Character design project: re- imagining a tales character for games

B-Cinos

OK so here's the project. it's a personal project for university, and what has been is how re-imaging a character from a tale affect it's design for games. then re-imagining a character of my choosing. I chose Aladdin for my re-interpretation. think enslaved:odyssey to the west if you want to know what i mean by re-imagining/ re-definition where only monkey really has any visual cues to his counterpart. should be mentioned, i did write a short story, it's about 1400 words which is why i don't really want to put it on here, but i can if people think it would help. anyway view these images and tell em what you think
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B-Cinos

first what i did was created a number of silhouettes and negative space sketching. using both paper with markers, and in Photoshop with some brushes. it was at this point where I quickly leaned away from the bigger bulkier silhouettes, feeling that that didn't look right for the character in mind. there were also some very loose head sketches.


from there i took some of the silhouettes that i liked, grabbed some tracing paper, and sketched over them. i like this technique, because it it allows me to take the silhouettes i liked and generate a lot of ideas from the core silhouette. i also played with robotic limbs, I feel this is where sci fi began to get stuck in my mind a little.


from there I did some head sketches, wanting to find a face or some faces that i could use as a basis for my final character design, and possibly help the flow of the values. i tried a range of different shapes, even a female face too see if it might change my mind on doing a male character, but ultimately, i really like 2 faces I did first more than anything else on the first page. the scarf like mask, like a snood, and the spiky haired male with the button on the neck of his coat, i id try an alternative angle with the masked mans face with the piercing on the second page and tried a more traditional mask next to it, but it was more to figure out his face as half of it was covered.



in the value stage, I took some of the sketches from the second stage, some of the negative form drawing on the 1st stage, I also used 1 or 2 silhouettes for designs that didn't come from the earlier stages. the value design was interesting because of this, a lot of designs in the stage just popped into my mind with no real influence from the previous stages.


It was here when I started doing a lot of bag designs in the values, that I started sketching out some proper bag designs, as well as some fanny packs, to see what i could come up with and if any was interesting.



this was a sketch for the design of his phone, as some of the bags had phone straps, i though it would be cool if the smart phone, was a robot that could hack, sneak around and do tasks, cause then it would literally be a smart phone. i wanted it to look a little generic, reason being i wanted people to pick up on the fact that it was a smart phone quickly.



the 19th design(or 3rd row 2nd to the right on the values) got a lot of variations from monochromatic, to complimentary colours, the 2 middle at the top i believe are triadic. 2 of the made it further as seen before, the one too the right end got some colour variations as well. the almost modern/ current clothed were complimentary, mainly focusing on blue and orange, the middle one got taken further . the 5 that followed were monochromatic mostly aside from the one with the glowing purple mask, the red one got taken further. the 2 white haired ones in jackets were plays on complimentary colours once again. the one's that look like the British flag almost, were plays on primary and secondary colours. the last 4 were monochromatic, but the black and red one got taken further as I liked that design.

B-Cinos

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the moodbaords i created when designing the character/s,

B-Cinos

these where done in reply to visioneer, as stated on this forum
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?264415-Character-design-project-re-imagining-a-tales-character-for-games
i'm creating this post due to having issues with using that forum.



first there were these 2 initial sketches, i felt that if i repeated the exact same process from start to finish it might hinder creativity, so this time this sketch and the one below were made.



from here the values were made

and then the colour schemes were, i played more with monochromatic this time, as it's something i felt i didn't play around with, or get to work properly with the previous iteration.
i also sort of scrapped the second sketch by the end of this process, i kinda got confused with how he'd look and how the clothed would work during the sketching stage. the farther i went down the process the more i didn't like it cause i just couldn't see it working functionally.

B-Cinos

a lot more focused on a singular design this time. however here they are

GrimFiction

Nice stuff, I'm impressed with how much planning and prep work you've done! Some slight crits would be that your first images the characters fingers are too long. Also try to play around with lighting and definition to make the character and pose more dynamic. Since his right foot is forward, his right side is the leading movement and so the left should be slightly darker to highlight this.

Overall great stuff! Awesome.

B-Cinos

i got some feedback from lecturers from the previous iterations and have started some more deisgns though i'm not sure what to do with them just yet.

first i worked out some poses

then i sketched over them shading values with pencil

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values 2. I tried with these values to try and sci-fi/ modernise middle eastern clothing.

