Saturday 29 November 2014

Dichotomy 3


Presentation

I presented all the work I have done up to this point for this project.

Feed Back (Not all personal, but all feedback should be taken on board, as we are all trying to get jobs in the games industry)

  • The characters are not obviously rich or poor.

  • The characters look the same

  • I need to ground the characters to make them             believable, their contrasting back stories and how this would affect their appearance.

  • Their physical forms should be different e.g. he could be fat because he is rich.

  • This is a character design project; it’s not about the quality of the 3D model.

  • You will get a much better mark if you model both characters.

  • The 3D model should be a portfolio piece.

  • Don’t use Z-Brush

  • When designing animals cover them up because nude animals are perverted.

  • Don’t design Foxes

  • Don’t design characters set in the future, because you can’t predict what it will be like and you will get it wrong.

  • My character was basically Adam Ant, who is a pop star from the 80’s, so it’s not futuristic.

  • Needed more silhouettes, before picking one to develop.

  • Don’t have a back story, this project it all about the visuals. Simply design from basic shapes, when you have found some cool dichotomous parings of shapes, paint over these. Try and pick out a character, simply try and make them as dichotomous as possible. Then do a Value pass, a colour pass, and then model both characters. At no point should you consider anything more than their appearance.

  • Any deviation from realistic skeletal and muscle forms will make your character impossible and there for unbelievable.

  • Character design is not fashion design.

  • If you nail your design in one silhouette that is fine.

  • The best examples of character design that you could look at are the Simpsons, Pixar and No One Lives For Ever 2.






 I could not hold the Simpsons or Pixar in higher regard, but I do think that if I had presented these designs they would have been torn apart, due to their anatomic inaccuracies. They are extremely stylised. Allot of the negative feedback we received was in relation to impossible  anatomy, even when students pointed out they  were designing a character for the Dota 2 Universe for example. 


Pudge from Dota 2


Also if we were to design characters in a stylised fashion, this contradicts something you are always told throughout all art and design tuition. Master realism before you start stylising your work, this has always been the case. Stylising is extremely difficult, and will only be done badly without a firm grasp on realism. 




The same can be applied to No One Lives For Ever 2, also here there is a generic sexualised female character. This game also plays on the fashions of early spy movies, so here we have an example of good character design that embodies  3 design traits we have been criticised for implementing in our own designs, Sexualising Female characters, fashion design and impossible stylised anatomy.

Lot of the point brought up are valid criticisms, I definitively should have done allot more silhouettes.
Some of the point will make me question the design and how it should be pushed, for example the guy does look like Adam Ant, weather this is a look I need to stay away from can now be determined via more design.

But some of the point brought up are highly questionable. I think the point that animal characters shouldn't be nude as this is unsavory, to be ridiculous. All animators have been designing family friendly characters like this for years, and animals in real life are not covered up. Their is absolutely nothing sexual about an animals uncovered body, if anything the idea that it is, is what is perverted here. 

Conclusion

I completely went about the project in the wrong fashion although we were not given a strict path to follow; we were simply given the word Dichotomy and told that anything goes, when actually we needed to follow an extremely strict system. It’s the ends not the means is what we are normally told, when actually for this project it’s the means that was important and not the ends.

What I need to do is follow the guide line we have been given, although my work up to this point has been viewed by my tutors and pears it appears that actually it is inappropriate for this project.

Don’t have a back story, this project it all about the visuals. Simply design from basic shapes, when you have found some cool dichotomous parings of shapes, paint over these. Try and pick out a character, simply try and make them as dichotomous as possible. Then do a Value pass, a colour pass, and then model both characters. At no point should you consider anything more than their appearance.

This is the path I am now going to try and follow. This extremely demanding 3 week project which we started on the 5thday now has 2 weeks left and I’m having to start again.























Wednesday 26 November 2014

Dichotomy 2

Condensed Design Process

Silhouettes

Here have simply used the quick selection tool to grab shapes from the mood boards and I'm mashing them together.




Here I was really happy with some of these designs. I still have some big decision to make, Will the girl be carrying a gun and how much should I be relating the two characters etc.


Here I’ve compiled the best of both silhouette sheets, to compare them side by side. I think they mostly work, they are obviously from completely different worlds (Rich/clean/spoilt and Poor/rough/dangerous), but yet due to certain design cues (clothing style) I think they still relate. 

