This is my final piece of work created for my specialism project for ba6. unfortunately i was never able t create a model of the character, however i do feel that i have accomplished my own desire to learn how to create a character mesh through my work for "the wanderer"

Artist Bio

This is a short description of myself as a artist produced for contextual studies.

I am a developing concept artist and 3d modeller with a background in fine art. In all aspects of my work I like to experiment with different styles and mediums, I am willing to adapt to any style to suit whatever project I am working on. I started out as a landscape painter, though I have always been interested in living forms, and later moved more towards Figurative works. I currently specialise as a Character and creature artist, though I have a keen interest in any organic design or form inspired by nature.

For concept art, my preferred style has a heavy emphasis on line art, I feel this this transfers well between analogue and digital art. I like to work using line art as a base, and applying layers of washes working up to more detail with different techniques. In my 3D work, I began using clay, and wire sculptures, though I have also used a variety of polymer clay and epoxy to create smaller detailed Marquette’s based off my own concept art. I am currently studying Game Art and Design at Norwich University of the Arts, where I have learnt to use digital modelling and sculpting software to expand my skillset. I am now working on my first game title as lead artist and 3d modeller, and produce a range of concept art, and 3d game assets as part of a studio pipeline.

character

below is the process of my refinement of the "hunter"

final render

creature

this is the progression of my work on the "hound" creature, it was easier to create a pleasing design, from only a few quick concepts because i had already experimented with the design motifs and fee of the design in my work on the "hunter" character.

final render

meanwhile...

As i have said before, on the side of my current work for BA6 i am also working on a project for the Brainchild competition. We are a team, trying to set up a game studio in Norwich.

My role is lead artist, this is the first time i have had to direct others artwork alongside my own, i have a strong vision for what i want our game to be, and how i want it to look. I have developed the game world and its aesthetics based on the work done by the producer and game designers who came up with the concept. I am working closely with Jonathan Pace who is the producer for the team, he is the one who came up with the game design and much of the lore and background. I try to convey my ideas to my team members (there are two other 2d artists, and 3 other 3d artists) in a load of different ways, as appropriate to what i am trying to get across and to whom.

My original brief for the style and type of game was to create something like Samurai Jack from a top down 3/4 view like Bastion.

This is "The Wanderer, Tears of Irrigo" from the perspective of the art and design team.

I wanted to set out the basic outline of the world i wanted to create from the very beginning  i maintain that mood boards are a great way to do that, i spent weeks gathering images for reference and inspiration, and made a collage of what i felt was the most appropriate. this is a fast ay for me to translate my vision to the team, i can just say, i want t like this, or kind of like the image in this mood board without having to search through a plethora of image files.

One of the earliest changes i made to "The Wanderer" (then called " Project Astrum" or just "Astrum") was the switch in camera perspective. i liked the style and feel of bastion, but i felt that the game we were making could turn out too similar in terms of the game world. I thought that a side scrolling perspective camera would be better for the story we were telling and could be used in interesting ways to help us stand out from the crowd.

This first collage is the first mood board that i  created, i wanted it to literally show just that, the mood, the feel of the game world. from here i could create designs and gather images for more specific parts of the game once i knew that the other artists were coming from my perspective. 

Above is the mood board for the player characters home race. The introduction part of the first level is set aboard, the flying ship of a race of nomads. It seemed right to design this race first.

I created a separate mood board for the clothing and characters of the wanderers. i wanted to go cor a mismatched, run down but homely look. this would create a nice contrast with the harsh and hostile feel of allot of the levels in the game. The character sketches are my own, from a game concept i came up with last year. 

At the time this collage was important, i was trying to create a stylized version of the universe that the game is set in, (called the Astrum- hence the game's old name) this was to be inspiration for an abstract of an astrolabe meets and orrery, to be used for the logo and as a banner on the games website. since then the game has shifted focus more to the story if the character than the world it'self so this may change. 

A rough mood piece/ collage for the layout of the front page of our website. this will just be a splash page , to use as a place holder untill the full website is up and running.

a mood board for my the environment of the first game level

The fist set of concept art that i started to work on was for the character of Zoe, the protagonist of the game. At the time of this work the plan was to have 4 playable characters to choose from, the player would be able to choose from either Zoe or her brother Horro, at either a younger or older age. We changed this when we decided to focus more on the one character. 

I started by producing a series of quick silhouettes of the character, and then taking various body parts and swapping them around to try out different styles effects ad combinations. the ones circled  in red are the designs that my team favored when i showed them. creating the look of the main character seemed the best way to start to work on the style for The Wanderer  once we had the style set for the protagonist we could apply it to designs for the rest of the world based on the mood boards that i had done and the concept art of myself and the other artists. 

