545 Portfolio work

Starting  a new semester, but still working on visual game effects. For now I am still getting comfortable with UDK and still working on some tutorial stuff, this time including character animation however. As of this moment, I am using an animated character provided with the tutorial I purchased and am learning off of, the link for which will be added at the end of this post. I am about half way through this tutorial and I hope to be comfortable enough in UDK afterwords that I can begin creating my own effects from scratch. For this semester I will be pushing full force to have some effects ready and polished before GDC 2013. With a suggestion from a professional in the industry, he recommended "A destruction moment, like a building corner collapse, or air vehicle flying into a building.  An explosion, grenade (very hard to nail) or javelin explosion.  Something magic.  A weapons impact.  Some water." Since I don't even know where to begin with the building destruction I will put that off till later. I will start of with the magic effect since it will give me some creative freedom to experiment and have fun with. Next will be a realistic object explosion. If time will allow, I want to model an texture whatever will be exploding and briefly animate it. For the next project to tackle, I was thinking of doing a lake or small pond, in a rainy atmosphere and simulate ripples on the water and the rain. Depending on how much time is remaining, I hope to do two weapon impacts; one, a bullet impact from an assault rifle, the other a sword impact. If I am running short on time, I will do just the bullet impact, if I have a larger span of time, I will attempt an animated character swinging a sword for a melee impact, and if I have lots of time I will do them both. As far as what I expect to have done before GDC, I hope to have at least the magic effect and the explosion, with the possibility of the water effect ready and polished to show off.But for now, I am going to finish this fun tutorial from imbueFX. 

If you are looking to get into game effects, please check this site out, the instructor makes fantastic, information filled tutorials creating effects in UDK for beginners to more advanced students.
Current project: AOE Ground Attack
Site home page: imbueFX