The poor character still needs to be pushed, the long cloak need to be altered as the rich character also has a long cloak. All so I’m still not shore how feminine if at all I want this character, I kinda want it to be a surprise that this tough looking character (exterior) is actually a young possibly awkward young girl (Grew up in the wrong world).

Paint Overs




I jumped straight into some paint overs, after the brief silhouette period. I felt that there was still development to be made there, but I had to move on. I thought that this silhouette could already be developed up into a good design, so I decided to run with it. I still think some development will need to be made post these paint overs. The boots need tweaking, I've tried to make some ultra-modern, yet relatable “cool” young person shoes, but I think I've gone too far. Though there are some good ideas here, their basically an exaggerated high top, and skate shoe combo. 




With early to mid 2000 skate shoes (Above) the cool thing was super wide, super big tonged shoes (the tongue would distort the silhouette of the shoe, the aim being make the front steep) If you push this as I have with my design, you end up with the tongue at an inverted angle.  My design is also a knee high, high top, but yet the heel is still at standard high top height. This chunky shoe design should Juxtapose nicely with the female character as I plan on giving her a light pair of skin hugging shoes, for being nimble and agile (stealthy) .



Allot more development is needed here although I am really excited with where this character will end up. There are allot of good ideas I just need to pick and choose which ones to bring forward.

I like the smaller half water proof from the first, its silhouette, the trousers and the bag.

I don’t like the skirt in the second, nor the strong contrast between lights and darks I have tried here.

 I do like the cape in the third although I think it hangs to similarly to the Rich characters coat.

I like the way the mask in the fourth encompasses a lot more of the head, I don’t like the trousers, the parachute pants from the first are allot more dynamic, also I don’t like the stance I prefer the femininity of the first stance (although the stance is quite a bit to feminine, and the knees coming together is confusing the silhouette a bit). 





Sunday 23 November 2014

Dichotomy Project

3 Week Project

Design two characters, Model and texture one.

First Task, select a theme that the rest of the project can spark from. I chose Rich and Poor. Luckily I already had an Idea in mind to run with, a story I've been tinkering with for many years now.


The story revolves around a civilization that lives in the ancient ruins of a vast endless metropolis. The current inhabitants are a tiny spec of life a small town maybe. 



The Rich live at the top of the towers, and the poor live towards the base. These people have reached minimal levels of development; they still have mechanical remnants of the past, e.g. basic guns, Metal work, but have no electronics.

The poor live in a hostile environment; they may be hunter gatherers, poachers etc. The Rich are their over lords, they own them, it’s basically a middle age (game of thrones) style hierarchy. The difference is the vertical landscape. 




I wrote down some contrasting words to describe the characters, and fill them out. I’m going to be designing these characters whilst taking Dichotomy into account.

After watching the presentations about this project I now know the importance of this in design. If the characters are meant to be different from a none visual point of view as in their beliefs, their personalities, and whether they are good or bad, this should be represented in their appearance.  Curvy forms tend to lend towards nice characters and angles to evil for example. 

Also even if two characters that aren't meant to have apposing traits, you still don’t want them to blend into one character and be indistinguishable, so using apposing forms, colors, tones and general designs between them will separate them. 

I fined the word Dichotomy to be a bit inappropriate, Dichotomy simply insinuates extremes of difference when designing. So if one character is skinny, the other by default must be fat, if one is short the other is tall, with no fought involved. Following dichotomy would result in everyone having the same characters. Although the word has become a cliché for an art student to use, Juxtaposition would be more appropriate. This would imply only adding features that enhances both characters as a hole instead of mindlessly mirroring and reversing attributes.

I have given myself a world concept to design to, a theme and some rules. This is similar to industry at the early concepting faze where the brief will never be open. I will never be asked to design a character without any kind of back story, as the back story is not my job. (Obviously here I have written the back story but I have not wasted time coming up with it I have simply picked it, and now I am running with the basic brief I have given myself).

Initial Mood Boards

Poor




Rich





These are my initial mood boards, most of the images are from real life, this is because I intend on creating a realistic character model. So real life ref is best. 

Due to Sentry Gun Hand in and the start of this Project (Last Thursday, so I'm currently 5 day behind) over lapping it is very late Monday evening (Tuesday Morning), and we must have both finale character design set in concrete by Thursday, including Orthographics.  So completely fleshed out and finished, surface detail etc. This will mean an extremely condensed design process. 


