Category: 3D Modeling

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Holiday Wars: Battle of the North

Here at the Design Hub, we don’t play games.

We design them!

Brought to us by the creative mind of Design Hub intern Daniel, we have a game that has been slowly brought to fruition titled “Holiday Wars: Battle of the North”. The creative team behind the development of Holiday Wars also consists of 10 Design Hub interns including coders, visual artists, and designers for website management that have collaborated on the project. While at first the goal for the project was for all of the interns to gain experience in making a shipped game for their portfolio, it has evolved into something so much more. “The main goal of the game was to keep it simple, accessible, easy to pick up and play, while still being casually hard to master,” Daniel tells us. He also mentions that the game has had a few different iterations and developments, but it has now evolved into the RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game that it is today.

Inspiration for this game included games such as World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2, and the game’s design aesthetic is very cute and fun, but with a subtle, dark undertone that’s sure to give players chills. 

The game is being designed for publishing on Steam with roughly 9-10 playable levels. As Daniel puts it, it is like chess but without the turns.  Players play as an army of Christmas Elves, commanded by a popular figure like “Santa” or characters like “the Snow Queen”.  While players explore the gorgeous snowy landscape, they come across other characters as well. Enter the Woppletingers-

Woppletinger character design by Daniel Todd

These mythical, beastly creatures were originally designed by Daniel and the Design Hub’s creative team, striking fear and awe into players as they encounter them. Everything players experience in the game was designed on programs including Blender for 3D modeling, Unity for the actual engine of the game, and Photoshop for art and concepts.

 The game, taking place in a chilly terrain surrounded by mountains,  is essentially a giant epic snowball fight between Santa’s Army and the Woppletinger tribe, along with other armies lurking in the cold as they fight for supremacy. While players are gathering resources to build their base, they are producing and controlling an army in hopes to defeat the enemy with the very same objective.  Daniel mentions that both sides are planned to be balanced, so it’s really a matter of skill who determines the victor in a fair environment.

Design Hub intern Daniel, working with team member on Holiday Wars game

Daniel has been working as an intern for the Design Hub for one semester, but has been nursing this project for the last few years. He tells us, “any game project requires a lot of work, and I’ve learned that the hard way over the years.  We couldn’t have done this alone, and I’m happy I met a ton of interns excited about the future of the game, and passionate for game design”.

Amazingly enough, the Design Hub has also actually helped Daniel start up his own company, Phoenix Ready Games. He is graduating this term, and unfortunately leaving the Design Hub,  but he plans to to cooperate with the Design Hub as an external business as he expands into other projects.

He tells us he would love to have this opportunity be available for students in the future; as he would’ve loved to have an opportunity like this when he first started ARC himself. And we at the Hub couldn’t agree more.

All the creativity, collaboration, and hard work from Daniel and his team that went into this game is truly remarkable, and is something that our Design Hub Team is extremely proud of.

Anyone interested in playing the game can send us an email, or keep checking our website and social media pages for updates on the game’s release on Steam. Thank you to everyone involved, and everyone who has supported the game thus far.

 

 As the war rages on, which side will you fight for?
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Design Hub Gives a Demonstration for Encina High School

Jason demonstrating the gesture feature for the DJI Spark drone Photo by Photography Intern Kyle Chan

Design Hub interns Sean and Jason gave a demonstration to three groups of students from Encina High School. They explained the advantages and opportunities that are available to them here at ARC as well as the Design Hub.

Sean spoke to the Design Hub’s ability to offer students the opportunity to not only learn how to fly drones, but to create them through 3D printing. He advocated that the students would also be able to bring their own ideas and passions and turn them into reality here at ARC.

Photo by Intern Kyle Chan

Jason gave a talk about the business aspect of obtaining a drone pilot license and how to start up a business flying drones. The two of them then gave a demo to the students, showing them how to fly the 3-D printed drones, the DJI spark, and a mini drone that allowed the students to have a first-person goggle view.

 

 

 

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Student Commission: Anime Character

Painted by artist intern Erika Gonzales, photo by photography intern Angelique Doty

Here we meet up with Erika Gonzalez, the artist intern at the Design Hub involved in past projects such as the Ishango Bones and the Cell Membrane projects. Now she shows us her beautiful new sculpture that she is painting for Jiajun Guan.  The people involved in this wonderful new project are: Erika Gonzalez, Jiajun Guan, and a team of 3D modelers and 3D printers.

Painted by artist intern Erika Gonzales, photo by photography intern Angelique Doty

Jiajun Guan found Erika painting the Ishango Bones (discussed in the other blogs and twitter posts) in the Design Lab 211, and was so inspired by her fantastic artistic talents with the paintbrush that he asked Randy, our tream ead at the Design Hub, to recruit her to do some work for him too!  Erika was assigned to paint the generic anime character for Jiajin Guan, and she finished beautiful painting in 11 hours of work from March 8- March 12! Soon this sculpture of the generic anime character will be moved from the Design Hub Room 311 and will probably be moved to a place for student to stop by and look at it, or it may be placed on Jaijun Guan’s desk.