I based the character off the 11th silhouette. this was my favorite as well as allot of the group. in this concept i was trying to design a unique style for the game to use. it was decides that this kind of art style was striving too much for realism.

i wanted to push the kind of art that i was creating. i am normally more comfortable at making art that is fairly realistic in its representation. however i wanted a stylized work for the game to be set in. i wanted to avoid the soft, rounded feeling aesthetic that allot of indie games seem to adopt. a style that is very reminiscent of the style used n Pixar productions and anime.

i played around with the idea of using more caricatured forms, but swapping out soft shapes for hard edges and smooth faces to try to create a distinctive style. the below mood board shows my influences, and attempts t translate that style into something that the other artists in my team could understand and replicate.

though i now had a good idea of what i wanted for the style, i did not yet know myself how to draw it, these are my attempts to practice using the hard edged angular style that i was working on.

my development of this style took a while to get down. this was the first full render of the character zoe in the style of the game, but i was really unsatisfied with the result  the drawing itself has no character and feels flat, this obviously comes form my drawing it from a perfectly face on angle, it does not really shoe the style well. i also think i tool the angular-ness too far.

this is the final product of my development in style. i was much happier with the result of this, it did everything i wanted to convey the style of the game. from this point i could move on to working on the character in 3d.

this series of images shows my development of the character mesh. this is my first time building a human mesh in any modelling program, and the first time i have tried box modeling any organic object.

starting from a simple shape and working in the detail

i tried various different ways to create the head before i was happy with the result.

i manipulated the basic head mesh to create roughly the characteristics of the concepts i had done. 

the proportions of the character are semi- deformed/ exaggerated, this is partly a stylistic choice part functional, facial expressions are easier to read from far away if head is slightly over large.

a rough map working out of the first city location (first dungeon in the game) this was simply used to convey my ideas for the design of the environment to the other people in my group.

my quick sketch of the location of the game (the planet irrigo), i use quick, rough st=ketches like this to convey my ideas to the other artists, these are just very quick pieces of concept art. this example was used to show the style of the game in relation to the world as a 3d object.

a quick sketch of the user interface for the game. i liked this design cause it is spatially efficient but fits into the mood/ feel that i am trying to create.

this is my design that we have used as our studio logo.

concept in progress

To break up my standard process of design (wit the hopes that i might be able to come up with some design that i would be happier with) i got out some Sculpey and wire, to throw together some quick maquettes. These are really just sketches in clay that i have made to see how my concepts work in 3d space. this is a great way to work, particularly when turning a concept into a digital 3d model later.

I took inspiration for these from my earlier sketches. i liked certain aspects of this first sculpt, the antenna break up the shape and make it less upright, providing lines that sweepback away from the face area. i had started to favor using the single eye in my designs to get away from the established expectations of "humanoid" aliens, but i think the design is too synonymous with robotics (it often looks more like a lens than an eye) and this isn't what i wanted for the character. i think i is harder to create an emotive character if you stray too far from a human (or at least recognisable) template, the head is also just a little to phallic.

With this second maquette i went with a more recognisable humanoid shape for the head and built it up with plates of clay i didnt want to spend a long time smoothing, so as with the previous sculpt i just defined the muscle structure, as i would do to create a shilouette. The design just felt like it would be better suited to more of a "fantasy" setting rather than sci-fi.

I liked this concept enough to finish the sculpt to a slightly higher quality, the face is human enough not to be a jarring design, but twisted enough be off putting in the intended sense. i took away features that are defining of the human face (nose and mouth) and duplicated the eyes, simple changes but effective. 

The photo does not show it too well, but the scupt has a collection of tubes coming from the bottom of the throat and back of the head. the ones at the back actually form the shillouete of a more human character with long hair, this should make the viewer subconsciously more aware of the more human attributes.

Taking the body from one of my sketches and the head from the last bust i sculpted i sketched out my first full concept for the character "The hunter". The overall body shape, i made very human, but in the details i aadded more "alien" attributes. my style of creature design id influenced by H.R Giger. I like Gigers biomechanical take on the human body, and use of smooth rounded forms. his work has influenced allot of my design of organics in the past, as well as in this project. 

Much of Gigers art uses a human shape as a basic form, adding pipes or tubes over that to create alien looking designs. I wanted my own designs to be less humanoid than this, i am trying to create work that does not strictly follow the Hollywood school of design when it comes to alien creatures and characters. 

Progression of my character: Here i show the steps i took in creating this piece from, sketch to line art, to black and white tone work followed by building up colour. 

Generating a character:

Quick Sketches

Rather than starting with my usual process of creating silhouettes, i thought i would start this design by getting straight into rough sketches. I followed pretty much the same principle as i would create a silhouette (using the sketch to define shape, form. and outline, leaving out more detail to further work) but i think this technique makes for a design that is more readable at a glance, and leaves less to interpretation. I don't think it is necessary to produce a silhouette if i am creating designs only for the benefit of my own idea progression. starting with silhouettes is more useful to get an idea across to a decision making client of team member not directly involved in the design process.

first sketches

These are the first set of sketches i created for this project. They are for the character of the "hunter", as outlined in my brief.  As stated previously i want to base the "Hunter" of a humanoid, or at least bipedal body type, with the "Hound" taking more of a bestial form. I went into more detail on some than others, but only when necessary. 

idea development

After the first set of sketches, i felt the idea of humanoid designs might be a bit limiting, so for this set i tried to push in a less human direction. However as i was producing them, the characters felt less like characters, less like individuals that could experience emotions and relationships, more like aliens in the league of the xenomorph species, soulless devourers than something that a character would want or be able to play as, and from the perspective of. 

pushing the shape further