Week 8 : Character Duo

   To start off, I apologise for the lateness of this blogpost. Last week was the start of the Dichotomy Character project! Well.. technically it was set on the thursday before, however most of us were still working on the Sentry gun project right up until its hand in on the monday. I was so happy last monday! Before starting on the character project I carried on trying to get the arm rotating as it shot but had no luck, so I asked for help from Elliott in the third year and because of him it works brilliantly. As he went along he talked it through to help me understand; it was so helpful and I really appreciate him taking the time to help me! I would like to practice more with blueprints in UE4 to be able to become comfortable with it, though. I'm hoping that I'll be able to come back to my sentry gun at some point, so I can perhaps add sounds and sort out a particle effect.

   Anyway, on to the character project! This project is incredibly flexible. We have to create two characters who are complete opposites but would belong to the same world. We don't have any tri limit or texture budget, simply an instruction to be reasonable. This kind of freedom was both exciting and daunting, especially as I didn't have the foggiest idea what I wanted to do. 

   So I started by doing some quick idea mapping, thinking of generalised character types and focusing on the relationship between the two. At first, my favourite idea was a kind of badass gran with her weedy grandson. I very quickly lost interest in that idea, though and because I was still stuck I decided to make a mood board focusing on my favourites of the ideas.

   I went on Pinterest and made a large mood board compiling all of the resources I thought would be helpful to me. I put them into grouped sections, so I'd be able to quickly look over at a group for a specific thing. I first looked at existing dichotomy characters and found some brilliant images, one of which was a photo of a small elderly lady sitting on a bench next to a tall punk rocker. I was so glad I found that, because it was a real life example of dichotomy and it made me smile. I also looked at various stylised characters, examples of small girl characters, teen boy characters, monsters, cyborgs and explorers. My two favourite duo types at this point were a girl and her large cute monster and siblings, so these were what I kept my eye out for the most. I very quickly lost interest in the cyborg stuff and took a great interest in the explorer images I had found. 

   I thought of a story from here, which I thought could take the form of a brother and sister who have gone hiking with their parents but have got lost from them. I wanted them to be very contrasting in personality and visuals. I liked the idea of the boy being a hormonal teen, so typically a bit of a moody git. However, he's a moody git who, despite appearances, secretly cares very strongly for his little sister; who is sweet, cute, intelligent and ever so slightly irritating. The way I imagine all siblings are. He was to be tall and gangly with sharper edges, whilst she was to be short and made of rounder shapes.

   I made another mood board focusing solely on brother/sister sibling relations and how I would show my characters relationship with one another.

   I made a bash kit of three simple shapes; a square, circle and a triangle. From here I came up with some ideas for the head shapes of the characters. I pretty much only used circles and triangles for the little girl, however for the boy I used circles very little.

   Using my favourites from the bash kit, I drew the rest of both characters to make a comparison between them both height-wise. Here I focused even further on the shapes of the characters, always trying to make sure that the characters consistently contrasted one another in a complimentary manner.

   I really liked the boy's face, so I sketched it out with different hair styles and variations on features. I really liked the face how it was, however I loved the hair style for the second one. I had been sketching this out previous to this page and I really liked how it made the character appear more edgy, with a stronger attitude. 

   I wanted to make sure that the silhouettes were interesting as well, so I made sure of this whilst looking into details of what my characters would be wearing.  My favourites for the boy were iterations 1 and 5, whilst for the girl I liked 1 and 2 best.

   I still couldn't decide between the two outfits, so I did two height comparisons to compare and see which I liked best. In the end I decided on leather jacket, because it backed up his edgy look and typical teenage attitude more effectively.

   When I presented these ideas, the main points of criticism I received was the silhouettes and values for the little girl. The issue was that her hair was a similar colour to her poncho, so it blended in a little bit too much. It was suggested to me that I make her blonde, which would sort out the value issue and make her contrast favourably with her brother. So, following this feedback, I made value sheets for both characters, focusing more in making sure that different elements contrasted well.

   I tried the chosen value for the girl with both dark hair and light hair, both of which seemed to work. I still wasn't sure, because although the blonde girl contrasted with her brother well, giving the girl dark hair made them look related. I also looked more into the details of the characters to include when it comes to texturing. I made decisions about their personalities too, for instance, the brother is bigger and stronger, so carries the heavier pack, whilst the younger sister carries a small backpack, a teddy and perhaps a torch. I liked the idea of including a small token of the affection between them and thought that the girl could maybe make little homemade flower badges, one of which she gives to her older brother. He would obviously not display this normally, but his sister made it.

   From here I created some colour sheets for both characters. I kept to mostly dull colours for the brother, knowing that bright colours wouldn't really suit the personality or look that I am going for with this character. However for the little girl I tried more varied colour combinations as I wanted her to be the brighter, happier one out of the two.

