Seth Smith - Portfolio
Welcome to my portfolio. Here you’ll find a selection of my proudest work specifically related to concept art, animation, 3D modeling, and other facets of my interests in game development. Explore my projects to learn more about what I've done.
Reel Rhythm
In the fall of 2025, I acted as the lead character and creature designer for a collaborative project working within a team to create a small game called Reel Rhythm. Published in December of 2025, my primary task was to handle the full and complete production of Jordy, the player character, as well as each of the collectable fish. Reel Rhythm was created in Unreal Engine, with the most helpful contributions of my team to help realize the project.
Jordy
Player character for Reel Rhythm
Jordy's model was initially sculpted in Z-brush, and then later retopologized in Autodesk Maya, optimized for animation in mind. He was later rigged and animated in Maya, and textured using Substance painter, using the high poly sculpt as a baked normal map, with additional manual adjustments made as needed. Much love and effort was put into Jordy, and I thoroughly enjoyed expressively animating his body, my favorite part being the belly jiggles added through a custom Maya bone and controller setup. The fishing pole object was modeled by our team's prop artist, and I designed the custom rig and animated the object's movement. The animations were designed with Jordy's gameplay in mind, with the reeling animation designed to loop for as long as the player is engaged with the fishing minigame. Similar choices were made for the rest of the animations.
His design went through a few iterations before it was finalized in order for him to best fit in with the world and match the chosen artistic style. Notably, Jordy is left handed, and his design incorporates lots of subtle asymmetry to make him a more memorable character.
5 unique fish models were created as game assets for the Reel Rhythm project. Each was initially given concept art drawn in Paint Tool Sai after significant research on the anatomy of each of the fish species chosen, as well as fish as animals in general.
Each model was first sculpted using Z-Brush, then retopologized in Maya, and textured using Substance Painter. The textures created were designed with versatility and adjustability in mind, and thus derivative variant texture sets were easily edited and altered to produce the skins for various species in a streamlined and efficient manner.
Rust Two Page Spread
This is a two page character spread that was made as a cumulative effort over several months during a character development class at Wake Tech in the spring of 2023. We started with documentation and researching character design, which led us to 2D renders, to a 3D sculpt made in Zbrush that was retypologized in Maya, textured using Substance painter, and then rigged and posed in Maya. The final spread was constructed in Photoshop and was paired with the various other production works we had created previously. These works consisted of character body and facial expression sketches and written background information, produced to help the artists get a better feel for our characters. The proportions of the body were changed somewhat during the sculpting process.
This course was one of the most beneficial for the development of my skills as a character artist, and remains as one of my most definitive experiences.
Hidden Depths
Hidden Depths is a Unity Engine game I was the lead artist for back in fall of 2023 for a collaborative game development course at Wake Tech. Due to some extremely unfortunate circumstances, as well as some very tight restraints the rest of my team faced, the workload was distributed much less evenly than what is typical for a work of this nature. By the project's conclusion, I was the lead artist, UI designer and programmer, SFX designer, voice actor, and lighting artist for the project. Despite the heavy challenge such a situation produced, I managed to hold things together for the team and bring the game's development to its proper resolution.
All sprites were animated by hand/frame by frame using Pixelorama, with initial concept art for the player character sketched traditionally using a mechanical pencil and sketchbook paper.
Rahbar Character Sheet
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This spread was created in 2024 as an updated/official reference sheet for a personal pre existing character of mine to be used in a subsequent body of work. Currently, this is one out of several completed for the same larger project. Drawn using Paint Tool Sai, with the final spread assembled using Photoshop.
Crow's Harvest
Crow's Harvest is a Unity Engine game I was the lead artist for back in fall of 2023 for a collaborative game development course at Wake Tech. I created the vast majority of the art assets shown throughout the work, but the project was made more than the sum of its parts due to the amazing and diligent efforts of my team.
The theme for the project was "horror" and the team designed this game as a parody of farming sim games like Stardew Valley and the like. I was responsible for much of the art and aesthetic choices, including character and creature design, and I even did some SFX work to further contribute to the team and to help solidify the atmosphere of the game.
All sprites were animated by hand/frame by frame using Pixelorama, with initial concept art for the player character and the enemies sketched traditionally using a mechanical pencil and sketchbook paper.
Quadruped Walk Cycle
This quadruped walk cycle animation was created in Maya for an animation class I took during spring of 2023. The creature's movement was heavily inspired by the walking gaits of felids. The movement is much more refined and precise compared to canines, and the spine, shoulders, and hips demonstrate a much wider range of movement. Of special note is the way the back paws will step into the footprint of the front paw, a movement strategy which minimizes noise and track leaving. Post processing was applied in sketchfab to make the overall model appearance more appealing.
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Tundra Sabre Horse Creature Concept
This spread was made for a creature design assignment within a course in Wake Tech, and was designated as a runner up winner in a 2022 ECGC art contest. For the initial creation process, artists were given a prompt for a random animal group, in my case, the equine family, and instructed to create a fictional animal based on this species prompt. The illustration was created using Paint Tool Sai, and the finished spread was constructed using Adobe Photoshop.
DECA Dragon Concept
These two pieces were created for a DECA games art contest in 2020. Users were given prompts to choose from to base their designs off of, that being Space, Sea, and Zodiac, with each design having to follow 1-2 out of the 3 themes. The upper image was awarded a runner up award, and lower image was awarded 3rd place at the contest's end. Illustration was created using Paint Tool Sai, and the final spread was assembled using Adobe Photoshop.
