What Happened, Kangaroo?

Here's an (almost) finished WIP of my first "What Happened Here" painting from Game Design. It's Varanasi, India subjected to hardcore pollution, ten years after everyone has abandoned the city.

I like the contrast of bright colors on the dead city, because I feel like this place will always feel alive - it has so much character and history even if it's just a bunch of empty buildings. I'm gonna desaturate it for the next iteration, but I do like this warm color scheme a lot. In the next painting of the same place, it'll be 100 years after the disaster, and people have started coming back and re-populating, bringing the city back to life.

For DFA we refined some of the abstract characters we had sketched out before:

Now we're on to rendering them out in gray-scale. I love all this character drawing, it makes me so happy ;v;  I want to go back and draw a bunch of the other characters from my abstract shape sheets some time, I saw so many fun characters in them c8

Weapons and Animations

I haven't updated in awhile! I can't believe there's only two weeks left; this year has flown by, and yet when I look back to the beginning of the year and everything that we've learned it seems like forever ago. Tomorrow is Accepted Students' Day and all the kids and their families have swarmed the campus, either deciding whether they want to attend here next year or visiting their choice school. All the student end-of-the-year galleries have opened now too, along with Best of Ringling, which my board-game Daemonibus got into 8) The theses this year look awesome, I can't wait to see them all on the big screen for the thesis show.

I modeled, textured, and put the weapon for my character into UDK, so here are some of my Crossbow weapon concepts for Ayra:

And the one-page design of the final:

 I'm going to re-do the textures, so here's just the model for now:

We're going to customize our weapons with particles, animations, sounds, and other stuff as well, which comes next.

Also, here's a short video of Ayra's idling animation in Maya. Since she's being chased and is constantly on the move, she gets pretty antsy.



I'll get some of the old Programming stuff up soon that I've mentioned before. Eventually, lol.

Model Sheets + Weight Painting

I never posted finished versions of my model's headshots, so here they are along with a low-poly wireframe/maps sheet. I've been working on weight painting before we start animating our characters. Importing our models into UDK and using the default animations makes them go haywire before weight painting, it's hilarious. I want to take a video of it, lol. Anyway, here are some sheets!

Some weight painting process. There are so many layers for each object p_p

I haven't posted Programming stuff in awhile because I really need to make a video to show what I've been doing. I'll make a big post on that soon! Also, my Platformer is kind of a secret for play-testing, but I'll post bits of it along the way 8)

Lowpoly Character

The whole process of making a character model is tons of fun and really rewarding, but decimating the high-poly model into a low-poly was kind of painful. I really like texturing, re-topoing, and UVing, but it was still sad to watch everyone's high-poly characters lose quality. Here are some process shots of the high-poly to low-poly process:

And my final Lowpoly Model:

 Also, for Game Design I pitched a One-page Design document for my Platformer, including the boss battle:

I don't want to go into too much detail regarding the specifics and give it all away, since it will be playable and I'll need a lot of people to play-test it in the coming weeks 8>  All of my Game Art classes are finally coming together to focus on the platformer project in different ways, and I'm so excited to see how everyone's turns out ;v;

Mood Ripomatic + WIP

   Have I mentioned how much I love my Game Design II class?

Our first assignment back from spring break was to make a Mood Ripomatic video that would capture the emotions and gameplay experience that we want to generate in our platformers. Since my game revolves around a renegade assassin running from the empire and being chased through the forest as she escapes to the port city to flee the country, I wanted to start where the game starts - having momentarily lost her pursuers, she finds herself navigating through a tranquil, beautiful forest - before the chase begins.

The main thing I wanted to convey was a sense of intense forward motion as you're being pursued, the building forces of danger and determination driving you to go faster in order to escape.

Outside of class I've also been working a little on an illustration of my character. I wasn't planning on posting it until I was done, but since I might end up using it in some way for the platformer, I thought I would show some process.

Works in progress:

 I'm still planning to paint a forest background and re-paint over her, and fix the wonkiness of her anatomy.

I'll also have some screenshots of my low-poly character model next time 8)  We're baking normals and texturing/painting/adding materials, so I'll show some of that.

Platformer + Final Character Sculpt

Final high-poly character sculpt before I start doing the topography in 3D Coat and decimating it for the low-poly model that I'll use in my Platformer:

I think I'm gonna change her name to either Ayla Sortwind (Ayla pronounced Ay-luh) or Ayra SinClaire (Ayra pronounced eye-ruh) because the previous name was just supposed to be temporary.