   I was anxious to start modelling them after this, so I very quickly made orthographical model sheets for both characters for me to use as reference whilst making my characters. 

   I'm quite pleased with the overall look of the pair of characters so far. I have also majority built a physical model out of wire and Sculpey of the teenager, and am currently in the process of modelling him in 3ds Max. However, this has been a pretty long blogpost, so I'll update you with that in the next one!

Week 7: Unlucky struggles with Lucky Cat.

    Well, the Sentry Gun project has drawn to a close and to be honest, I could be prouder. Don't get me wrong, I do like the final result, I just wish I could have achieved all that I had wanted to. I'm going to carry on working on it in my spare time if I can though, so I can get a nice piece for my portfolio.
   Following on from last weeks post, from there I went on to texturing, which with PBR is nothing but an absolute joy. Metalness and roughness maps are beautiful things that really make the texture. When it came to texturing I tested it straight in engine, so I would straight away be able to see what the final results would be, instead of putting it into Marmoset and having to edit it again later. The textures on the Daruma doll came out really well, so I feel like it's such a shame that you only see it for about a quarter of a second as it flashes past you.

Below is the main Sentry with just an albedo texture applied to it. The only difficulty I had with this really was with the face makeup, because the seams run up the side of the face.

   As you can see below, once I added the metalness, roughness and normal maps it really brought the model to life. I feel like the cat really looks like shiny porcelain. As well as testing the textures, I made sure that the pivots on the main body of the gun worked the way that they should. I had already been checking it as I went along and noticed as I worked on it that the projectiles weren't firing once I had replaced the example with my own mesh. This was easily solved by placing the socket at the end of the gun barrel and removing the collision mesh.

   By this time it was reaching the last few days of the project. I had made it my stretch goal to get the arm rotating independently, so it could look like it was reloading. I don't think I realised that this would actually be quite difficult, especially as I don't really know anything about blueprints. I received a lot of help from Hazrat to attempt this, and even though we didn't manage to get it working, we sort of got halfway there and I feel like I did learn from it. I say that, but as soon as I try again I will still probably be baffled. *Sigh* It's a learning curve I guess, I'll carry on trying. 

  Anyway, I built the arm separately to be able to do this and it took a lot of editing of the pivots in 3DS Max to get it dead on, because when we tried to get it rotate with the model at certain points it would sort of break away from the body. That works now though, so I'm glad that's one aspect sorted. When we tried to get the arm to rotate back and forth however, it whirled around and disappeared right through the body, turning my Sentry gun into something wildly sassy. I'm going to hand it in without the dramatic arm gestures though, and continue working on it to try and get it working.

   These are my final renders of my 'Maneki Neko' Sentry gun. Like I said, I'm disappointed about the arm rotations and really wish I had pushed it further. Having said that though, I'm pleased with the aesthetics of the final result and am most proud of the overall design process that I went through. It was at this point that I was most inspired and I am so excited to begin concepting for the next project.  

   We were also given the task of creating a poster to show off our design. I thought this was interesting as it's not something we normally do. It was pretty cool to do something different, though I have to say I think I could have come up with something a lot better. I'm going to have to work on my poster design skills too by the looks of things! I do like that this poster is a tad ambiguous. Its message is a bit sinister and I like that, because it was my intent for the sentry gun to be a bit creepy and this adds to that where creepiness is maybe replaced by cuteness.

   Our next project is the 'Dichotomy Character' project, where we have to design a pair of characters that belong to the same universe, but in appearance and personality are completely different. The brilliant thing about this project is that we can adapt whatever style we like. I don't feel like we've really had this opportunity much before, so the prospect of having free reign over the design of our characters feels so exciting!

Week 6 - A Week of Sentry Guns

   I've enjoyed this week a lot, I've felt much more positive towards my work and I feel I've made some good progress with the Sentry Gun Project. It's been a bit weird not having any classes. I've been in the labs every day though, because I enjoy working with other people around me. Though it's got to be said, I very much enjoy working at home, because pyjamas are comfy, and your singing won't disturb anybody... except maybe the neighbours. 

   This is the finished version of the paint over that I showed you last week. I tried to focus a lot on what kind of materials would be used so that I will know what I'm doing more when it comes to texturing. I included scratches on the metal ball that I'll put on with roughness maps, and focused on which bits would be wooden etc. 

