StarCitizen // MISC Prospector - Exterior
The Rig I made to show the intended articulation of my design.
StarCitizen // MISC Prospector - Exterior
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Released in 2017, The MISC Prospector was the second complete vehicle that I had the pleasure of working on for StarCitizen while at Cloud Imperium Games UK.
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My responsibility was to create all of the exterior hull as well as the landing gear and mining arm (including initial animations and rigs), and also cavities such as the landing gear bays, rear hatch and internal framework.
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The very talented Tom Woodward worked with me on this again, creating the exposed processing engine greeble section in the middle of the ship, the mining bags (not shown here,) their frame and doing the interior.
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The prospector was the first mining vehicle introduced to the game – it was a joy to work on, and to get to see other departments working on elements for its (then) bespoke mining functionality.
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I was later tasked revisiting the ship to concept a new head for the mining laser, building off the work of Gavin's initial design – the brief was to show the two stages of the mining operation visually (beyond the GUI and VFX), so I redesigned the old head to get more articulation, and differentiate the silhouette between both states as much as possible. Going from the original circular shape to a condensed triangular form with an extruded central nozzle.
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The mining head I have shown in all these renders is my final version of the asset, but it was later removed from the game unfortunately – As mining became more established in the game, mining tools later went on to be a responsibility of the props and weapons team, so a new more optimised version of my design was re authored in their workflow, along with a bunch of other great versions. So, it's great to be able to share my original version with you here still.
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Special Credits
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Concept Art Director - Paul Jones
Concept Artist – Gavin Rothery
Vehicle Art Director - Nathan Dearsley
Vehicle Artist - Thomas Woodward
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General Credits
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All the work done at CIG is a massive team effort, without the hard work of all the staff from each department and the support from the community. None of it would be possible.
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Massive thanks to the vehicle System Design and Tech Art teams for their hard work in assisting us getting all aspects of the vehicles setup and functional in game, the weapons and props team for the assets they created for us and also to the VFX and Audio departments for their contributions on the vehicles - adding so much atmosphere and immersion to the game.
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I would also like to give special credit to all of the other CIG vehicle artists past, present and future: the work done at CIG is done with access to shared libraries of assets - many textures, materials and even whole assets will be used in the creation of new work. Even finished assets need to be revisited, maintained, updated and improved as new features are added to the game - so a huge thanks to all of you for your help and contributions!
https://www.artstation.com/pauldavidjones
https://www.artstation.com/gavrov
https://www.artstation.com/nd3d
https://www.artstation.com/minimacman