Tag: character design

Children’s Book Adaptation: Weapons

April 8, 2017

I wanted to take a break from working on environments and decided to have a go at some of the weapons for the characters that my fellow teammates had designed.

Tinman

Tinman is the sci-fi character of the group so instead of a traditional weapon I knew I wanted it to be some form of a laser rifle.

Initial Sketches

I started off by using the pareidolia technique to come up with unique shapes that could possibly be developed into a weapon. By doing this I was able to avoid recreating a weapon that already exists. There was control with this method as I knew that the gun was going to be a rifle therefore with most of the designs I tried to implicate that look, making sure it had a stock and a long barrel, however, I also created other forms of weapons to see how it would work.

Development

When done with the pareidolia I started to develop multiple different designs in a hope to make one my final design.  This helped me to refine my designs, adding detail as well as clearly outlining what the gun looked like.

Scan_20170403 (4).png

Final Gun, Photoshop and 3d Model

With the developed guns I was able to come up with a final design. I liked certain aspects of the different guns I designed and combines them together to create my final gun. With this, I went into photoshop. I wanted to add colour to imitate the materials that it would be made out of to help visualise what it would be like in the game. Finally, I wanted to go even further. I decided to 3d Model this gun as this would give the final outcome to what could be used within our game. I feel like this is a good design for tinman’s gun as it captures the sci-fi element and contrasts the fantasy side of the game.

The Wicked Witch

I also took it upon myself to create the weapon for the witch. This, however, did not follow the same process as the tinman gun as I already knew what weapon I wanted to create and by making it up as I went along I was able to come up with a design

Scan_20170407 (3).png

Photoshop and 3D Model

Similar to before I went into photoshop and added colour to finish off this weapon. I wanted the weapon to appear as if it had a connection to the witch rather than just a weapon that they use. The way I did this was by having the ‘hilt’ of the scythe the same colour as her skin. It also had a bright yellow gem in the middle which appeared to hold her power. This connection is then shown by the fact that the witch has the same coloured eyes.

Rabbit Heart Character Concept

March 21, 2017

For this task, we as a group had to come up with an idea/design for the antagonist to the game our tutors have been working on called Rabbit Heart. What we did for this was each go off and come up with different ideas that could possibly work for the villain. We then came back as a group and shared our favourite ideas. To then progress further we created a character containing the favourite elements from everyone’s designs. For example, my favourite element was that the character had a ragged lab coat due to the fact that they were a scientist/engineer.

My next task for this mini project is to carry on developing the character before then taking it into photoshop. Since we didn’t really decide if the character has a weapon or not because she is a mech I decided that I want to experiment with different weapons and see if any look like they fit in with the character.

Mini Brief: Boxer

March 7, 2017

The brief

The aim of this project is to design two different boxers. These boxers have to contain a narrative as well as a use of how hey could be used within a video game. The narrative could possibly be shown by a pose that they are placed in. As well as this one of the characters must be human, the other can be whatever I desire.

Research

Arnold Tsang

Arnold Tsang is a character concept artist from the United States mainly known for his art on Overwatch. Looking at the different pieces that he has created i is clear that his style is cartoon/animated rather than realism. Using bold black lines to highlight specific features of the character. A big inspiration that I can gain from this concept artist is they way the characters are designed. Each character has been designed so that if they were just silhouettes they would easily be recognisable. For example, the character ‘tracer’ could easily be recognised due to her long spiky hair and ‘McCree’ could be recognised because of his large western cowboy hat. When I starting my sketches this is something I need to think about.

Marco Nelor

Marco Nelor is a character concept artist that has worked on successful games such as Mortal Kombat X. I thought that it would be a good idea to research a fighting game character artist as these characters will be the most similar to the ones that I create as the boxer would most likely in a fighting game. Looking at the different pieces that Marco has created it is clear that he goes for the realism style, making the characters look as close to real life in possible in terms of the characters figure and proportions. Since this is a fighting game, all of these characters have a large figure with extremely defined muscles so that it is obvious that they are a warrior. I feel like this makes sense but makes all the characters too similar. None of the characters is skinny or just larger in body fat. However, one piece of inspiration that I can take from this artist is that the clothes the characters were given a narrative and backstory about the character. A good example of this is a piece showing a female character wearing dog tags and military equipment. This obviously shows that this character has a military backstory but also that they are a diverse range of characters in this game and not just ‘ninjas’. Another good example is a concept of the main villain of this game. The clothes of this villain appear to by of ancient fashion due to the colours and abnormal shapes of the shoulder pauldrons. This then gives the narrative of this character making it appear that he is possibly magical and thousands of years old.

