Character sheets more important every day
polycounter lvl 18
As we move to that ever higher polycount it seems that some companies have a problem keeping up. So often i have seen some lovely character concepts, with style and feeling but with very little detail and much too much room for interpritation being used to help the hapless character artist make that 2 million poly Zbrush/max/maya wonderous work of art, only later to be told that that stripe in the background wasnt motion blurr but actually the all important extra pair of legs for the quadraped. O.K well maybe that is a little far fetched, but i am sure there are some here that can sympathise?
There were some wonderfull character sheets here, there was a contest once, some girl and her mother? but i cant remember their names to earch for them and they are over a year old, that it would be nice to get hold of again. If anyone still has them or other good character concept sheets they can share with me. Not so much for the characters, but more for the presentation, views and basically a good example of how to present character concepts? It would be a real help, as i think someone has to start a crusade against designing characters half way through a production cycle. It would be nice to see some examples.
Otherwise has what is the story in your house, do you do the concepts from the finished models, does it cause problems or has your department got it right.
Tim
There were some wonderfull character sheets here, there was a contest once, some girl and her mother? but i cant remember their names to earch for them and they are over a year old, that it would be nice to get hold of again. If anyone still has them or other good character concept sheets they can share with me. Not so much for the characters, but more for the presentation, views and basically a good example of how to present character concepts? It would be a real help, as i think someone has to start a crusade against designing characters half way through a production cycle. It would be nice to see some examples.
Otherwise has what is the story in your house, do you do the concepts from the finished models, does it cause problems or has your department got it right.
Tim
Replies
as for the story, what's also a bit bad is that the artist rushed into the zbrush model without making a base lowpoly mesh that he would have had validated with the concept artist and art director to check that the shapes are correct, fit with the concept, the skeleton, etc, there's clearly (at least the way you describe it) a pipeline malfunction here (but I could be wrong, as you didn't describe the full pipeline there)
someone has to start a crusade against anything designed in the middle of a production, for sure, but also start one for communication between the different specialists, because you can't avoid direction changes coming from the publishers, thanks to the fantastic thing that is marketing (among many other reasons to change something halfway through the produciton) but sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes not, though
Of course forget everything I just said if the asset is a licensed property.
The model sheets you are looking for are Hawkprey's. and you can probablly find them at www.hawkprey.com
I think thats his website.
nevermind, here's the link
I would love to see some gears of war character sheets. Looking at the character art really messed up my day (just kidding), if the bar gets any higher it is going to take a year just to get a toenail let alone a whole character over it.
tim
P.S congrats on the blizzard character josh.
Hawkprey is a perfect example of how do it right. I think his work gives the character artists enough info to build a crankin model with just the info provided, but if they want to kick it up a notch they have the freedom. He also understands what the 3d artist is looking for, which isn't some action pose of the character durring thier controtionist days.
Since I'm an enviroment guy we have very little concpeting done for our stuff. Its mostly whatever you want to do in your spare time. I use Max to rough out a level as a concept and normally paint over renders to get a feeling for detail. So I doubt any more info from me about concepting would help that much...
Concepting is an art form most companies don't want to pay for, so it gets pushed into the dark conrner of contract or "spare time". Most concepts I see are of little use to a 3D artist but do a good job of getting the "idea across". Striking poses, characters twisted into bazar shapes to "strike a pose". Stuff that looks great but can't be built off of. Vauge or improbable detail that is hard to read or wouldn't work. 50 million hoses going from the fingers to the toes looks cool but won't work! Small sketches that look good because "they are small" offer very little detail. Like you said is that a smudge, a knife, a back pack or an antena?
[/ QUOTE ]
Come on, these striking pose concepts are the right way to go, concepts are only for collectors edition books and promo anyways.
A rough concept indicating style and proportions is fine if you have a guy you can rely on to create a great model, knowing the constraints and plans. Plus just talking to the concept artist or getting the occasional quick paintover as it progresses is just as useful, and much faster, than a fully-detailed, rendered and coloured concept painting (which like Toomas says, is the sort of stuff that's destined for an art book).
I think it's the difference between promo concept art and production concept art. It's rare that a lot of actual production art that is used makes it into an art book - for every beautifully-rendered character painting, there are usually 10-50 thumbnails, sketches and pieces of work that go to the modellers to work from.
That's my limited experience anyway
Since I'm an enviroment guy we have very little concpeting done for our stuff. Its mostly whatever you want to do in your spare time. I use Max to rough out a level as a concept and normally paint over renders to get a feeling for detail. So I doubt any more info from me about concepting would help that much...
[/ QUOTE ]
Im not sure concept art does much to help ? A perfect even if say you had an environmental concept artist for example . I look at the AWESOME concept art from Tabula Rasa but the in game screen shots are ...umm not so good ... anyways Personally if I was a 3D artist I would love to work from well thought out and detailed concepts but it does'nt look like it always helps in every case
Ohh here are the awesome concepts from Tabula Rasa
http://tr.stratics.com/content/gallery/concept_art/index.php?startImage=0
[ QUOTE ]
Since I'm an enviroment guy we have very little concpeting done for our stuff. Its mostly whatever you want to do in your spare time. I use Max to rough out a level as a concept and normally paint over renders to get a feeling for detail. So I doubt any more info from me about concepting would help that much...
[/ QUOTE ]
Im not sure concept art does much to help ? A perfect even if say you had an environmental concept artist for example . I look at the AWESOME concept art from Tabula Rasa but the in game screen shots are ...umm not so good ... anyways Personally if I was a 3D artist I would love to work from well thought out and detailed concepts but it does'nt look like it always helps in every case
Ohh here are the awesome concepts from Tabula Rasa
http://tr.stratics.com/content/gallery/concept_art/index.php?startImage=0
[/ QUOTE ]
yeah, i would love to have detailed concept drawings for environments. and the ones on that site are excellent... but then it seems the game artist took those concept drawings and made generic ingame art based only very loosly on the concepts... what a shame too.
but having concept drawings would prevent that, "what is this area missing" thought that always pops in my head after modeling some area.