I have teamed up with an indie developer to make art for his game, Planitia. I've already posted these pictures in the mobile gaming WAYWO thread but I wanted to make a project thread to document the art as I make it. It's a god game in the spirit of the Populous games. (which I never played, so I can't comment on mechanics and similarities/differences)
He wants the models to be as low-poly as possible without straying into the region of minecraft men, along with a healthy dose of whimsy. I don't have any deadlines yet and Skryim went and ate my face so these pictures are about a month old. Here's to getting back to work in the New Year!
First I started on the villager. Basic model with solid colors and a very rough AO pass.
![RedVillagerTest_01.png](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33168855/Planitia/RedVillagerTest_01.png)
And the wires
![VillagerWires.jpg](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33168855/Planitia/VillagerWires.jpg)
DemonPrincess was wonderful enough to do a quick
paintover for me with color suggestions.
![villager_example.jpg](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33168855/Planitia/villager_example.jpg)
So I submitted the villager for approval and the developer didn't care for, well, pretty much everything. So I incorporated his revisions and produced this:
![RedVillagerProof2.jpg](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33168855/Planitia/RedVillagerProof2.jpg)
He loved it, so now I'm working on textures:
![RedVillagerProof2-Shade.jpg](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33168855/Planitia/RedVillagerProof2-Shade.jpg)
I feel like I'm going in the right direction, but using a soft brush was a mistake. I'm going to re-paint the shading with a harder brush to try to get a more hand-painted effect (and tone down the contrast on the pants). I'm tweaking the model too to prepare for animation and make the texture look nice. Also to do is iterate on the face so that it reads properly at the tiny size.
This is my first time working on a commercial project and I know some people might look down on it because it's so low poly and it's just me (the artist) and a single developer (the programmer), but I want to do the best I possibly can and really make this game look nice.
I'll continue to update this thread when I've got new things to show, thank you for looking!
Replies
Still have to rig and skin this guy. That's got me scared, not so much the rigging but the skinning. I haven't skinned a model since 2004 on 3D Studio Max 5 (I STILL have nightmares about that). Now I'm using Maya and I've got my fingers crossed it'll be an easier chore.
chrisradsby - I was surprised how much I liked the 64x version myself once I tried it.
Painting the weights was A LOT easier than I remember it being in Max.
I'm not sure I like how the rig feels. I followed this tutorial http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/tutorials/P-maya/T-Maya-Rigging-Rigging-a-biped-character-for-animation/ID-125/ I'm also typing up documentation of the entire thing in google docs so I have more quickly accessible information for next time. I have a notebook full of scribbles, but it's not very readable at a glance. I'm more than willing to make my notes available to anyone who would like them, just let me know
It's a similar system to what I used in college in 3D Studio Max, so now that I've made one I'm confident that any future rigs I make I can adjust to make them more pleasant for me to animate with.
I suggest this as after zooming way out on it myself, I felt the body movements looked ok, but the head bobble was too much. They are usually a bit more stablized, focusing on direction of movement.
Speaking of, here's the run I did today:
These are coming together a lot more quickly than I expected. Now that I look at the walk compared to the run I think the run looks a lot more stiff
I think he's snapping the neck of a pigeon and letting it free.:poly122: Ehm, that's probably not it...ehm maybe opening a bag of seeds then dropping it all over?
Thank you both
Jessica, I haven't seen you post in your Panderan house thread in a while! Do you have another project thread you've been working on that I haven't seen?
And here's my progress so far:
It's, ugh, I'm having issues. I've never done much, if any, handpinting landscape. I smushed some of makkon's brushes around but good brushes can't compensate for an unpracticed artist. I welcome any and all suggestions. I'll keep poking at the hand-painting, but I think I might try to cobble something up in zbrush and use that as a base.
The grass might be looking a little bit to "paint drippy". Maybe try to put a little more variety in teh way they drop off? Dunno.
I'd try to paint the shadows in, it looks like you're using a drop shadow atm.
Buuuuuusteeeeed xD Thanks for the crits man, I'll definitely work on them
On last painting, if was me, I'd prefer to make more large strokes, and would make smoke with a "solid" apearence, I mean, using the same large strokes, with a non textured brush. You know, aproximatedly like clouds on th sky of this Murph's painting. I think this kind of rendering could let things more cartoonish and simple. But of course, it depends on your goals.
PS - I think it's pronounced plan-EE-sha and a quick google search reveals its use in naming things like craters on mars, which makes an odd kind of poetic justice for a game whose core mechanic involves blasting poor little peasants into oblivion.