Initial Sketches

Starting off this the design stage of this concept I began drawing simple ideas for my characters. immediately knew that I wanted one of my characters to be a robot as this would give me lots of design choice and they are rarely seen in fighting games, or just as a playable character in games in general. looking at the techniques I have learnt in the past I found that one of the most useful for designing my robot was the silhouette technique. This was similar to the scribble pareidolia, however, the shapes are more controlled and can be more like characters. The pareidolia technique would be better if designing a prop or vehicle. When doing this I took my research into consideration and tried to give my designs key features that would make them stand out.

Scan_20170307.png

Sculptris Idea Generation

For the human character, I came up with my idea using a different technique. I began using a program called ‘Sculptris’ and creating shapes giving very little thought to what the final outcome would be. After a good hour using this program, I could see an idea within my working. An old man with a long thin moustache, reminding me of the Sensei from the kill Bill Movies.

Sensei Model

Development

With my sensei character, I then began sketching using the Sculptris file as a reference for how I wanted my character to look. I used the head and scale of the character off of this but then wanted to add traditional Chinese robes so that it was obvious that he was a sensei. I used reference images found on the internet as a guide to designing the clothes. The key element that I noticed was that the clothes appeared to be ‘baggy’, hanging loosely on the Senseis. I tried to imitate this for my character.

My initial sketches had led me to come up with an idea for my robot and I began to develop him further creating variations that showed him as a boxer and as a warrior. To make him stand out as a silhouette I decided to give the robot abnormally large shoulder pauldrons, similar to how they do it in ‘World Of warcraft’. This way the silhouette would show a tall skinny robot with out of place shoulder pads. Since the brief stated that the character could not use weapons I knew that the variant showing him with a shield equip would just be an alternate design. For this character I knew that I wanted it to be obvious that he was a boxer, therefore I added boxing gloves to my sketches and make it look like they were crudely attached to the robot using tape. This was so that it appeared as if the robots original purpose was not to fight. I wanted the robot to be related to the Sensei and I came up with the idea that he would be a training bot. Since the Sensei would be in a guild it is most likely that there would be students that needed to train. The purpose of this robot would be to be the opponent of these students. I wanted this to imitate into my design, therefore, I thought it would be good to have engravings on one of the shoulders of the robot that read ‘training bot’ in simplified Chinese.

3D Model and Posing

I then drew my human character in multiple poses showing a stance for fighting and him meditating. I used an image off of google to show a typical fighting pose of a Sensei. The reason that I decided to draw my character meditating as from my knowledge of films and animations that have contained a Sensei, the main thing that they seem to do meditate to try and find piece. A good example of this is Kung Fu Panda.

Finishing off the design of my sensei I then created a robot arm using 3DS Max and attempted to merge this with the existing Sculptris image to create my final character design.

3d Modelled Sensei.png

After developing my robot I wanted to create a 3D model so that I could easily pose him. I did this using the drawings I did as the reference for how he should look and stand. I also used a boxing stance reference picture off the internet to help me correctly position him. When creating my robot I had an accident within the software which was that my character duplicated. Most of this looked extremely weird and was deleted however it duplicated the arms and ended up improving the design of my robot. Making the final idea a four-armed robot instead of two like I had originally planned.

Final Images

Finally, I took the drawing of my posed Sensei as well as the 3D image of my posed robot into photoshop and began recreating them, refining the design and adding colour so that it was obvious what material the clothes of the Sensei where and what material the robot was made out of.

Development Sheet

I made a development sheet for both of these characters so that it was easy to see where I started and how I got to the end of this project.

 

Evaluation

Looking back over this project I feel like there are certain elements where I have exceeded my limitations, especially in the 3D area of designing organic models. I feel like I have researched more than usual into the subject of my project and then used this as inspiration for the final outcomes.Using 3D software for character design Is something that I haven’t done in my past character design projects and I feel like it is certainly a technique that helped me extremely well. It enabled me to pose the designs of my characters easier as well as show them from different angles easily.

I still feel like character design is the subject in Games where I am lacking due to my drawing of anatomy. However, by practising sketching and comparing this project to my previous character project, I can clearly see an improvement in the shape of my characters and how they should be positioned.

 

Improvement on Human Anatomy

January 31, 2017

After looking back on the previous sketches that I did on human anatomy I decided that I wanted to try and improve on this further by drawing some more using different techniques that would allow me to easily put the character into a pose. In my first attempt, the gender of the characters that I drew was unclear and I tried to make sure that I improved on this in this attempt. I also wanted to attempt drawing different body types. Since a lot of video games tend to use larger muscle characters I thought it would make sense for me to learn how to draw these style of character. Most games also go for the realism aspect which means that the characters have to be in the correct proportion so that they mimic the real life counterpart. Comparing these drawings to my previous ones I can already see an improvement however they are far from perfect. This is something I need to keep doing as I will improve the more that I do it.

img_0458

Character Expressions

January 9, 2017

Expanding further with my character design I decided to have a go at creating character expressions. I did this by first drawing simple ovals and then contour lines which gave the roundness of the shape and showed me where the features should go. I did this so that I could make it appear as if the character was either looking to the left or right or up or down. I tried to make these look as similar to my game character as possible however in some of the expressions I feel like this is less obvious.