      Below are some colour iterations of the original paint over. I took these from the voted favourites of my initial colour iterations. I think in my head I decided which ones I liked best about halfway through, so by the time I got to the mossy stone one I'm sad to admit I didn't try as much. I think I realised before I finished that this would be boring to do and it would be much better to do one of the others. I liked 1 and 2 fairly equally, I really liked the colour scheme of 1 but thought it could be quite fun to do the metal materials on 2. In the end I showed some people and took a vote on which colour was best. Everyone I asked picked 1, so I guess that choice was pretty clear. Originally he didn't have face makeup on, but it was something I tried on 3 and a few people said they liked it so I tried it out.

    From here I did a reflection sheet with notes to see if there was anything I'd potentially want to change. I thought more about the makeup, which reminded me of traditional Kabuki makeup. Kabuki is classical Japanese dance drama which is well known for the dramatic makeup worn by the performers. I looked at a few examples of dramatic Kabuki makeup to look further at how I could stylise this. 

^Kabuki from Animal Crossing, Aww.

         Then I tried out a few different styles, which I still haven't as of yet decided on. Whatever I decide on though, it was a fun thing to do, and I'd like to do a study of one of the examples of Kabuki makeup because I just love how dramatic they are. I also looked at the gun barrel and where the ammo will be stored. I made the barrel look more like a cannon, so it looks slightly more stylish and interesting. When I changed the back it made the whole design look a little top heavy, so I stuck with the original. 

   I also decided on a stretch goal! I decided that if I finish everything require by the brief early enough I should try to animate the raised arm so that it comes down to reload the ammo. I think if I can learn how to do this and pull it off that it would look pretty awesome.

   I also looked into what the gun would shoot. At this point I'd pretty much decided I wanted it to be a cannon of some kind. Originally I couldn't think and just kind of thought "Erm.. engraved cannonball?" To be fair that could have been interesting to texture, and would have looked quite pretty. I thought of more that could be relevant to the gun and came up with the Daruma dolls that I mentioned in my previous blogpost, which I think would be cool. Like, here, have a face full of Zen. I also looked at lanterns and the creepy masks that are prevalent in Japanese history, but I thought these were a little over complex for something so small.

   I revisited my pivot designs as well, because even though my original idea does work, it doesn't look like it physically should and it looks very unstable. Now it works differently, almost like a globe, where it pivots around a pin.

   By now I was really itching to get on with building the model, so I quickly sketched these orthographics to help me get the model accurate. I kept them fairly simple because I wanted to crack on with it.

   Building the face took a fair amount of time, because I wanted to put as much detail into it as I could spare. I had to keep revisiting it to keep the entire model under the tri count. I liked doing this though because it was a challenge and reminded me of character modelling.

   This is the test model in comparison with the final one. I managed to make it and keep JUST UNDER the tri limit. Phew! I think I'm actually quite happy with the model now! I've got it all unwrapped now too, which was annoying when it came to the face. It took a lot of fiddling around, but I tried to keep the seams in places where they'd be perhaps less obvious. 

   I also this week attempted at building a physical model of the Sentry gun. I did this fairly in the week, so it's different to the final look of the model, but building it is one of the other things that helped me see that it didn't look right.

"Hullloooooooo"

   I regret building it out of fimo now to be honest. I originally thought that it would be best because of the cat. I suppose it was best for the cat, but I could have done with building the rest out of cardboard or something. I'm going to try sanding the base a bit because it's quite slanted. 

   Next I'll go on to texturing my Sentry gun! I'm really looking forward to what the next week will bring!

Week 5 - Maneki Neko

   I'm a wee bit late posting this blog post, but in this post I will be going through my progress through the first week of the Sentry Gun Project. On one hand this project has been so exciting, it feels like the first project where we have absolute freedom to create something awesome. On the other hand, it's scary... because it's the first project where we have absolute freedom to create something awesome. Personally, especially at the beginning, I found it hard to focus my ideas and become attached to any particular one. I suppose this is a good thing really, because getting attached to ideas too early on can be a bit dangerous, but it didn't stop me feeling a little bit disheartened at first, mostly just because I felt like I was falling behind.
   I started on the Monday, after we had gotten the brief, by collecting pictures from Pinterest and compiling mood boards. I needed a starting point of what to look for and tried to consider my own interests to begin with. I like history (even better if it's potentially dark and disturbing) and thought this may be a good place to start. I don't know why it bothered me so much, but I wanted to stray away from steam punk, because even though it is awesome, it's probably been done a lot before. After looking at existing Sentry guns for reference, I looked at Ancient Egyptian artifacts and Shipwrecks and Underwater ruins. I wasn't sure how I could make Ancient Egyptian artifacts work other than the colour scheme, which would have been fairly interesting. With the underwater ruins and shipwrecks, I was reminded a lot of the lost city of Atlantis. It was suggested that the sentry gun could shoot blasts of water, but I was unsure about this.

This was my first moodboard, with a selection of different paths to take.