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the moodboard which i made during the third iteration

B-Cinos

this was all originally on concept art.org under separate replies, put them all together as it's all a single iteration


http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?264415-Character-design-project-re-imagining-a-tales-character-for-games

link to the concept art thread


i did a few more values to really nail the values, and shapes of the design. the colour stage comes next




the colour schemes I've come up with. some have similar colour schemes used before, I wanted to see how they looked on other designs.



I put the schemes in a them like order. though it has been brought to my attention that there is still a bleeding of themes

i sampled the colours from each picture in the environment mood board to see what the character will be clashing against or blending in with. it almost seems that a fair majority of colours came out, which considering the character is a thief, probably for the best


some new colour schemes. i feel as though i have been repeating myself somewhat colour scheme wise. though i have gone through a lot these 3 iterations of design so i guess it's to be expected to a degree.


should be noted, the phrases like sci-fi, middle eastern, are where i feel the inspiration for said colour schemes came from. though for some i'm not sure and just put them where i thought best .

B-Cinos

OK so this is may be the final iteration due to deadlines and the need to complete orthographic's(maybe illustration/s). some feedback(not from here) liked the last 2 colour schemes from the previous post, for the middle eastern and the 1st cyberpunk one. so I created these in response to that. 4 look very similar, aside from 2 have the sports stripes due to some feedback I wasn't sure I agreed with about the saturation of the trouser/pants.

you may also have noticed the hair on most is almost identical to the character from the first iteration, I altered it's length slightly but it's the same style. I just liked the hairstyle for the character. though I did come up with a more punk-ish hair to see how that would look.

SCI FI/ Middle eastern-ish
The pants/ trousers are more saturated.





these pants/ trousers are less saturated.




altered




SCI-FI/ Cyberpunk-ish

B-Cinos

final look

also tried making a quick background thing

B-Cinos

the illustration, the arms went wrong somewhere, due to time constraints i will have to try and fix it at a later date, as this project requires me to model my concept.


here's the model as it currently stands with most of the form there. to me it's important to get the form right for a model or the clothes may/ probably won't look right. the feet have that gap because of the style of shoe and how i plan to create them via creating a new subtool via masking the foot area, hence the foots lack of toes and such in comparison to the rest of the body.

looking at it now. the head may need widening.

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second progress shot, fixed some errors that were pointed out to me by my project supervisor

tristanCarter

If you're continuing on with this, there are a few spots where you need to go in and fix up some anatomy, namely the face, which I assume you'll be going in and altering anyway. I would take a look at the wrists as well. The only other spot might be the ankles and glutes. You also want to build that shoulder/pectoral connection better. Though the character will be covered in clothing, you still want to be honest with your anatomy and prepare for any moments where the shirt might change or come off. Should that happen, having the anatomy already correct will really help.

B-Cinos

his butt is kinda square isn't it... it's good what a fresh pair of eyes can show you. thanks for the feedback. though could you tell me a couple of key on the face which aren't working for you? that'd be great

tristanCarter

The biggest thing is the overall shape of the head. Specifically, you need to rework the shape of the skull from where it connects to the neck and as it arches to connect to the brow. The brow you currently have is very neanderthalish, the nose doesn't flow up into the brow like you'd see on the average male face. If you look at male faces, you'll notice that our brows typically have only the slightest bit of hang over our nose. In addition, you should pay careful attention to the orbicularis, the group of muscles that make up your brow, eyelids, and the area right over your cheekbone. I'd take a look at some facial anatomy references, and just some anatomy references in general, and make use of the clay buildup brush and trim dynamic brush to get those forms into the face better. A great way to build up the region around the eye is to create the eyesockets and then append two zSpheres, dynamesh, and then use the clay or clay buildup brushes to build in the anatomy of the eyelids and brow.

You are right about the butt, for that, once again I'd take a look at some anatomy references to properly reshape those forms. Again in the anatomy stage the brushes that are your best friend are clay buildup, trim dynamic(to get the various planes), and smooth. Damien Standard can also help with blocking in muscle forms.

B-Cinos

thanks for the reply Tristan carter. I think I got the problems you listed(or at least it's an improvement on before)

The progress shots in normal and perspective mode.(previous were all in perspective)

normal





perspective





(edit i think i slightly edited the stomach between screencapping the normal then perspective. just in case the perspective was done after so you may wanna use that one when looking)

B-Cinos

just sorta noticed i haven't shown any of his clothes yet. and now they are kinda done.

I think due to time constraints i won't be able to make massive changes, minor one's i might

any crit's welcome

also noticed from first pic the butt is to shapely formed in the baggy trousers so I altered it