Boss Character project for Unreal engine, WIP
CONCEPT REDESIGNED FURTHER DOWN/UP
Hey people, got a fairly large project ahead of me as part of my university dissertation. I'll be creating a boss character keeping around UT3 model limits so 12-15k tris as a top limit, when modellled it'll be given a custom rig, taken into the engine and used in a custom Unreal map with a scripted boss fight, custom animations, material shaders, and hopefully just being kick ass in general (what have I got myself into :whyme:).
Below are hand drawn concepts of the boss, he's basically a king or lord of some description, although his true reason for being so is a little more complicated and kind of the reason for his attire and general appearance, I shan't bore you with the details unless anyone is interested.
The core concept of him is the dual spiked ball & chain weapons, initially part of his armour they detach as he engages combat and allow him to swing them round devastatingly. Naturally one of the problems with the design is the incredible shift of weight on his back which would blatantly ruin any chance of standing up straight. As this is mainly a aesthetic choice (it makes for an identifiable silhouette at least) the character will be deemed as just being unusually strong and adjusted to the weight, the animations will try to focus on the impact of this weight however. If anyone does have any greater insight in how to deal with without affecting the look too greatly please do post.
I haven't started the modelling yet as I've been dealing with some report work concerning the project, however before I do begin I was thinking of something that could help me plan out the project better.
Directed at the 3d artists that work in the industry, how long typically do you set aside for completing a character or/and what time constraints are you given for a specific character entity in relative to the rest of the project? Is it a couple months or is it compacted more into a few days or weeks for each character? I'd like to approach this project with a more realistic timescale in mind, any input would be greatly appreciated.
C&Cs all greatly appreciated, I'll get to work on this
Cheers
Nathan
Hey people, got a fairly large project ahead of me as part of my university dissertation. I'll be creating a boss character keeping around UT3 model limits so 12-15k tris as a top limit, when modellled it'll be given a custom rig, taken into the engine and used in a custom Unreal map with a scripted boss fight, custom animations, material shaders, and hopefully just being kick ass in general (what have I got myself into :whyme:).
Below are hand drawn concepts of the boss, he's basically a king or lord of some description, although his true reason for being so is a little more complicated and kind of the reason for his attire and general appearance, I shan't bore you with the details unless anyone is interested.
The core concept of him is the dual spiked ball & chain weapons, initially part of his armour they detach as he engages combat and allow him to swing them round devastatingly. Naturally one of the problems with the design is the incredible shift of weight on his back which would blatantly ruin any chance of standing up straight. As this is mainly a aesthetic choice (it makes for an identifiable silhouette at least) the character will be deemed as just being unusually strong and adjusted to the weight, the animations will try to focus on the impact of this weight however. If anyone does have any greater insight in how to deal with without affecting the look too greatly please do post.
I haven't started the modelling yet as I've been dealing with some report work concerning the project, however before I do begin I was thinking of something that could help me plan out the project better.
Directed at the 3d artists that work in the industry, how long typically do you set aside for completing a character or/and what time constraints are you given for a specific character entity in relative to the rest of the project? Is it a couple months or is it compacted more into a few days or weeks for each character? I'd like to approach this project with a more realistic timescale in mind, any input would be greatly appreciated.
C&Cs all greatly appreciated, I'll get to work on this
Cheers
Nathan
Replies
ok crits on what you have so far, liking most of the design, but i think the scar on the eye needs to turn into something else, eyepatch, or some other facial detailing. also the skull on his chest could be redone a bit make it smaller, or less "litteral", what about layered plates that sort of allude to the skull, i think its too in your face as is but thats just my opinion. love the balls on the armor idea. some audio jokes about his big balls would be hilarious imo. the torso armor is also a bit heavy compared to the rest of his body, try and keep the weight of his armor balanced it will look more natural.
OK more constructive than the others, if you are having trouble visualising him as balanced standing up straight, so am i. If he were haunched over with the balls of his outfit abouve his feet he would look much more balanced, it would also give him the look of being physically twisted as a side effect of his combat style. < i would say definatly go for this.
That being said, the best piece of advice I can give you is to completely redesign this character now. Paper and pencil are cheap, polygons are not.
I've worked as a concept artist for a couple of years and I really had to fight against simply hitting the back button out of this thread, because this design is exactly the same kind of Warhammer-alike stuff you see all the time. You've probably been in this forum long enough to have heard people talk about the usual characteristics of a good character design--strong silhouette, clear detailing, interesting colors, textures, etc.
