Christopher Marques

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Hello, I'm Chris, a multi-disciplinary
designer based in New York,
driven by a lifelong passion
for learning and art.

My passion for art flourished around 5th to 6th grade, a time when I found joy in the act of creation. In those early years, my sketches covered a spectrum of subjects, from intricate houses to characters and cars. What captivated me most was the world of architectural drawing, where I could design everything from treehouses to carpentry projects. As my imagination and skills grew, I considered pursuing a path in architecture, a dream that evolved as I journeyed through high school.

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In high school, my artistic journey took an unexpected turn, shifting from early architectural sketches to more detailed drawings. Fueled by a passion for design, I found joy in creating intricate illustrations, often focusing on form, perspective, and shading. As I honed my traditional drawing skills, my curiosity led me to explore the realm of digital art and photo editing, introducing me to software like Adobe. This period of exploration marked the beginning of a creative evolution.
During my high school years, a parallel passion for gaming emerged alongside my artistic pursuits. Engaging in an afterschool gaming group centered on Super Smash Bros, I witnessed its remarkable growth, from a small gathering to a thriving community of over 25 members, complete with regular tournaments. Following the disbandment of this group, I assumed a leadership role in another gaming community at the local library, fostering both online and in-person memberships. Joining the AMGC (Anime, Manga, and Gaming Club) further solidified my connection to the gaming world. These experiences not only enriched my love for gaming but also shaped my leadership abilities, laying the groundwork for my future endeavors in design and development.
After transferring to NEIT, I embraced the role of a programmer, stepping up to the challenge presented when our cohort faced a shortage of programmers. This transition, although not my primary expertise, proved invaluable. It taught me to tackle diverse challenges and shoulder various responsibilities within my teams, fostering adaptability and a deeper understanding of the design process.
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A standout accomplishment during my academic journey was clinching a contract with the US Naval War College, which later evolved into a full-time role after graduation. This experience thrust me into a multifaceted position where I managed, designed, and programmed for a war game project commissioned by the college.
After successfully wrapping up the war game project, I returned to New York with a renewed focus. Here, I dedicated myself to further refining my programming skills and enhancing my game design expertise. Concurrently, I embarked on a journey in freelance work, where I explored diverse creative avenues such as app development, animations, web design, and print marketing.
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Driven by a relentless pursuit to professional growth, I’m actively pursuing online education to enhance my design and project management skills. Simultaneously, my artistic journey and game development endeavors have remained steadfast. I am deeply immersed in a long-running project, ‘Quest for Honor,’ a tabletop battle arena that I am eager to release within the next year. 

As a designer and developer, my journey is marked by continuous learning and creative exploration. With over six years of expertise in C# programming and Unity development, I’ve honed robust problem-solving skills and embraced a self-directed work ethic.

While my roots lie in game development, my skills have evolved to span a diverse range of design, including web, digital, and print. This expansion showcases my adaptability and creative flair.

I invite you to delve into my portfolio to witness the culmination of my dedication and passion for excellence. Let’s connect and explore how I can contribute my skills to elevate your next project.

Beat Vortex

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Beat Vortex is the working title for a rhythm game I began working on in 2018. 
I picked back up work on the project during 2020 to see how much further along I could get. 

After extensive research, I was able to implement multithreading for the song loading and analysis.  
This took load times on mobile from 7-12 minutes depending on the song to 50-90 secs. 

I later use a similar technique to improve the terrain generation, which yielded similar results. 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Visual Studio, Trello. 

Honor Lore and art

During the pandemic, I took the opportunity to freelance and work from home as a way for me to focus on finishing up one of my passion projects.  

One of the first steps along this journey was to develop more of the lore and background of the world. 

Honor Rulebook

As progress on the game began to pick up steam, I shifted focus over to refining the rulebook I had previously thrown together during the original development. 

As part of the process, visual and grammatical improvements were made to improve the flow and clarity of the rules. 

After completing the revisions of the rulebook, the project moved forward into play tests and further refinement. 

Journal App

This past year I started working on developing a productivity app. I felt that the to-do list’s or habit trackers I had tried were very narrowly focused on doing one thing well. This often left users needing multiple apps to handle simple planning and task management for their day to day. This creates a lot of opportunities for confusion,  wasted time, and more pain points than their software solves. 

The goal of the Journal App is to give every day users the same depth and control over planning of their schedules as we have for corporations with software like Jira, Trello, Monday, or Asana. 

This project has been a great test of my UI design and implementation. It has also given me a chance to further improve my workflow for loading/storing user data. 

Tools used:  Photoshop, Trello, Unity, Visual Studio. 

Tulipanov Virtual Gallery

For this project, I was asked by the painter, Igor Tulipanov, to create a virtual gallery space where he could host private exhibitions of his art. 

I used a concept image he gave me to model the exterior off of. I then designed an interior that worked well for that space and fit his unique art style. 

The final goal for the project is to be able to embed the gallery on the homepage of their site. This proved to be the main challenge of this project was setting up the ‘multiplayer’ aspect, due to it being webgl. 

 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Photon 

Pip42 - 1 : Building design

PIP42 – 1 gives players the ability to place down structures and create bases on a foreign planet. To do this required a modular building. 

I started off by building a mood board of space structures that I felt fit the aesthetic I was looking for. 
Since the game is top down, I need to design with the ability for the  roof of all the models to be removable. 

Tools used: Autodesk Maya. PureRef. 

Honor Stats Rebalancing

After the first few play tests, we found the stats for Honor needed to be rebalanced. 
Using google sheets allowed me to visualize the distributions of stats for classes, weapons, and armor. 
I was able to do this using conditional formatting, which I set to shade cell based on their value. 

The original stat calculations took a considerable amount of time to work out. 
Developing a new system cut down the time substantially. 

Tools used: Google Sheets

Honor Card Design

Over a few months, I worked to refine the card designs for my tabletop card game. Here are some iterations of the early stages. 

After not seeing much progress towards a suitable design, I decided to create a mood board to help define what I wanted to create. 

I’ve settled on a simplified look with minimal framing, allowing more room to let the art shine. 

After settling on the new design, I began implementing those concepts across the rest of the card types from the game.

Tools used: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Pureref

Graphics by Color Group

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This was a project for a local business. They wanted their site updated to something that was more modern and fresh than their old site. 
I designed and built out the new site remotely, then swapped the site out over night to prevent downtime and users seeing a broken site. 

www.ColorGroup.com

Museum of Bops

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Museum of Bops was a freelance animation project for the painter Igor Tulipanov.  

Igor wished to see the characters from his paintings come to life. 

I modeled the character, built out a museum and animated all the characters.

The video is the intro of the project where the characters enter the museum before climbing into the paintings to interact with their fellow bops

Tools used: Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Visual Studio, Trello.