Cat Character Illustration To Concept Visual Update (Project Neko)
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Hi Guys , how you doing? I am working on a visual update for a character I worked on in my free time and posted here last year. The character was supposed to be a one time fun painting study but alas I fell in love with it. I then tried expanding the character in a story with other characters by doing Inktober (I couldn`t finish it , unfortunate).
Anyway cut to short I teamed up with a good friend of mine Faivu (whos a great character artist btw look him up ) to work on a mock up game for this character in Unreal Engine. The style were aiming for is a mix between Torchlight/Diablo/Leauge of Legends. Pretty fun right ?
The main goal is to practice, learn , getting out of the comfort zone and most of all have fun with it . Right now I`m really learning new stuff about the pipeline and the communication between 2d and 3d artists. I will upload the start ,progress and updates about this project as much as possible. Feel free to critique and help (super appreciated
).
The start of course is research and knowing what we want to convey with this character . SO RESEARCH!
Then we move on to brainstorming ! (dum Dum DUM!! ) drafting to understand proportion , shape language and focal points. After choosing the silhouette that i am happy with , we move on to figuring out also how our character Neko looks like with and with out armor. I wanted to keep the main proportions from the illustration.
Now moving to one of my favorite steps , armor and weapon design . I wanted Neko to have this wandering knight hero vibe , with the long scarf as one of the main focal points next to the big ears. Having my reference and research nearby keeps me in check . Looking for interesting shapes (Small, Medium , Large shapes) to create contrast plus readability. In my The Sword is a magical sword that can talk , our friend Neko is always wearing his scarf over his mouth so we can never understand him properly . The Sword makes up for that.
Looking at my references the Sword is not sharp looking rather its blocky to make it feel heavier and blunt. I loved the idea of a cricket bat for inspiration.
Happy with the design choices , ready for a proxy model for 3d to model and have a start. Now I wanted to have the base colors for Neko. I applied the base colors and a bit of definition on the forms from the initial illustration.
My friend did a great job with the start up model . We sat down and had a look on what modifications to add on the model by doing paint overs . So we explored the what is going to be most readable on this isometric camera view. We want a clear sillotte. Focusing on the ears , hands ,scarf and sword.
We also wanted to make the fur more fluffy.
After adding some tiny adjustments to the proxy model , we moved on to putting the concept into a mock up environment , to have a better idea on how this character would look in game. Fixing the silhouette more and specifying the main colors to help 3D.
Time for some Gestures! I have never done this but I`m having lots of fun researching discovering how games design their character movement trough gesture. (also mad me realize how much i need to practice gesture drawing ). So here I am exploring 3 different ways of getting in and out of combat key frames. After that we will move on to battle attacks (so cool !)
I explored more the motion and flow of gestures for battle. Breaking it down to 3 light attacks that go in a combo and 2 heavy attacks (air attack and spin attack) Was studying concepts from League of legends a lot. Breaking the gestures into silhouettes gave more freedom. I also looked into what kind of attack VFX we would like to see Neko with. We went with glowing slash accompanied with ink strokes at the end. (wanted to keep the initial style i had with the 1st Inktober i did for Neko).
Anyway cut to short I teamed up with a good friend of mine Faivu (whos a great character artist btw look him up ) to work on a mock up game for this character in Unreal Engine. The style were aiming for is a mix between Torchlight/Diablo/Leauge of Legends. Pretty fun right ?
The main goal is to practice, learn , getting out of the comfort zone and most of all have fun with it . Right now I`m really learning new stuff about the pipeline and the communication between 2d and 3d artists. I will upload the start ,progress and updates about this project as much as possible. Feel free to critique and help (super appreciated
). The start of course is research and knowing what we want to convey with this character . SO RESEARCH!
Then we move on to brainstorming ! (dum Dum DUM!! ) drafting to understand proportion , shape language and focal points. After choosing the silhouette that i am happy with , we move on to figuring out also how our character Neko looks like with and with out armor. I wanted to keep the main proportions from the illustration.
Now moving to one of my favorite steps , armor and weapon design . I wanted Neko to have this wandering knight hero vibe , with the long scarf as one of the main focal points next to the big ears. Having my reference and research nearby keeps me in check . Looking for interesting shapes (Small, Medium , Large shapes) to create contrast plus readability. In my The Sword is a magical sword that can talk , our friend Neko is always wearing his scarf over his mouth so we can never understand him properly . The Sword makes up for that.
Looking at my references the Sword is not sharp looking rather its blocky to make it feel heavier and blunt. I loved the idea of a cricket bat for inspiration.
Happy with the design choices , ready for a proxy model for 3d to model and have a start. Now I wanted to have the base colors for Neko. I applied the base colors and a bit of definition on the forms from the initial illustration.
My friend did a great job with the start up model . We sat down and had a look on what modifications to add on the model by doing paint overs . So we explored the what is going to be most readable on this isometric camera view. We want a clear sillotte. Focusing on the ears , hands ,scarf and sword.
We also wanted to make the fur more fluffy.
After adding some tiny adjustments to the proxy model , we moved on to putting the concept into a mock up environment , to have a better idea on how this character would look in game. Fixing the silhouette more and specifying the main colors to help 3D.
Time for some Gestures! I have never done this but I`m having lots of fun researching discovering how games design their character movement trough gesture. (also mad me realize how much i need to practice gesture drawing ). So here I am exploring 3 different ways of getting in and out of combat key frames. After that we will move on to battle attacks (so cool !)
I explored more the motion and flow of gestures for battle. Breaking it down to 3 light attacks that go in a combo and 2 heavy attacks (air attack and spin attack) Was studying concepts from League of legends a lot. Breaking the gestures into silhouettes gave more freedom. I also looked into what kind of attack VFX we would like to see Neko with. We went with glowing slash accompanied with ink strokes at the end. (wanted to keep the initial style i had with the 1st Inktober i did for Neko).
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