Jak Foster
Game Design Portfolio
About me
Hello! My name is Jak Foster, and I am currently passionately studying game design at the University of Hull. The games industry has always been a large part of my life from a young age and I am eager to use my existing skills to begin my career within games.
Throughout the three years I have spent on the course, I have gained a lot of new skills as well as developing existing ones. These skills include projects within Unity and Unreal Engine, a number of 3D projects in Zbrush and Maya, all whilst making 2D designs in Photoshop.
Take a look at the projects I have been working on during my time at University
2D Art
Over the course of my studies at University, I have began to love 2D art as I gain more and more experience with each project I take on.
My main passion before beginning University was Pixel Art. However, as I’ve been given 2D game’s projects, I’ve expanded my experience by exploring other 2D drawing methods.
3D Art
Beginning to explore 3D was tough for me as I hadn’t been taught it in college. Therefore, the only way for my to gain knowledge into this area was to do my own research and projects.
I began by using Blender to model some basic shapes such as cups, tables and chairs, before moving onto Maya once I started University. The move from Blender to Maya was seemless and I enjoyed it so much more, therefore, I was able to create much more complex objects as shows in my Casino Furniture showcase. In second year, I was then tasked to create a 3D Character in the recommended program of Zbrush. As this program allowed for better organic sculpture, it was much easier to model my character and eventually, texture once the modelling was complete.
Game Projects
During my first year of University, I was tasked with creating a game project with several other team members. My Role for this project was to code and compile the game into one game, including camera work within Unity.
The overall game concept was to progress though the house, looking for pictures ‘refreshing’ your memory as to why you are there and time will run out if you don’t find the next photo frame in a certain time.
My second year on the course, tasked me to create a game based around the theme of “Fragments” within a week. I came up with the idea of creating two ‘fragmented’ characters which were controlled by the same user inputs as each other. Therefore, you would have to use your puzzle solving skills and work out how to get the two characters to touch in order to open the gate and move onto the next level.
Overall, to get this completed in a week was a big challenge for me as it was the first time I had attempted something like this. However, with good project planning, I managed to get all the artwork and coding completed within the week and had a working game I was pleased with
One of the modules I studied in my second year was level design where I was assigned to create a level which adhered to all the principals of level design such as guided lighting, blocked paths and large open spaces.
My game is a first person puzzle game where the player must explore the level in order to escape the castle which was seemingly abandoned over night. You play as a messenger who arrived at the castle to find it in a dilapidated state. The objective is to find and open a series of locked doors in order to escape the castle which you got locked in shortly after arriving. Using effective level design techniques, I created an engaging playable level which successfully fit the criteria
As I entered my final year of University, one of the modules assigned us to create a VFX animation piece of our choosing that lasted one minute long.
As an avid viewer of F1, I chose to create a concept trailer for a new F1 game. One of the criteria was to create at least two of my own special effects and for this project I needed to make three. The fire required a lot of eye for detail to make sure the animation, colour and lighting was perfect in order to give the right fire effect. The most enjoyable effect to create was the particle system of the lines flowing over the car which required splines to path the particles onto. The final effect was the smoke which was fairly easy to make, but required a few alterations to perfectly accompany the fire.
Alongside Unreal Engine, I also used Adobe Premier Pro to edit the trailer in order to sync up the footage to the music.
Illustrations
In my final year at University, I got the privilege to join the University’s Ice Hockey Committee in the role of Fixtures Secretary. Whilst in this role, one of my responsibilities was to design posters for and run the team’s social media pages.
This was an exciting opportunity as I had never been asked to do anything like this previously.
I was mostly given free use to design in whatever way I chose, with the only constraint being to use the University’s Pan-tone colours of the blue and yellow.
I decided to make a template where I could easily enter the details of that game’s information onto the page, keeping the consistency across each post.
