Whew, looks like quite a few contributors for this project already! Hard to find something that hasn't already been done in some fashion...but I imagine we'll be able to work it out.
When I saw this project on Desura, I was rather intrigued - a free XCOM-like game with high reviews? That sounded like something to take a look at! Dozens of hours later in just one game, and I was hooked. Quite a lot of neat things going on, a very nice XCOM vibe with a lot of tension - it's always tense when you find a UFO Fighter invading one of your ill-prepared bases, leaving you eight badly-equipped, hardly-trained rookies to face Ortnoks with Plasma Blasters...even on the easiest difficulty there's definitely some real challenge going on.
When I checked the website and found out folks can contribute, I thought, hey, maybe I could do something! But what?
Just glancing over the TODO stuff and proposals, it looked like a lot of what's still needed is either code-related, out of my experience, or already being taken care of! I'd originally thought of seeing what I could do on the modeling front, but I have to admit I'm sorta rusty with the ol' 3ds max, and it looked like a lot of the stuff to be modeled was already being taken care of. I never could figure out texturing very well either, so that seemed out. Then my eye got caught by the talk of cutscenes...
Now, a little background. My primary experience creatively is as an artist and animator - most recently focusing on experimental-style animation, but I've also done hand-drawn traditional stuff and some 3d-based work. I've actually made a couple of animated short subjects on my own, and assisted a friend with another, so as you can imagine when I saw the call for cutscene stuff - storyboards, designs, etc. - it definitely caught my eye. "Might be an interesting thing to try," I thought. A storyboard can be useful for whatever kind of cutscene style is used, whether it's the full 3d CGI treatment or the more "motion comic" style you see in Neverwinter Nights and Homeworld. What worries me is that I've no real idea if my work would be of a good enough quality to work for the project - seeing the amazing stuff the 3d guys have been coming up with is certainly rather humbling, particularly the updated armor models I saw floating around. (Best I ever managed on the 3d front as far as a game went was making models for use in a Spacebuild enhancement pack for a Spacebuild mod in Garry's Mod...)
So to help any of you in charge decide whether I'd actually work on this project or not, I can offer a few samples of what I've done to give you an idea of what my talent level (real or imagined) is. To the Dropbox links! (And YouTube too!)
Experimental Animation:
http://youtu.be/JcnsMrHbrts (pastels/charcoals on mylar sheets) - this may give you some idea of what I've done with animation, particularly with regards to story/pacing. Obviously, the style shown here isn't going to be used for this project!
Digital Painting (sorta):
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4376536/GD-Blood%20Star%20Rising%20v3.png - A little digital painting thing I did one time - not really great, but has some potential, may give others ideas too.
3D Props for Garry's Mod:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4376536/Armed%20Combat%20Corvette%20Front%20View.jpghttps://dl.dropbox.com/u/4376536/MilCock2%20and%20MilCock7%20Fighters.jpghttps://dl.dropbox.com/u/4376536/MilCock8%20Exterior%20Shot.jpg^My one real experience in actually making 3d content for a game, albeit for a mod of a mod (confusing huh?). The modeling itself was actually the easy part, the tricky part was getting textures on (I had to do a sort of brute-force method because I had almost no experience with UV mapping/texturing whatsoever) and doing the collision models for the props based on sliced-n-diced models...to some degree anyway. I'm ashamed to admit that it's also been some years since I've actually done any significant 3d work, so I'd probably suggest exercising caution on this front.
So yeah, there's what I have (at least some of it). If anyone who happens to be in charge on this project feels I could make a contribution - and, of course, has a suggestion on where I could start and what needs to be done - then please, by all means let me know!