Bloom - 3D Blocking Model

Today I blocked out the model to make sure proportions and everything is in order and readable before I commit to details and such so in turn this is very rough around the edges. (a small note: I blocked out muscle tone in her legs but didn't smooth any of it yet) I think her head is too big right now and maybe her hips are too small. She does not have her gun holsters because I will make those in Maya separately as they are a little elaborate with all the pieces. I decided to get rid of the hanging earrings as there was too much going on around that part of her head. The rails at the bottom of her shoes are also missing currently. Any criticism is greatly appreciated as always !! 

Bloom - Signing off on the design !

I still wasn't particularly happy with the design of Sawa, and felt she was too bright in contrast with the stark white alien so I went for a darker approach akin to the design language of Bayonetta. Tried to communicate the harnessing of magic better through the guns and ice skates. 

As I said in my previous post I wanted the shoes to be multipurpose so she can change between rollerblades, iceskates, and normal shoes. For specifics: the bottom of her shoes have a railgate that she can slide the ?mode of transport she wants? into it. (They then power up from there)

Final Design

(sorry for the terrible upload congruency and layout. i'm currently sitting in lakeside carpark waiting to take my laptop in for repair ! shall maybe fix later)

Bloom - Further Direction

Firstly; a tag line to summarize the game's story simply: Sawa, 26, an intrepid Iceskater moves into New York City after following an advert for a small basement apartment that requires no rent. Her mysterious landlord requires instead that she aide an investigation into an equally as mysterious giant monster.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Going further with the design I'd begun thinking about forms that Sawa will have. It makes sense that she has an outfit that fits around her everyday life and always harkens back to the fact she, while willingly, unexpectedly took up this task. So it should transform when ready to fight.

Considering how she will scale both the giant monster and the buildings around NYC; when she transforms her skates give her the ability to play with gravity and stick to whatever surface she's on. As she skates black dust and pretty sparkly thingies will emit from underneath trailing a little. Thinking about it I don't think you'd be able to slide up most buildings in NYC easily; and it wouldn't be a smooth ride anyway. So I'd like to push the idea that she can transform back into her normal state and run up fire-escapes. Because those are a cool staple of NYC I feel.

Currently she feels a little as if she's like an annoying fly on the wall to the giant alienmonster. Furthermore; a game seems triflingly odd if you only ever fight one monster regardless of the investigative aspects. It would need to have smaller monsters along the way perhaps.

i wanted to do some paintings with her next to the monster to see if they contrast eachother well, and it's given me a good indication some colours need to change and design elements.

Bloom - Concept Direction (big post)

These were some of the initial concepts I drew to get a sense of where I was going to go. I knew I wanted the aliens she is going to be fighting to be big; and so she needed a way to get up to them. My concern in terms of game mechanics were how she will do damage and any subsequent meaningful damage. I drew her topheavy, with mechanical arms that could make her fly with boosters. By giving her restricted movement in the form of a super duper stylish pencil skirt n' some heels it would make her a slow runner and in hopes that the player would realise it'd be faster to fly. However I got tired of this idea and I didn't like the inclusion of mech parts.

So I'm now looking closer at some inspiration. From the likes of Street Fighter, Bayonetta, the videos of 水曜日のカンパネラ, Katharine Hepburn, Dana Scully, and when BB played Bonnie in that one music video !

I want the head of the alien to be its biggest weakpoint, and also the hardest to reach. I tried to make some obstruction of getting to its very unfortunately always open mouth. Considering the game would be set in a New York style sky-scraper filled city, I'm trying to get the alien partially mirror the buildings. Vertical !

I got rid of the mech arms and spliced together some rollerblades with ice-skates so this way there isn't a reliance on anything rocket-based ! She'll have to skate up the alien cutting it in the process. For weapons, as this time around it is unavoidable, I decided to give her two high firing Glock 19's, although I also want to give her a tommy gun too. (thinking about those trigger buttons on a controller)

I pushed the vertical shape of the alien further, and thought it'd be interestingly hilarious if the alien had this accordion style body that unfolds (thus making the alien get higher) as it loses health. The concern being each time it does this it's not a clean process, has a little bit of a fit, and destroys the surrounding area its in.

 

This is where I'm at design wise right now ! (Though I still need to test different colours) She is still loosely top-heavy but it's not as obvious. She's got a harness set up to hold the guns on her shoulder-blades and lower back.

I'm hoping to be able to make this character in 3D as well as the alien. The alien in terms of rigging will be so hilarious because I'll have to make it un-posed. Gotta unfold the accordion ! 

As I want to start with a high poly in Zbrush i thought i'd better take advantage of all the embellished detail work I can do as aside from the guns and harness clips most of this project will be organic. 

I'd love for any feedback of any sort please ! : ^)

Major Project - Proposal / Inspiration

For my major project I want to create characters for a game that is a mashup of the lighthearted magical girls genre like Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura etc, and the investigative mystery of the x-files ! I'd like it to aim for the amount of detail seen in triple A games. - Focusing more on a more mature art style with procedural texturing. However; at the same time I'd like a contrast between horribly odd aliens and girly dainty characters . Scale between the aliens and the characters will be exaggerated but there'll need to be some experimentation into how big I make the aliens. I think straight away they should be more organic rather than armoured etc.

Games featured: Batman Arkham Knight (DLC), Final Fantasy 14, Final Fantasy 15, Evolve, Bayonetta 2 , Aegis (Persona) Fanart by Blair Armitarge!

I'll need to look into polycounts for these games to aim for a similar amount. I'm looking here on Polycount to which I see FFXV ranging at 100,000 max per character (20,000 assigned to hair alone), with Sunset Overdrive (particularly more stylized) at 40,000 per character. In Bayonetta, there's around 20,000 per character. I'm thinking already I'll need to use 2 texture maps but I can allocate 2k for the main parts and a 1k map for the accessories so we will see.

Finally I'd like to research into a proper game rig rather than a strange hybrid with what I did in my previous project !

As for how the gameplay should impact the design of the characters, the amount of "gravity" the characters can get away with probably needs to be lenient. - Similar to how Kingdom Hearts deals with size difference and gravity etc. A lot of this seems to be reliant on weapons however so part of the design I'll need to consider will be how the characters fight these giant aliens !

What I'll make: 

For this contrast in giant aliens and a character to work I'll need to make:

Concept work & Complete 3D Models (Highpoly+lowpoly/textured/rigged/displayed properly in Marmoset viewer)

1 human character

1 alien

At the level of detail I wish to achieve I think this is reasonable for the timeframe as they'll be vastly different and nothing would be reusable.