Also, we pitched our Platformer concepts and levels in Game Design. Mine revolves around my character, so it takes place in a medieval fantasy world. The story is that you play as the character above (Ayla/Arya), an undercover Assassin who received missions from the King's high general. She was ordered to assassinate a good friend of hers for a crime he committed, but upon refusing to carry out the order, is threatened with death. She kills the high general in order to escape, and makes way for the nearest port to sail for another country where she'll be safe from the King's jurisdiction. That's where the game picks up; the player makes their way through this platformer forest (the branches being the platforms) to the port city, where the boss fight will occur with the King and his forces prepared to capture you. As the player navigates the forest they are confronted with various puzzles, but have to solve them with speed and efficiency, because if you take too long some enemies will catch up to you and you'll have to kill them in order to survive. Overall I want the feel to be really fast-paced, fun, and fluid.

The main mechanics are jumping, pushing/pulling objects to reach higher platforms, swinging, speed pick-ups, falling objects (environment obstacles), repelling, bouncing on giant mushrooms, and shooting with her crossbow.

Here's a simple draft of my tutorial level (the first level), the yellow path being just one of many the player can choose to take:

Right now we're blocking in our levels in UDK and getting the mechanics to work 8)

Character Update

Almost done!

Still gotta finish the blade on her back and fix the position as well as fix up a few other smaller things, but the sculpt is almost finished 8)

Character Modeling WIPs

My model's progress from a few days ago:

And then progress as of today, about 85% done with everything:

I just blocked in the colors to make sure they still looked okay in 3D, but I didn't color everything (we're not even doing the colors until we texture/do materials), and I still haven't touched the hands in awhile or done the hair yet. The face is almost done though, but the head is a little small right now, haha. I have a bunch of little fixes to make, but I'm on-schedule for having her done by Monday :)

We also pitched our Platformer ideas today in Game Design class, so you'll be seeing stuff on that soon. I'm so excited to see everyone's Platformers, especially with our characters in them, it's going to be so awesome (B

Character Progress

Progress! I'm about 3/4's of the way done detailing the clothes, but I still  have to remake the corset's skirt. It's been the biggest pain, I can't wait until it's re-done and I don't have to deal with this messed-up one anymore |D  The face and hands will come after I'm all done detailing 8)

Zbrush Character Sculpting

Getting used to ZBrush's interface was super frustrating at first, but once you get to know it better the modeling is really fun 8)  About a week ago we sculpted our character's base anatomy in ZBrush, and this week we have to have the clothes all modeled. I haven't really worked on the face and the anatomy needs more detailing, but here are some progress shots:

The clothes are almost done except for the boots and vambraces, and ridges/details on everything else. I did something wrong with my base anatomy model and it had multiple faces within each other, so extruding the faces from it to model everything else has been a massive pain. Despite the set-backs, modeling is still so much fun qvq  I definitely want to do more character modeling in the future and work with ZBrush a lot more. We're test-rigging right now and painting weights, but it's tedious and I don't think I like it much |D  We're going so fast, it's crazy to imagine where we were just a few months ago in comparison to now. I can't wait for all the projects in the next few months 8)

Final Character Turn-around

Here's my final revised character for 3D. The only iffy thing I may still change is the pendant on her corset under the sash, but I think pretty much everything else will stay the same.

We started learning ZBrush and after struggling a bit, I'm starting to get used to the backwards, unintuitive interface. We're working on the anatomy sculpt (nude body sculpt) right now, and then will model the clothes and everything else on top afterwards.

3D Character Concepts

I really wish we got more drawing assignments ;_;  I adore making characters, and I loved drawing out concepts for both of these characters, but I felt like we didn't get enough time. I would've loved to stay in this concept stage for at least another class period, since it's the most important stage of them all, and I think it would've benefited a whole lot of people since we really didn't get much time for iteration 8\

My first concept, though not "what I wanted to be when I was a kid," was just something I came up with that wasn't as generic as a medieval fantasy warrior, which was my main character concept based on the theme. Here are the sketches for the first concept, a 1700's female assassin dressed in Rococo/Baroque-style dresses. She conceals her weapons within her clothing's drapes and gets close to her target, flirting with them so they drop their guard before she suggests a secluded area, or is brought back to their house, where she assassinates them. There she slips out undetected, deceptively appearing as any ordinary high-class lady would, and gets off clean.

Examples of 1700's Rococo/Baroque dresses:

I really want to play with this character more because I knocked the idea before finalizing it, and do some actual character sketches of her. But that'll be on my own time I guess, haha.

Here are the concepts for my main idea, the medieval fantasy character whose profession I played around with (I made up so many fantasy characters for stories back in the day). If you can't read the writing, the professions are Chemist, Warrior/Explorer, Assassin/Explorer, Spell-caster, Messenger, and Astronomist.

I struggled with indecisiveness for awhile on which one to go with, especially because I have stories that could go with each character, and everyone I asked for opinions liked different ones. In the end I went with a combination of the Messenger and the Assassin's professions, but with the Assassin's outfit. Here's my turn-around WIP, which I still plan on revising. I'll post the final character turn-around when it's done 8)