I started looking at natural shapes like twisting branches and vines and came up with an idea I did actually quite like, which was to have a sentry gun made of twisted vines and gnarled tree roots, and this would shoot a sort of magic energy. My source of inspiration for this idea was from the Spriggans in Skyrim.

   I chose to take the Ancient China section of my mood board further in the end though, because after I created that section I felt more excited about making a start and felt more inspired to do so. I felt like I would be less limited with ideas for this aswell.

   After this, I compiled a larger moodboard of just Ancient Chinese reference, to have a good starting point to build my bash kit.

   Using this bash kit I created a page of silhouettes. I found this difficult at first because I was over thinking EVERYTHING. I realised the next day that they ones I did when I wasn't paying as much attention were actually the best ones. I chose my favourites from these, then asked a few of my friends around me which ones they thought were best and that I should take further. I've taken people's votes into consideration with my own opinions and have considered critique comments and deduced my choices to these to 19, 21, 24 and 26. 

I compiled the comments I'd had on these and my personal favourites were 19 and 24. I'd loved 19 from the beginning anyway, because I'd grown attached to the idea of making a kind of Dragon Sentry Cannon. Amanda gave me an awesome idea with 24 though. She was like '24 looks like a really fat cat.. hey you could look into like those Chinese Lucky cats.' Which I thought was an awesome idea. I'd been feeling down about my idea direction and this perked me right up as I started researching them. Whilst I was doing this I also started making more silhouettes, working up each of the chosen ideas and seeing where else these could take me.

   Researching the Lucky Cat idea actually made me realise that it was a common misconception that they were a Chinese tradition; they are actually a Japanese tradition. I kind of loved the irony in this idea; the 'lucky' cat statue with creepy, sad, staring eyes being a hidden weapon. I love the idea of having this in a game; being in a Japanese temple or something and walking past one of these statues and hearing the cogs turn and the ceramic grind as the statue turns towards you and starts firing off rounds.

   Even though I still loved 19, I was so inspired by 24 and really wanted to take it further. So I did. 

   I looked a little further into the different types of Maneki Neko and discovered the Daruma Maneki Neko, which is where the Cat holds a Daruma/Dharma doll. This is a traditional Japanese doll modelled after Bodhidharma, founder of the Zen sect of Buddhism. This is so perfect for the example of it if it were in any kind of temple. and just adds to the irony of it being used as a weapon... pretty un-zen. Another thing they always carry is the Koban, which is a gold coin used during the Edo period in Japan. Traditionally they're made our of carved wood, stone, porcelain or cast iron, or if you're thinking expensive, Jade or Gold, which I will consider when deciding the colours and textures.

    I experimented with what the cat would be holding, what the stand would look like and where the gun would come from. I liked the idea of the cat being ideal for a disguise, and I played with the idea of the arm rotating to fire the rounds. I wasn't sure how I could make this work with the blueprints though, so I put that idea to one side, and decided it could maybe be an added feature if I reach the stage where I can start thinking about stretch goals. I tried to decide here how the pivots might work. This made me anxious, because I was worried that the idea I wanted to go with wouldn't work. I looked at the brief and example model to check where the pivots were, and checked it on mine. The base and the horizontal yaw were fine, the only bit I was worried about was the gun pitch. I tried this as a ball and socket type thing, and selected the gun pitch area in Photoshop, and changed the pivot and saw that when I rotated it, in theory it should work. I was still worried though, and decided that after I had made concept decisions about the face, I should build a test model to try out in Unreal engine.



   I really really wanted to make this statue creepy, so I experimented with the face, pulling the mouth into a cartoonish grin, making freaky eyes, etc. In the end though, I decided on the original version, because I find this creepier than any of the versions that I concepted. I don't like that it looks like it's staring at you with a completely black expression. I think if I was in a room with loads of these it would make me feel pretty uneasy. However, I have this annoying thing where I am so intrigued by things that make me uneasy that I kind of love that I hate it.

   After this, I did some quick colour tests and got some second opinions on which were the best to take forward into concepting. I'm still playing around with what I want the gun to look like, so this was just a test to see which colours worked best. 

   From here I made a quick model and put it into engine to see if the pivots would work the way I wanted them too and I was so relieved  to see the cat rotate to face me, the gun pitch making it follow me up and down if I jumped into the air.

   Using the same model, I used the clown rendering technique that Mike taught us last week to block out various sections ready to make paint overs to further help me decide on textures.

   This is the first paintover so far. It's not finished yet and I plan to do a few more, and decide on what the gun will look like more, because at the moment I think it looks a little bit uninteresting. I think maybe it needs to be fatter, because I like the idea of it looking like a cannon, and it could have cool engravings on it. I'm looking forward to progressing with this, especially getting to the texturing stage, because I think I could make this look really good with PBR.