Don't get me wrong, huge bulky dudes with sweet huge weapons and armor and skulls totally rule, I used to draw them all the time too. But if this is really a dissertation level piece, and a BOSS CHARACTER especially, then you need to step up your game. Don't be afraid to work from your betters--if you're going to steal, steal from the best, but also steal from the less stolen from. WH-type characters are so universally done and done to death that your smaller details--which are interesting--just aren't going to help any because the big picture is "just another hulky dude with no neck and skulls everywhere".
You don't have to completely scrap your work. Your linework is clear and easy to read, and the essential nugget of having two spike balls that are on the back and then swing forward in a dramatic arc is pretty good. But otherwise this isn't boss character material. He needs to be more unique, more physically imposing (and not just stout), and referencing more interesting design choices other than "where can i put this skull". again, this isn't trying to rag on you or your work--skulls rule, huge dudes with skulls everywhere are also cool, there's a reason we're always obsessed with this stuff.
also think about visual design elements as they relate to your character in the game world, having weak points (NOT big glowing spots, btw, just saving you some time there). how does the player fight this character? does he have a rhythm? does he charge like a bull then has a cool down period, because swinging those huge spike balls gets him tired?
this design is completely autopilot right now--meaning that without thinking you're cribbing a lot of known, cliche design elements together. big shoulderpads, skulls, spikes, chains, and that's about it.
not that these things are at all bad in and of themselves, but every time you use an element that you've known you've seen before in exactly that way, that's something else that people will not find interesting about your character. it takes enormous, even unbelievable amounts of technical ability to bring off a design this flat and make it worth looking at--blizzard can do it, but not always even for them.
consider a time period, a culture, a theme, a physical power or handicap. all these things will go to grounding this character out of the completely generic cliche and into something interesting.... when everyone pulls water from the same well, it's time to find a new well.
That said it's time to get the ball rolling again, and hopefully with a better base design this time, I'd like to get into the modelling soon so that it isn't just my possibly poor way of conveying my ideas on paper that are being criticised, but for the basis of my workflow document I need to break this project into a more "logical" workflow.
So this is the new concept, a more radical change I hope. I've tried to approach a lot of the things you've picked up on and get them in the design and avoided the typical "bloke in armour" look. It may still have some "Warhammer-esque" influence, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I like that style and if I can't enjoy the project myself then I can't make a good job of it.
@woogity: Thanks for the positive advice, one of the first I was thinking when doing the design was in fact how I'd rig the chains in well. I was thinking about a 3 or 4 point rig along the chain, the animation should be fun especially if I can get some stretching in the motion to look nice, the fight is going to be all about dodging those gigantic spiked balls and the feeling of weight is really going to have to come through. I've kept with the ball & chains idea, as I say its the basepoint of the concept, the creature is natural posed hunched up so the attached balls shouldn't mess the balance as bad. For how they are mounted I'm still making a decision whether there should be some attached armour designed to fit them, or additional bones or bone that is deformed to fit.
@gauss: Firstly thanks for not doing as you said with backing up when you saw it. I appreciate your advice, and I'd probably be doing a far less interesting project otherwise. I agree with basically everything you've said, I can't say it is all rejoiced in the new design (I mean it still has a big skull, and the weak spot is indeed glowy :poly116:, the burning heart or other such entity floating in his exposed ribcage, hopefully not in the same wavelength you were mentioning). In the case of gameplay, a lot of the points you were saying are already designed in my project, but you're right that it just didn't convey in the character, I hope this one will be more obvious. Again apologies if my drawings (I've never shone on the sketching scene) don't relate too much of the design, as with most it'll surely detail and adapt during the modelling/sculpting etc to a more detailed piece.
Sorry for the titanic amount of text, again please c&c it's so helpful to get this rich feedback and there's some great artists here, hoping it's not tempting the back button like last time
Cheers for the time (you're crazy if you read far)
Nathan
And finally the concept, sketch and some concept colour over
Just a few things from here:
-in further drawings, be sure to indicate scale. a little silhouette of a man (scaramouche, scaramouche) or other such object or character that we all know the size of will really help sell the fact that this is a moderately large or possibly even huge beast.
