Over the past several months, seniors in Prof. Sartain’s courses have been producing some beautiful 3d environment designs, now added to our Student Showcase.

Over 10 weeks in Environment Design II, students had to conceptualize, model, texture, and light a scene with the theme “Abandoned” in mind. They used software such as Autodesk Maya, Substance Design, Substance Painter, ZBrush, and Unreal Engine to create their immersive scenes.

Prof. Nathan Sartain is a Senior Environment Artist at Sony PlayStation, and he has been teaching at JPCatholic since 2015. His credits include work on franchises like Destiny, Call of Duty, and The Last of Us.

“I wanted to create a challenging assignment that showcased all that these students have learned up to this point,” said Sartain. “I gave them the ‘abandoned’ theme as it can be interpreted a number of ways, and it was also recently on my mind from working on The Last of Us 2. I really pushed them to make it a “portfolio ready piece” - they all rose to the challenge, and created their best works yet.”

John Paul Diodati is a senior Game Development student who will be graduating this August. “Prof. Sartain has been an inspiration to me ever since I started studying at JPCatholic,” he said. “I came to this school with the dream of working on video games, but I had very little knowledge of 3D programs and environment creation. I’d often see the level of work produced by professionals in the industry and feel discouraged. Starting out I had little faith that I would be able to reach those levels. Through Prof. Sartain’s mentorship and the guidance of my other professors, I found the inspiration and the tools to pursue my dream. Now that I am close to graduating here at JPCatholic, I feel ready to take on Game Art professionally, and I am forever grateful to my professors.”

See some highlights from the class below:

John Paul Diodati: Overgrown Church
Environment Design II
Artstation: Glieseboy

Tam Nguyen: Abandoned Chapel
Environment Design II
Artstation: AnimationGenie

Based off La Chapelle de L’ange au Violon in France.

Yssa Mitra: Abandoned Throne Room
Environment Design II
Artstation: MightyMango

Taylor Prudencio: Abandoned Hospital Room
Environment Design II
Artstation: Tp-Works

Grant Hall: Urbanized
Environment Design II
Artstation: Grantasourus

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Bonus:

Grant Hall: Abandoned Medieval Village (Level Design)
Level Design and Environment Design I
Artstation: Grantasourus

Grant created this immersive level environment as part of two courses: Environment Design I with Prof. Sartain and Level Design with Prof. Figueroa. Watch the video for a full walkthrough of this large scale environment.

To see more work from our students across Film, Animation, Game Development, Illustration, and more, visit the Student Showcase