Sketchbook: Matt Hoffman

Lord Ned

I am looking for large amounts critique!

Howdy, I'm Matt Hoffman, I'm 17 and this will be my (hopefully) regularly updated sketchbook. By "trade", I'm used to level design or environmental art, and I'm interested in switching gears into the art side of things more now. As I go through the thread, there will probably be blocks of me 'defending' the idea, it's just me attempting to show my thought process. Feel free to ignore them and please, don't take them as hostility.

Current Project: Marine Spacecraft Blast Door

Goal: To create two versions of doors, heavily based on the ones from the Pillar of Autumn's.

Main Goal/Thing to enhance:

Other Inspiration: 1, 2, 3.
My Sketch: (Critique on drawing skills will be accepted but was not the goal in this sketch to improve it)


Process Behind: I wanted to create a very solid feeling, airtight, and hard to cut through door. It also needed to be mass-produce able. With all of these requirements, I also wanted it to be higher tech and more logical than Halo's existing one. And a bit sci-fi-ey.



Gonna chalk this design up to overall non-successful, but I think it's worth investigating some more. It obviously needs to be a lot wider (Drew the reference from memory ) and I need to re-think some of the design. Obviously the original had windows, and the blast doors were an additional layer that closed over the normal door. I didn't remember this when I first drew it, so it's on the list of things to re-implement. (I think the blast-shield closing over existing doors is not only smart but a neat concept).

So that's where I stand tonight, let's see where it goes tomorrow!

Lord Ned

A day or so later, I snagged some time to re-design it. This one is now more true to the original, while solving some issues I had. One of the issues with the first (re)design was that the bottom 'slot' was short. Thus there would have to be a large amount of vertical clearance for the door to work. It also re-added the viewing panes (Only to the top half). The windows only being on the top half helps pull the player's eyes up off the floor and towards potential combat on the other side of the door. It also will allow the player an idea of what's ahead/behind. This design integrates locking bolts that are visible from the middle section bolting into the side doors. The side doors would then bolt up/down preventing the door from going anywhere. This visual cue, coupled with a red keypad screen would let the player easily tell at a glance if the door was passable or not. The one issue this one brings up is there's a large pane of glass material that would be easy to burn through. I had the idea of additional material coming down to cover the windows and clamping into the door (Notch next to the keypad) but that feels awkward. Back to the re-designing chamber!