Reflecting on this I feel like the technique of using guidelines that show the direction of the face is something that helped me a lot and allowed me to easily position the features quickly. This is something that I will use more in the future when designing characters.

fullsizerender-1

 

Character Design: Explorer Concept 1 (Coloured)

November 29, 2016

Just like my other design I also added color to the first set of sketches that I created. I used similar colors to the other design so that the style of clothing was the same and possibly so that it could be a damaged version of that outfit. I went with gold for the buckle and the bracer so that it would stand out and look like the only piece of value on him.

N reflection to this design I feel like the colors I have used work well and give a time set for the character. The only part of the design that I am not happy with is the beard of the main character as I feel like it doesn’t fit in. With further practice, I think I can find a way to get past this issue.

character-design-sheet-1-colour

Character Design: Explorer Concept 2 (Coloured)

November 27, 2016

With the sketches from the second concept sheet I then added color onto it in photoshop. I first re-drew it saw that the lines were more defined and clearly visible. I then began to add color. I made the character himself have a blonde hair color he is unique as more characters usually have brown hair, I also did this to contrast with the other colors that I would be using. These colors are mainly browns so that the armor and cloak look as if they are made from leather, and a light orange so that the tunic looks like it has not been cleaned and has faded in the sunlight.

In reflection to this, I feel like this design works really well and the colors that I have used add more depth to the character and show what his clothes are made out of. The only negative about this is that the character looks more animated which is only because it is concept art. When I come to creating the character in a realistic scale it may have fixed this. Next, I will do the same process to the other design so that I have more outcomes and more choices for the final design.

character-design-sheet-2-colour

Character Design: Explorer Concept 2

November 27, 2016

After I finished the first design I wanted to create an alternate design inspired even more by the character from Thief. Since I want my character to be mysterious and little is known about him at the beginning of the game it would make seen that a lot of him is covered. Therefore he had a hood, alternate designs showing the hood down, and a bandanna to cover his face.

I wanted to make it so that some of this design was similar to the last one. For example the shoulder pad and the tunic. This means I could use both of the designs within the game and use it so that the design changes in the game because of an event or at a certain point.Just like my previous concept I organized all the sketches into a design sheet so that it is easily visible.

In reflection to this, I feel like this is a good start on this design and by having a hood and bandanna it reduces the likeliness of a disproportionate face. On the other hand, by creating an alternate face it helps me to increase this skill and also gives me more choices. My next steps will be to add color to this design in photoshop to bring the character to life and add more detail.

character-design-sheet-2

 

 

Character Design: Explorer Concept Sheet 1

November 24, 2016

With the inspiration that I had gained from my research, I began to draw up some different characters. Firstly I decided t go with the animated abnormal body shape that doesn’t rely on correct proportions. I wanted the character to be wearing the typical medieval clothes will having scratches and rips on his clothing. As well as this I still wanted the character to have some form of protection since they will be traveling to dangerous places. Therefore I decided to give the character a shoulder pad that would be held on by a strap attached to the characters built. Finally, I added pouches to the characters built since he is an explorer it is likely that he will want a place to store the artifacts that he collects.

To show the full visual of this concept I created a full rotation showing all four sides of the character. As well as this I also created an alternate head for the character which can show a whole different personality to the character and give them more of a clean and simple look. I showed all of these drawings by creating a character sheet on A3 in photoshop. Making it clearly visible which were the alternate heads and which was the main part of the concept.

Looking back at this work I am proud of the outcome of this design, however, I need to carry on with this body type, experimenting with different clothes to give me more options for the character. As well as this  also want to take this designs and apply them t a realistic human and see if that would be better or worse for my game.

character-design-sheet-1

Character Design: Explorer

November 23, 2016

The Explorer in my game will be the main character that the player uses. The reason that I decided that the main character will be an explorer is because it will give a reason or incentive for why he would try to find the Atlantis city, whether it be to prove its existence or collect artifacts.

I started off the design for this character by looking up at explorers in other games and also medieval characters. Specifically thief, Uncharted, and Tomb Raider. From the research gathered I already have lots of inspiration for multiple designs of the character. The clothes will be similar to that of the ‘Thief’ character in terms of the medieval clothing, for example, tunic and high boots. It will then be extremely weathered to show the effect of the exploration. This could have an effect similar to the damage in thew Arkham series where as the player progresses through the game the clothing is damaged.

My next step will be to take this inspiration and start to draw up some characters. I’m still unsure about how I want the characters to appear in my game, if i want them to be realistic and in proportion or if I would like them more animated and abnormal.