Soon!

2010-07-07T16:28:00.001-04:00

Well, I find myself in need of an on-line portfolio and I need it pretty fast, so this is going to be the new home for that until I do something more permanent. Stay tuned as work will be going up as soon as I sort and process it all.