Tutor comments to take into account

These projects need to be done with finale piece in mined you want to create a real strong 3D Model at the end of this project that shows good technical skill, a portfolio piece.

One of the problems with this co-hort is that we spend too much time at the concepting faze, when this course really isn't about that, its about creating impressive 3D work. We need to quickly fined a design which is cool, that we can use to demonstrate 3D skill, then quickly drop the design faze and just Model and texture it.  

This project is an opportunity to teach us Z-Brush.

My basic world concept and character Ideas are good, I should continue down this path.

Mood Board Development

The problem with these mood boards is that I hadn’t decided yet whether I was designing the rich character visiting the lower city, So I included weapons and helmets in his board as well as the poor.  Also the poor are meant to wear skins and pelts, it’s meant to be cold at the top of the city so I also included furs for the rich. Also I had the idea that both characters must obviously live in the same world this meant I was trying to give them similar design cues.

After looking at these I decided that I needed to design them for their own environment.  So the rich would lose any kind of weapon or protective gear.  Also the rich now also don’t wear furs; they only wear newly made clean materials.

There are historic elements to represent their current level of development; we can relate these styles to our own history. But there are also future styles to get across that this is actually in the very, very distant future.

Poor 


Rich




I’m really excited about this project at this point. After seeing my sentry gun design come to life I’m really looking forward to seeing one of these characters in the flesh. If this project is as successful as the sentry gun this should be really cool, and having a character model in my portfolio should be a real boost as we have only done one of these before (the other one being the gladiator, being our first sculpt of a character it’s really quite poor, so I feel as characters are so important we really need to nail the 3D Sculpt for this project, and learn as much as we can). 


The First Image is not my work: Title: The Concentration City Name: Maciej Drabik Country: Poland Software: 3ds vray Photoshop Submitted: 20th May 2014











Monday 17 November 2014

Finishing_Sentry_Gun

Projection Mapping

I went mad with projection mapping, I've recently updated my computer, (Got a larger 250GB SSD) so I inevitably lost all my programs, so I didn't have Photoshop for the last week of the project. Thus Lots of projection mapping, I also used Z brush for the Butt of the gun.




modeled these details on to the UVW Unwrap, this way very little editing is necessary in Photoshop. 



Flat Color and Half of the Normal Map




Paint overs and Logo Design



Emissive Color




all The Textures 




Muzzle Flash






Combining 16 BIT Images



When doing this for each individual channel you have to shade out the other channels black, Also remember to set the layer to "Screen" (in the drop down box where it would normally say normal).  
The Finale Piece

















Thursday 13 November 2014

Modeling the sentry Gun


Ref Planes








I decided to change the size of the base, this was done to save some texture space.
Modelling went really quite smoothly. It was really nice modelling my own design and watching it all come together.


I made this template to help with texturing. I used this to make shore there was a handful of pixels between seems.

Engine 


Putting the gun into the blue print was surprisingly simple.
For this gun I wanted to have Two rounds coming out of the single barrel and two shell discharge points.



To do this you simply duplicate the “Eject Cartridge” Point for example and then change the name of the Ejector Socket, to the name of the second one you created. You then have to add this sequence to the Trigger Event Sequence.






Sentry Gun


Mood Boards


As this is an open brief, here I am simply trying to get inspired. I’m simply clicking around pinterest and grabbing anything that jumps out at me or that I think is appropriate. 


Real Life Tech


Amazing German artillery. These guns are not of this earth. 



Random mechs and general design.

Silhouettes

I used the above images to create random shapes, using the Quick selection tool in Photoshop and then shading in the cast.

This was allot of fun. Awesome designs came easily, it was quite hard not to just run with some of these first ones.


I did a new mood board, I wanted my design to be easily read as a gun, even from far away, at first encounter and before it started shooting at you.


Second batch of designs 

Here I have picked my finale design, here I took into account feedback as well as my own opinion. During this sheet I also kept flipping the canvas in order to get a fresh view of the designs. Some of my favorite designs I found didn't actually read well when flipped.


Another Mood Board to help with filling in the gaps



Design Development. I tried to use allot of hard edges in order to keep the tri count low.