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!