-you've got a solid overall design, now work at massaging some bolder shapes out of the front and side silhouettes.
-while you're at it, take the time to revise individual elements beyond generic symbolistic language. when we are children, we draw an eye like a egyptian hieroglyph--very readable yet far away from representational. all artists have to fight against this inclination with their work. here, what you need to do is make the generic into specific and specifically designed instead.
take each element--i want to see a steer or goat skull, whatever that is, far better and more accurately represented.
for instance the arms are now still almost exactly the sort of generic symbolic for "big strong arms". i see these on action figures and on other illustrations, but never really anywhere else... do some anatomy studies of animals as well as humans, maybe distend the anatomy in interesting ways while also rendering the muscle masses with greater conviction.
-what's up with the chains? did he just go to Chains of the Damned Discount Warehouse, where everyone gets the same linked set of chains? Same place Ghost Rider shops apparently? i'm not knocking the chains, chains are sweet, but let's see you make them your own. make sure that even if we only see the chain we say "huh, well. that's not a normal chain. or at least not ghost rider's chain.
-more small elements that point to culture, origin, history. is the beast infernal in origin? merely magical? some form of undead? don't tell me another word about it, show me.
so sure you got plenty of work ahead but it's all gravy. you've got a strong design to frame it all around, and now you just need to build up and refine the individual design elements in a way that builds up the whole as a sum greater than the parts. take the time, keep drawing him and redrawing him and you'll find a lot of the work does itself. research and attention to detail will find you with a very rewarding finished product. best of luck.
-Woog
I'll start working on some front and profile drawings soon, as said the arms need some work, I'm on the thought currently of them being similar to a white-back gorilla's, particularly in movement (the immense power of gorilla arms combined with the power house hind legs of a bull, seems a strong combo to me).
@frubes: I've curved the pelvis a little, I agree it looks a little flat, in fact I think it still is too flat but I'm considering enlarging the whole pelvis area and I could add an extra loop to curve it more.
@nrek: Cheers man, I see what what you're saying with the ball, as the ring replaces the spike which would have been there, there is some room for an extruded snout, its flat at the moment on the low detail mesh, I'll get it to look right on the scuplt and then readjust the low mesh to the correct shape before baking normals.
@Medestruit: Yep, totally agree, I've modelled most of the stuff on the low mesh now, so I can get a better idea of the overall look, I think the legs as well as some of the lower areas of the spine need to be beefed up a lot, might just do a push on them see how that comes out.
Very close to putting this into zbrush now and start some of the sculpting, I'm using this as the base mesh for the sculpt and then adjusting it later as the final mesh before baking the normal in max. Currently the arms are very lackluster I'll be doing most of that in zbrush and then probably remodelling it properly later, they're going to look decayed and ragged. The character is under 13k tris at the moment, the chains from the weapons started to eat up a lot, I could optimise them more but wanted to make sure the right shape came through, as an effect, the chain coiled around the arm wasn't feasible so instead the chain links directly into the arm, in the high res I'll sculpt some gruesome openings in the hide which allow the chains to enter where they connect to the bone.
Here's a little play with some block colours and the glow within the ribcage and skull. There will be a fiery heart of some form in the ribcage, just forgot to model it.
-Woog
Feedback welcome
Heres some youtube vids of some animation and ragdoll stuff in Unreal, I have some simple gameplay (essentially it chasing me with an invisible impact hammer) that I may get round to frapsing as well
[ame]
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Cheers guys
Staffordshire University
BSc Computer Games Design, also its getting a new vamp up this year the earlier modules are starting to encorporate a lot more game modelling practice and ridding of some of the more redundant subjects. As far as animation goes it typically doesn't specialise in that area in great detail, there are a few modules on animation as well as some motion capture handling, of course as you progress you can start to specialise in the areas you wish and the new course format is being designed to allow for as much flexibility in that as possible. Summarising, the course is mainly modelling with texturing, rigging and some animation, you also do some work with engines (not programming) and game theory in the first year which you can choose to do more of in second and third years.
Hope that helps
I actually saw your work at GradEx last year and it was one of my favourites. I'm doing my Masters this year and I'm thinking of going down a similar route.
Would you recommend any particular area of investigation or methodology?
I was thinking of going down the line of trying to focus on incorporating all aspects like design, animation, attacks etc into a focused theme/style. Be great to hear your suggestions.