The Pieces

Reflections of a common thread scattered into distant worlds.

Music with narrative was a seed.

Self reflection is what grew.

This piece marked the beginning of my 3D design studies.
It honestly reflects where I was when I entered the field: proportions are inconsistent, lines are unstable, and colors are present but lack depth or cohesion.

Yet even within this early work, the foundational elements of my design approach are already visible:

Framing and balance
Viewer eye movement and implied narrative
Environmental storytelling driven by layout and spatial logic

There is intention behind every element.
The man facing away from the viewer creates ambiguity and tension. The visible hand suggests stealth. The distant town and fishing poles imply the presence of others—possible witnesses.

The visible UI confirms the game context, and the full health bar hints at an untouched or emerging conflict.

This is where I realized something important: even low-fidelity work can carry meaning when structure and implication are used deliberately.
It was my first proof that design choices—no matter how raw—can guide player perception and generate narrative.

At this stage, I was beginning to explore 3D object creation more seriously.
I had completed the introductory phase of the course and began to worry that my limited traditional art background might hold me back. This concern lingered throughout the course and often revealed itself in different ways.

Creating basic shapes and forms came naturally to me, and I enjoyed the modeling process. However, my workflow broke down when it came to texturing and shader application. This challenge pushed me into a period of focused research—where I studied texture resolution, UV mapping, and PBR-based node systems in depth.

While the objects in this scene appear simple, they represent my early commitment to achieving realism within my current skill set. The process exposed several flaws in my pipeline that I would need to address as I advanced.

This project also reaffirmed my deep-rooted interest in medieval environments and storytelling. Looking back, I see this phase as a turning point—where technical constraint revealed my underlying design motivations and helped clarify my creative direction.

In my lifelong attempts at making art, I’ve often relied on instinct to finish projects—even when built on shaky foundations.
That approach gave my work a kind of "imperfect charm," but I’ve come to realize that it can limit broader appeal and functionality, especially in professional pipelines.

With this project, I decided to face that head-on. Unfortunately, I made a recurring technical mistake that followed me throughout the course: I didn’t start the character in an A or T-pose. Despite being reminded, it simply didn’t stick—revealing a blind spot in my understanding of rigging and animation requirements. It was a humbling, but necessary lesson.

Despite those setbacks, there were strong conceptual intentions behind the design. The character was created to appear large and immovable in-game, like an anchor—deliberately signaling a strategy to the player. The color palette uses purple and blue-green contrasts to imply magical or mysterious elements. A red plume signals danger, while the flute and passive snake introduce a theme of charm or seduction—leaving the player to question the character’s true intent.

This unit was conceived by intentionally inverting the constraint of the assignment.
A vehicle was required, but instead of designing around typical forms, I aimed to shape the design around the silhouette of an anchor. This reinterpretation pushed the definition of "vehicle" and allowed me to explore functionality in a more symbolic framework.

In this design:

Hooks allow the vehicle to be lowered into position
Turbines provide directional control during descent
Bumpers serve to absorb impact
Lights are positioned to illuminate the entry path
A dual-chambered body implies the ability to scavenge or transport

By letting form dictate mechanics, the piece invites unconventional interpretation—transforming a limitation into a narrative and visual feature.

FROM

Low to High

At a certain point, I had to push past my struggles and focus on producing functional, complete work.
This new round of props and character projects was my attempt to follow stricter realism guidelines—aside from the orc, of course.

Using photographic references helped me achieve more believable proportions and surface detail. My extra research into texture mapping and shader systems also paid off, resulting in noticeably improved material work.

The process was smooth—until I returned to character modeling.

Once again, I made the mistake of starting in a non-traditional pose, and I had to manually reposition the arms into an A-pose. This revealed significant issues in my topology and overall modeling process for characters.

In response, I began exploring multiple sculpting pipelines in Blender and started refining a method that better fits my goals moving forward.

The character itself was inspired by one of my favorite fantasy archetypes, infused with elements from Dungeons & Dragons lore. I reimagined the physique using speculative anatomy, envisioning how the muscle mechanics might function in a modified humanoid frame.

Symbolically, the character blends themes of death and control:

The skull sits in the center like a gut-instinct puppetmaster—mindless yet guiding.
The protrusions and pointed bone structures hint at viking brutality and orcish aggression.

This design helped me bridge realism with expressive symbolism, and revealed critical areas of growth in my character pipeline.

Worlds grow

Simplicity can spawn trails of emergence that can dance with the mind.

When I was tasked with creating an environment, something clicked.

The assignment’s constraints became narrative seeds. My messy, imperfect style—once a flaw—suddenly felt like a strength. It translated into something organic, believable, alive.

Each simple asset became a stroke in a larger composition. Object placement formed invisible lines of meaning—contradictions, implications, questions. Nothing was accidental. Everything was an invitation to think.

Characters had intent—or didn’t. Their placement said why. The gaps between them became silent conflicts—voids shaped by competing truths.

I realized I could be everyone in this world. By fracturing authorship, I gave the player control of perspective. Unanswered questions became fuel. My own questions during development created hidden pathways—branching from possibility alone.

There was no need for a single path. The story could be obscured. The player could carry the variables in their mind.

This is what music, film, and art taught me to see. Game environments just scale it—into systems of narrative probability, waiting to be seen.

One idea kept surfacing in every project: shape should drive the design’s flow and remain consistent throughout.

This doesn’t mean repeating the same symbol—like filling a world with triangles.
It means using shapes as abstract frameworks to organize logic, motion, and thought.

The hallway-with-fork assignment aligned perfectly with how I think about traversal.
In retrospect, the constraint itself was a narrative seed.