Painted by artist intern Erika Gonzales, photo by photography intern Angelique Doty

Even though this beautiful sculpture is the only of her kind, we can all look forward to seeing Erika Gonzalez’s fantastic art skills in the future projects that she will be participating in. She will be collaborating with Jiajun Guan with the Snow Wars project, specifically, working on the development of “Snow Wars Santas.”

She uses the same techniques as the cell membrane and Ishango bones projects: she paints the sculpture first with acrylic paint, then seals in the paint with Mod Podge. What was different with this sculpture was the way Erika painted the eyes: with an ink pen!  She used the ink pen to add gentle and minute detail to the character’s eyes, giving them a certain life and sparkle. We are definitely looking forward to future art and 3D printing collaboration projects to come!

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ARC Design Hub Drones Take to the Sky!

Photo by photography intern Angelique Doty

On March 2, 2018, middle school and high school students from Heritage Peak: Pacific Charter Schools visited the ARC campus to view the demonstration of drone flying put on by the drone-flying interns of the Design Hub: Sean, Jason, Shane, and Allan.  Jason demonstrates the flying of the drones using remote controls, while Sean presents the technique of using hand gestures to direct the drone on where to fly. The basic ground rules for the drone flying demonstration in the gym was for all people in the gym who are not currently involved in the drone flying to stay behind the blue line, except for the individuals who are either showing the students how to fly the drones, or the students actually participating in flying the drone. Angelique, one of the Design Hub’s photography interns, had the opportunity to fly the drone. “Jason showed me how to guide the remote control to direct the drone to wherever I wanted it to go. It was like a real life video game!” She tells us afterwards.

Angelique is the Design Hub intern behind capturing the photos of these drones, and is our eyes and ears for fantastic events like these. She is one of the several very talented photographers we have on our team, and is an integral part in bringing the Design Hub stories to life. She takes our articles to a whole other level, because without pictures these pieces would be all bark and no bite. Here is a quick thank-you to her!

This event Angelique covered was made possible by the CTE department reaching out to the drone flying interns of the Design Hub through Randy Schuster, who put this event together. This event was put in place to encourage more students to discover all the different educational opportunities that ARC has to offer. There will be further development and a build of programs, especially in the photography and agriculture departments.  The drones will be flown on campus in certain areas. For this event, it was held in the gym and on the neighboring field. Due to restricted airspace, there are regulations for how far the drones can be flown in the air. They are in the process of setting up another drone flying event on a specific day during the month of April, and are working on getting certain days set up to fly the drones during the semester. 

Photo by photography intern Angelique Doty

Flying these drones isn’t the only thing our Design Hub interns get to do, either. We actually make them by hand here in the Hub’s maker space! Every piece is designed on the computer by our modeling interns, and sent to be 3D-printed in our 3D printing lab. From there, the pieces are assembled by hand, and the tech needed to fly the drone is inserted into the drone body. Then, voila- we have a drone that is ready to fly! No drone kits required. Here at the Design Hub, our students really take pride in their work, and are happy to share with others and inspire younger students like the ones at Heritage Peak. If we left at least one inspired student from this visit, we consider that a win, and we hope to see that inspiration someday flourish into something great.

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Art Meets Science Here at American River College’s Design Hub

The Design Hub here at American River College is a strong proponent of multidisciplinary collaboration. At the Hub, team-building across all planes is valued and celebrated. It is a place where the arts and sciences come to eclipse, and the outcome is something truly spectacular.

Artist intern Erika hard at work. Photo by photography intern Angelique Doty

Here, we meet Erika Gonzalez to learn more about about her job as an artist for the Design Hub. Her current project: to paint the cell membrane models for the Science Department.  These little cell membranes required the help of Erika’s excellent painting skills, 3D printing, the Science Department, and 3D modelers to create the cell membrane structure. Erika is the lucky intern who was chosen to complete this project. ARC’s Science Department ordered the models of the cell membranes from Randy Schuster, the head supervisor of all the interns that make up the Design Hub. He has made sure to connect with nearly every department on campus, and runs the Design Hub in such a way that allows ARC’s campus to benefit from all of the hard work, talent, and innovation that comes out of the Hub.

The painted cell. Photo by photography intern Angelique Doty

The diagram of the model was sent from the Science Department to the 3D modeling interns at the Design Hub. They then transformed the structure into a file format that the 3D printers could handle.  From there, the files were transformed into printable structures, and were given to Erika to paint and bring to life. She had to paint each minute crevice in the same way as the 3D printed grain, paying a lot of attention to detail. She is painting the cell membranes with acrylic paint, then sealing it with Mod Podge to prevent the acrylic paint from chipping. This project will be housed at the Design Hub lab room 311, and it will be on display in the Science classrooms. It will also be used as a class reference for the Science Department.  The Design Hub is very proud of the collaborative efforts of our many talented 3D printing modelers, our artist intern Erika, as well as the Science Department. When art marries science and design, the possibilities are truly endless!