2-D Work- The Lord Admiral

With some exploration done on the variation of Voi I set about to start my design of the Lord Admiral.

An earlier sketch of the Lord Admiral in his undersuit with ceremonial officers headdress.

The Lord Admiral in his armour, slightly more painted up.

The Lord Admiral without his hat and a more interesting prosthetic eye. I don't think the headdress added much to the character and made him look him look more like a space-sous chef than one of the highest ranking members of the Jurisdiction admiralty.

A key feature of the the Lord Admiral is his idiosyncratic prosthetic left eye.

I explored a few different ideas for the Lord Admiral's left eye with some slightly more bizarre (and more goat like) eyes. I eventually settled for the right topmost one because there was something about it I found "off" and slightly unnerving. Perfect for the Lord Admiral. There is also something eye-patchy about it, because it doesn't look like a proper eye.  

My one-sheet with information about the Lord Admiral (including his really weird name) and the wider Jurisdiction.

2-D Work- Project

For my 2-D character project I decided to do an alien naval commander simply titled The Lord Admiral.

 My moodboard to help establish the feel and technologically advanced aesthetic of the Lord Admiral.

A quick paint up of a Voi, the type of alien the Lord Admiral is. The subject pictured is not necessarily the Lord Admiral.

Ear explorations. My favourites are 1, 3 and of course 9.

A few sketches and scribbles in my sketchbook trying to get a bearing on the form of Voi and in turn the overall body shape of the Lord Admiral.  

Explorations of Voi under armour suits which allowed me experiment with and elaborate on the Voi design aesthetic. Concentric circles are a mainstay motif in Voi designs.

Owing to their great technological advancement Voi can readily alter their fur colour and patten them with "tatoos". Elaborate prosthesis are also utilised by soldiers and engineers who may become injured in their line of work. 

2-D Work- Robot Paint

Today's class involved us trying to copy a value painting of a robot to the best of our abilities. We were give two hours to do so. The result:

Ta-da! A rohbut!

2-D Work Begins!

For our first 2-D specialisation class we were tasked with drawing designs for both a room and a character with 50 or so minutes allocated for each. The results are as follows.

The room is some sort of cellar or dungeon or something with satanic stuff in it. Yay.

My character was some sort of disgruntled alien commander with a very stiff cape. Yay also!

AAA Asset- The Finale.

With the hand in date today I though I would throw up all screenshots and what not for the nearly completed object on its own post.

The cannon on its pier with some of the lighting twiddled to achieve a more atmospheric effect.

I created some cannon balls to add to the scene. They are just Unreal's default spheres with a dark rusty cast iron texture thrown on (although I'm unsure how well it shows up on them).

Quixel 3Do image with the UVs and ambient occlusions thrown onto the model to show how everything all works together (or something to that effect). 

A top-ish view. The UV's were triangulated so that they would cooperate with the .obj exported from zBrush better.

Over all I am fairly pleased with how it turned out. It is far from perfect and could be far better but it looks the part, at least to one degree or another. I learned a lot about them processes required to make a game asset, skills and knowledge I am thankful for.

I have had several problems with the project. My overall time management could of been better which would have given me more wiggle room later on to fix completely fixable mistakes which I have had to forgo correcting to try and get everything else done.

I have mentioned above that my UV layouts were sub-par. Having previously negative relationships with UV's in the past led me to just get one out that worked. It is far from perfect but I stand by the fact that it (mostly) works.

Adding materials and textures in Quixel Suite gave me some issues. It can be seen that the metal looks a bit flat and let us not forget the colour map "shadows" (which remind me of nuclear shadows, hence "shadows").

My experience in ZBrush, however, was overall a positive. it went smoothly for me and produced some decent detailing and colour maps. The normal maps were functional but there was room for improvement.

My Maya modeling went well. There were a few problems with vertices but I was able to fix them and carry on with no detriment to the final model.

It seems, reflecting on the whole project (read: ordeal) that I am capable of learning and implementing the techniques necessary but I am far from a natural. 

Did I enjoy the project? Yes-ish.

Am I happy I did it? Yes. Would I do it again? No.    

I am and will forever be a 2D artist.

ZBrush Stuff- Insert Multimesh Brushes

This weeks ZBrush class included an introduction to "Insert Multimesh Brushes". An exiting sounding term for what is arguably ZBrush's equivalent to kit-bashing, using pre-made tools of objects such as gun barrels and panels and slamming them on other objects.

Here is a monstrosity I conjured up whist getting to grips with the idea:

I started by throwing stuff onto a six-sided cylinder.

I continued to throw stuff onto the six-sided cylinder.

The six-sided cylinder now has a huge gun barrel sticking out the front. 

A front view showing added spine and barrel radiator detail

The finished (?) product. A large thrown-together space cannon.

For all your ship vaporising needs.

ZBush Stuff: Dynamesh

This week in our ZBrush lesson we were looking the Dynamesh feature of ZBrush. To get a feel for the feature we were told just to mess around and model what ever we wished, this was my result.

This is the front view of my space-borne monster-creature-thing I came up with. I looked at crabs and their shell for inspiration to help me with designing the creatures "hull". 

A side view, not that exiting.

The top of the creature is pitted with holes of varying sizes. I imagined that it would fire internally manufactured projectiles at its foes through these pits. They also have the added advantage of being visually disturbing and therefore interesting.

The rear "engine" of the beast. It needs to move in space somehow.