I started with a T-formation, then bent the “fork” concept inward through layered misdirection:

A closed door ahead masks the fork entirely.
Diversions like clutter, lights, or noise redirect focus—splitting the player's attention like a billboard or a shout in the dark.
Energetic asymmetry creates imbalance:
- Left feels heavy—trash, noise, pipes, restriction.
- Right feels open—an empty shop suggests safety, but maybe it’s a planted inversion.

Visual language pulls the player left.
Psychological cues invite them right.
That tension is the mechanic.

From here, I can branch scenarios:

A guard stands at the corner for 30 seconds.
A PDA flickers in the trash.
A keycard hides somewhere.

Now I'm attempting narrative probability—not a fixed path, but a space of unfolding choices.

This is how I build scenes: not with decoration, but with intent embedded in invisible geometry.

This ultimately led to a very large realization.

Shapes

as keystones

Watching it grow

"Cult Of Sacrifice"

My excitement peaked when I was tasked with building a world.

In my world, the player wakes in a prison cell—surrounded by subtle clues that teach them how to interpret the game. These clues introduce the core mechanics, narrative patterns, and embedded logic of the experience in a natural, engaging way.

If the player solves the escape, they achieve their first true win. And that act of escape becomes a mental anchor—something they’ll associate with progress, risk, and reward throughout the game.

Every new area is designed to reinterpret that same initial mechanic. What was once a solution now becomes a question. Notes evolve from hints into warnings. Drops become chasms. Barriers become shields.

One of the game’s core systems revolves around world-changing interactions hidden within seemingly innocuous notes. Players who develop the habit of reading everything may trigger unexpected shifts. Some will find this delightful, others frustrating. But all of them will engage differently—because sometimes the system rewards asymmetry, not balance.

One attic—filled with cobwebs and gold—can hold multiple versions of a story, each leading the player to different conclusions at once.
Learning too many of them too quickly creates a craving for more context.
Notes are often semi-hidden in plain sight, rewarding the observant and patient. Others are placed with obvious markers—like a nearby light—creating contrast.

Even the placement of a building can carry narrative weight.
This particular house was deliberately placed along an invisible route of decay—an axis where themes of collapse echo through nearby spaces.
The result is narrative reinforcement that lingers in the player’s mind, without needing to be explained.

This marks my first attempt at “quantum narrative” environmental design.

Growing Pains

Each reaction becomes a gameplay variable.
Each choice rewrites the worldview in the player's mind.

A player who reads too much may trap themselves in a puzzle.
A player who ignores everything may already be trapped.
The one who moves just right might get a free pass—never knowing there were higher stakes at all.

In this world, memory becomes a mechanic.
Emergence is the gameplay.

An outstretched hand, covered in blood, rests at the center of a forgotten cave. Above it, hanging remains. The scene opens a box of questions—cause and effect, accident or ritual?

The room is layered in contradiction: bloodied stone beside tropical fish, coral growing near decay. Enclosure and death alongside signs of life.

Every part of the map is symbolically loaded, each space feeding into a deeper, connected mystery.

These mysteries hint at a buried history woven into the geography—suggesting that the world’s present state is a visible sum of all its hidden pasts.

From stone structures to… well, more stone structures—the world continually reuses its own ideas, reimagined. By intentionally misinterpreting shapes and language, an asymmetric logic emerges, creating subconscious continuity across regions.

New areas feel strangely familiar. Tasks are implied through lived memory. But this comfort sets the stage for dead ends, pitfalls, and unexpected returns—especially for players relying too heavily on habits. Subversion thrives here.

The stone labyrinth becomes a laboratory of risk and reward. Visual noise is a layered part of the puzzle. A peculiar form of clarity awaits the observant. Layered histories are hinted at through environmental text, layout, and symbolic recurrence.

As the player reaches what appears to be the end, they instead arrive at a new beginning.

This inversion mechanic is another way of recycling the gameworld into itself—fueling immersion, emergence, and replayability.

At this point, enemy patrols are different. The once-familiar space now feels eerily quiet, layered with invisible tension.

If the player has explored thoroughly, they’ll recognize the secret tasks ahead. If not, they’re exactly where we, as designers, want them: unsure, reactive, and immersed.

They now face something unexpected. This creates natural permutations—different player types arriving at the same point with different levels of awareness, producing emergent paths through the world.

From this supposed escape, the player arrives at the center of another crossroads:

Continue forward into the unknown,
or—against all signs and logic—turn back to seek true completion.

This moment flips the world:
What was once conquered now feels unfinished.
Or, if the player knew the secret, the path here was the final test.

Beyond perspective, everything shifts—combat, traversal, even enemy placement.
Familiar tactics no longer apply.

Tight corridors from early in the game return in new forms.
The echoing footsteps once heard above now resonate below, beneath the piers.
Enemies remain the same, but feel transformed—changed by the environment and the player’s evolving understanding.

"Spoiler Alert"

In the end, there are only two options—and both lead to the same result:
You play again.

By making death and memory fundamental mechanics, the player learns to embrace failure and take risks. Eventually, they begin to see through the illusion. They realize they can regulate the world itself.

But that’s not the point.

This game is made for someone seeking understanding, not just completion. Soft locks exist. Workarounds exist. But to truly engage, the player must abandon standard expectations and re-calibrate to the game’s unique demands.

I anticipate that this will alienate some players. Many won’t see the meaning. Some may hate the design for being too open ended or emergence optimized.

That, too, is a path within the design. Even traditional gameplay and story writing exist within the design. It's adaptable to anything.

The true win state is reflection.
To look back. To notice what happened.
And to begin again—with new eyes.

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The world is the same.
The player is not.

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