Christian O'Brien's Portfolio

Portfolio

ASL Fingerspeller

ASL Fingerspeller is an award-winning game created as part of my Master’s dissertation. It is a virtual reality game for the Oculus Quest which uses hand tracking to teach the American Sign Language alphabet. The game was released on SideQuest to positive reviews, and user testing showed the game was a useful learning tool. Below are videos documenting game development and how to play. You can learn more, and download the game here.

Presentation Video

How To Play

ASL Fingerspeller took first place in the Student Category of the Serious Games Competition at the Serious Games Society’s Games and Learning Alliance Conference 2020!

Phantasm Virtual Visualization

As a Unity Developer at Phantasm Studio, I worked in a small team to develop the Virtual Visualization software. The software was used to pre-visualize on-location action and dialog sequences in blockbuster movies and big-budget television series.

My responsibilities included functionality, UI design and implementation, and testing. Additionally I provided tech support to users of the software, and produced an extensive tutorial series.

Ignant

A board game about willful ignorance

Ignant was created by Christian O’Brien, Alastair Peat, Maverick Fan, and Daniel Murray as part of a Serious Games Design course.

Design Document cover.png — The project focused on creating a serious board game which tackles the issue of willful ignorance. The group discussed how willful ignorance affects our lives and ways of overcoming ignorance. The game we developed uses group discussion as a tool to promote open-mindedness and as a method of discovering one’s own ignorance.
Each player is represented as a monkey in a primate society. The society begins in the feudal ages and progresses to the information age as the game goes on. Players earn a banana-based currency by participating in discussions. The better the group cooperates, the more bananas each player earns. The currency is exchanged for progress up the societal pyramid. The winner is the monkey who reaches the top of the pyramid and is able to remain on top for one whole round.

Where is Kazakhstan?

A party game based on the minigame from BBC’s Richard Osman’s House of Games

Traffic Jam

A Game of Life inspired minigame about navigating the rat race and collecting cash! A mobile-minded game, the user taps or clicks on the gameboard to direct the green car. Driving over piles of cash with differing values will add to their score whilst colliding with a blue car will reduce their score by 10K! How much money can you rack up in 30 seconds?

Developed in Unity using C# as a technical test, I programmed all functionality, game logic, UI, and particle effects.

Iconadrive

Iconadrive is a cyberspace racing game created by Christian O’Brien and Daniel Murray. The gameplay represents how information is transmitted through the internet. The player is a cyber-racer carrying information from one computer to another. Travel from node to node looking for the fastest path to the destination, just as information packets travel node networks across the web. Strap in, and watch out for hackers who want to steal your data!

The game was created in Unity. My responsibilities included modeling, environment design, shading and texturing, UI design, and sound design.

Visual Effects and Animation

This is my 2019 VFX & Animation showreel.

All pieces were created inside Blender and rendered with Eevee.

PokèWave Diorama

This is my first project in Unity, made as part of an Interactive Visualization course. The project was to create a diorama with in unity which showcases some interaction methods.

I combined two of my interests, Pokèmon and Vaporwave art, to create a stylized podium. Interactions in the game included volume control through the environment, triggering character animations, dragging objects, spawning characters, and moving characters.