Welcome to Airship, my humble freelance game art and Vfx shop specializing in the creation of pre-rendered and realtime art including modeling, texturing, shader/material creation, rigid body dynamics, fluid simulations, and visual effects. Well, actually Airship was my freelance art studio but now I work for 2K Marin in Northern California.

You can email at ewan@airshipcreative.com

NEWS

October 19th, 2011: It's been a busy time at work but I made some time to help out my buddy Jesse Sweet who won a spot in the Montreal Kino Kabaret Film Festival. I had 3 days to put together this digital matte / set extension shot at 1080p and had a lot of fun in the process. I'll post a link as soon as the Director posts the full short film. Congrats Jesse.

September 22nd, 2011: I've been noodling around with Houdini's rigid body dynamics. I like the procedural approach and the rigid body dynamics but wow, tough to adopt the fluid sim stuff after learning with FumeFX and RealFlow. We're currently exploring how best to use Houdini's strengths within our Unreal pipeline with mixed results.

August 30th, 2011: After an awesome 8 week class, this is the last week of Allan McKay's Advanced Digital Pyro class through the CG Society and I'm actually sad we're nearing the end. I learned a ton, had a lot of fun, and met some great artists. Thanks much Allan!

January 12th, 2011: Happy New Years everyone. Hope your 2011 is off to a good start. I found this gameplay video on Vimeo that features a lot of my FX work on Bioshock 2. This guy caught some nice footage of some fun effects. Enjoy!

"At first blush, the visuals in BioShock 2 seem on par with those of the first game--but after carefully scrutinizing them, we saw many subtle improvements. Lighting has been polished up considerably, and the overall level of detail seems to have been increased, too. We're especially fans of the particle effects we saw both indoors and underwater." Kotaku.com | Gamespot.com

June 13th, 2010: Been noodling around with Zbrush and Mudbox and trying to figure out which fits best into our art pipeline. This guy was created in Mudbox and Max. More sculpts below.

April 2nd, 2010: Just returned from a fantastic trip down under to work with the 2K Marin Australia crew. Yeah, calling 2K Australia 2K Marin is a bit odd but the jist of the change is that we've joined forces like the Wonder Twins. Great group of developers and I must say that I really enjoyed Canberra although I almost perished a few times looking the wrong way when crossing the street. Other than that, very fun trip.

February 11th, 2010: Bioshock 2 was released this week to solid reviews and a metascore of 88.8 as of today. More importantly, people seem to really enjoy the game. It was a very wierd feeling opening up the box and seeing a project that I've been starring at for almost 2 years come to life in my livingroom. I am very proud of the game and am honored to be working with the extremely talented folks at 2K Marin and 2k Australia. Next up, GDC, a trip down under for a few weeks, Bioshock 2 DLC, and an NDA title that will make a lot of gamers happy when it's announced.

January 24th, 2010: Happy New Year! Hope you all had a fantastic holiday season. Thingsare starting to get very exciting as we approach the release of Bioshock 2. So far themedia'sresponse has been extremely positive. I've said too muchalready, butneedless to say, we're all quite excited about the feedback we've received so far. With the game finished, I've been transitioning to Bioshock2 DLC as well as a very exciting new project in support of our friends at 2k Australia - a seriously talented bunch of dingo-eating, 'roo boxing devs of highest calibre. 2010 is shaping up quite nicely.

November 1st, 2009: Back in 2007 and 2008, I was honored to be Lead Vfx Artist on Gearbox's Borderlands through Liquid Development who provided a wide range of outsourcing services for the game. After a total art overhaul that gives Borderlands its distinctive style, I was pleased to see that most of the effects that the team and I created were retained in the finished game. My personal contribution includes the majority of the grenade explosions, many of the vehicle explosions, and various environmental and creature effects. It was a fantastic experience to work with the talented team at Gearbox on this unique title that is a blast to play - especially with friends in co-op mode.

CURRENT PROJECT

XCOM: Lead VFX Artist
Developer: 2K Marin

PAST PROJECTS

Borderlands : art manager, lead VFX artist (Liquid Development)
Developer: Gearbox Software

Killzone 2 : 3d artist (Liquid Development)
Developer: Guerilla Games

Fable 2 : 3d artist, assistant art manager (Liquid Development)
Developer: Lionhead Studios

Rockband 2 : 3d artist (Liquid Development)
Developer: Harmonix

Condemned 2: Bloodshot : 3d artist (Liquid Development)
Developer: Monolith Productions

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway : art manager (Weapons), 3d artist (Liquid Development)
Developer: Gearbox Software

TOOLBOX

3D Applications
Autodesk 3D Studio Max
Autodesk Mudbox
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Softimage XSI
Houdini
Maxon BodyPaint
Vue
VRay

2D / Compositing Applications
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Illustrator

FX Simulation
Houdini
FumeFX
RealFlow
Reactor
MassFX

Match Moving
Boujou
Mocha

Game Engines
Unreal Engine
(Extensive Cascade, Material Editor, Matinee)
CryEngine

PROFESSIONAL GAME ART SAMPLES