jasonhalvorson's posterous

Portfolio of Jason Halvorson

Los Gatos Locos

Cats

A couple of years ago, my cat ran away from home. I went around my neighborhood for weeks posting flyers, wandering around calling out her name, even setting up traps trying to find her. A few months later I moved from that house, but I never gave up. I checked the SPCA website weekly to see if they found her and sure enough, about 6 months later,  they did. I've always wondered what she possibly could have been doing for those months she was out on the streets.. This curiosity inspired me to write a comic book, which I have been working on recently. It is going to be about a group of stray cats and their lives on the street. Here are a few of the characters that are in the story. Done in Illustrator.

Pod Concept

Drillpod

This particular illustration I did in my sketchbook, scanned in and edited with Illustrator. It's a concept I was asked to do of a "space pod." The idea is this pod would be shot out of a ship and onto a planet. It would drill into the planet and pop open, releasing the contents of the pod safely onto the planet's surface.

Galactic Adventures: That's My Lunch!

The "Lost" Robot Chicken adventure is finally released for Spore: Galactic Adventures. I was the level designer for this mission. Here are a few pics from the adventure. The basic plot is you have to help escort a cute little girl, Suzy Woozy and a bunch of her adorable critter friends to her birthday party in Hugz Valley. Along the way, you run into monsters who are set on eating Suzy's friends. You must feed her pets to the monsters without letting her find out...It's funny in a twisted sort of way :D Oh and there's a twist ending!! You have to play the adventure to find out!! :P

(download)

Galactic Adventures: TX-5000 Super Weapon

This is one of the levels I designed for Galactic Adventures, the expansion to Spore. This level is called "TX-5000 Super Weapon." It's a stealth mission where the player must sneak into a futuristic base to dismantle a secret weapon called the TX-5000.

(download)

Galactic Adventures: Bahaha 500

This is one of the levels I designed for Galactic Adventures, the expansion to Spore. This level is a race called "Bahaha 500." It's a time trial designed to challenge the player to find the fastest route through a maze-like race course. The champion has boasting rights over everyone else as the fastest on the planet.

(download)

Galactic Adventures: Temple of Spode

This is one of the levels I designed for Galactic Adventures, the expansion to Spore. This level is called "Temple of Spode." It's an escort mission where the player accompanies a priest on his pilgrimage to a mysterious temple. The player soon discovers that the temple is under attack and must protect the priest as he conjurs the powers of Spode to assist them against an age-old antagonist.

(download)

White Box level designing

These are some level design concepts I've been working on. This is what is called "white boxing." It's a very fast way to create level designs without worrying too much about the aesthetics. I've come to find that it's a very good way to concept level designs. An artist will later come in and make this much prettier, but this is a great way to get some layouts down and play-test before worrying about art.

(download)