Character Concepts for Games

Again with the posting updates I thought it was time I posted some of the work I've been doing for digital animation. The next few posts with be of characters I have designed over the last couple of weeks.

Mood Boards

Time for a bit of an update on my narrative posts/ tasks. My blogging has fallen behind a bit over the last few weeks so I thought it high time to catch back up again. Anyhow here are a pair of mood boards for the location and the character that is featuring in my screenplay/ animatic which is the assessment task of this module, enjoy.

Zbrush Work

It's been a while since I posted stuff up on this blog, or any blog for that matter, so I thought it was high time to update this one. At the moment I am doing quite a bit (many things going on) but one of projects I am most enjoying is a bit of character modelling I am currently working on. I have previously posted some maya shots of the finished low res model (my workflow is very much game themed) and this next screen shot is of a slightly higher poly version ( I havent altered the uvs just fortified some edges so that when I opened the mesh in zbrush edges wouldnt change to much from the smoothing) which has been opened in zbrush and has had be sculpting with it for a few hours. Im gonna take this time to say how much I love zbrush, its so very intuative, and even with just using some basic tools you can get some great results, currently I have only used the standard brush, move brush (a tiny bit) and the smooth brush. As you can see I am currently working in the folds in the trousers, this is a bit tricky but fun, its hard to get a good sense of realism to the folds, and also not exaggerate them too much. But anyway I dont want to ramble too much, as zbrush is beckoning me back to work (along with many other things). But my final words about zbrush are that the program is simply ab-tastic, seriously video game characters would be looking far more weedy if it wasnt for zbrushes ability to very easier create abnormally hench people in a matter of brush strokes. I've had to keep myself in check as the concept art for this character was more malnourished that ripped

Witchdoctor Modelling

Here is an update on the now pretty much complete low poly witchdoctor model. I am really pleased with how this model has worked out, and I am looking forward to taking it into the next steps of the next gen character creation process (zbrush and texturing) I cant wait to see what he will look like with normal , colour, bump, spec and ambient occlusion maps. There are a few little things left to do, mainly the hair and one or two little detail bits but I am confident those will come together quite easily, particularly as I set myself a polygon budget of 10000 triangles and have just broken into 8000 with this model, This means I can go back in and so some analysing of the mesh and add resolution where I feel its needed. I am also pretty pleased as although I started out with an attitude towards triangles that I would make as many as was needed to create the shapes there are actually not that many, meaning I shouldnt need to rebuild it before opening it up in zbrush, I can just tweak one or two areas or even in some cases make no changes as the triangle is in a place when a slighting uneven distribution of resolution wont be noticed. Next step is to finish the remaining things and then uv map with maya and headus uv layout. Hope you enjoy these images.

A Vaguely Halloween-y Post

This really is only very tenuous link to halloween. This weekend (among many many other things) I have been preparing to attempt to teach some character modelling tomorrow, and whilst it has taken a bit of work I decided that I would use my time to come up with some concept/ reference images of an idea I had for a character (which tomorrow I shall attempt, and hopefully not fail, to model). The character is a real mix of influences (and I think would make a pretty cool halloween costume hence the tenuous link), originally the plan was to create a futuristic minotaur/beastman character. However I got a sudden urge to see what my imagination would think a witchdoctor/shaman character would be like if they were in a post apocalyptic genre (theres been a lot of the end of the world going on at the moment I apologise). Anyway taking a lot of influences from shamas, native american clothing, Rafiki (from the lion king) alchemists, gunslingers (a pair of revolvers) voodoo, captain jack sparrow (I imagined the character as being a cross between him and the weird voodoo lady, with a shed load of extra crazy and a messenger bag full of explosive stuff, alcohol and weird potions that were also very explosive). I also envisage him carrying a big stick (in the style of the native american dream/ story sticks) with the traveller esq bag on the end. I can also picture him hitting people with it. Anyway enjoy, hopefully soon I'll be posting some awesome pictures of the finished model

Update on modelling for next gen games

Works been getting pretty hectic at the moment, what with narrative work, drawing cubes for life drawing and all the concept stuff for the game (doesn't sound like that much I know) but finding time to work my way through all the other stuff I've set for myself (this next gen modelling practise, practising my digital drawing, escape courses, structure of man course, not to mention enslaved:odyssey to the west and team fortress 2's halloween special) its been feeling pretty hectic. But it is now the weekend so I can work without too many distractions. So I thougth I would take the time to finish up the tutorial on next gen character modelling, all that remains is the gun arm on the right arm and a one or two more pipes, the real challenge will come on monday when I am going to try and do a similar workflow for a character I need to design this weekend. The advantage is if the character ends up looking good then I know I am ready to start modelling characters for our game and wont feel quite so pressured to cram even more learning in before we start modelling, so fingers crossed. Anyway I have ranted enough and would like to kindly remind anyone who does actually read this that you probably have better/more fun things to do so just look at the pictures and move along

Character Concepts

We met up as a group again today to show the concepts we had been working on over the last week, and to start to finalise the looks for certain characters. We have now worked out a particular look for the main characters and there arch nemesis. I am going through and drawing out my interpretation of these looks, as are other people and in about a weeks time we should have some final designs. I decided it was time some of my work became digital so I draw up a base for the main character on sketchbook pro and copied it into photoshop where I started experimenting with different looks to find one I liked the best. Here is the progression. I like the last one the best, as it was largely all the best looking bits of the other sketches, and so I will start to use this as the concept I develope further into a final concept, then once we as a group have picked a finished character then the person who drew it will have to draw the characer from all the different angles we need as reference images.