Siren: 12/11/13

Update on Siren.

Grimble: 12/11/13

A quick update on where Grimble is with a few renders.

Herbert: 12/11/13

Here are just a few pics of Herbert to update you on where I'm at right now.

Thesis Preview - Siren

Siren is the fourth character in "Human Show". She is a domineering and deceitful repurposed companionship bot. I'll save the backstory for another time.

I've had a lot of trouble coming up with designs for Siren. She used to be a boxy little robot with treads for transportation and arms that dispensed human-grooming items as well as weapons. She had a friendly demeanor that hid a controlling and maniacal personality. She was a repurposed war machine (which I still think is a pretty funny idea).

However, when I went back to the drawing board regarding character relations and backstories, I decided to switch things up a bit and change her history. When she changed to a repurposed companionship bot, I decided she needed to be more human in shape. She also needed to project her menace in the design of her body and posture.

What a challenge! On one hand she had to be alluring, and on the other she needed to fit the style of my other characters. She needed to have feminine characteristics, but a commanding presence. In many ways she has to be more human than my human characters! I'm still in the process of pushing her design, but I'm at a much better spot than I was.

Here's a little look into where this character is and where she has come from.

This is where I'm at currently. I have a basic framework of choices that I'm pushing in different directions. 

This is a color key for a design that I was happy to have come up with recently (you can see it in the first image, on the left, although without any hair). The red dot indicates which color scheme I prefer.

These are some thumbnail silhouettes I did to experiment with different choices. You can see how different ideas began to combine to create the design I have now.

Some early struggles with combining the style of my project with a much more human silhouette. Also, with trying to reconcile robotic mechanisms in a simple way.

One of my first tries at the new direction I was taking. This was essentially an attempt to understand the female anatomy I was shooting for in a mechanized way.

 This was the design for Siren I had about 6 months ago. I was happy with it at the time and it served the purpose I was gunning for at the time, but I'm glad I switched directions.

Another look at old Siren, with weapons deployed.

Thesis Preview - Color Keys

Using Photoshop's great masking features and Hue/Sat/Brightness sliders, I've been able to quickly come up with a couple new sheets of color keys for two of my characters. One of the characters you've seen quite often, but the other one is a redesign of one of my aliens (Grimble). I went ahead and posted one of my earlier designs of Grimble to show how much (or how little) he's changed.

I also have some new ideas about "Human Show" that I'm excited to develop and share with you all. It's a new direction for the project that I'm really excited about and has renewed my passion for the project. Look forward to news on that!

 New color keys for Ralph...

 ...and Grimble. New design, too!

An old design of Grimble, running Herbert around.

Thesis Preview: Messing around with Toon Shading

Given that my early sketches of my project relied heavily upon a cartoon style, my professor recently asked me if I had tried anything like it with my models. The truth is I had no idea how to do it, beyond messing with textures. I planned on researching it later on, when I would be focusing more on texturing my characters.

However, today I was watching a video about Nintendo's Wind Waker HD and how they had to alter their toon shader to suit the HD graphics and emphasis on new lighting effects. That got me thinking about using a shader to do some of the heavy lifting for me, or at least to see what I could do with it.

Maya has a Toon option under the Rendering set of menus, so I figured I'd start there. It was really easy to set up some quick shaders and tweak their parameters to come up with some results that looked good. While I'm definitely going to research this approach more and work with my own painted textures, this gives me a good idea of what Maya can do to help me. Check out my results below. Click on the images for a closer look.

Compare these new results with my earlier render to see what a difference there is between the two.

Thesis Preview: Figuring Out a Costume for Ralph

This morning I spent some time trying to figure out a good costume for Ralph. My early renders from a couple of weeks ago show that I already made some attire for Ralph, but I just wasn't happy with how he was looking. So, I went back to the drawing board. I did a render of Ralph from an angle where I could do some paper-doll-like costume painting in Photoshop. Then I copied his image a couple of times and got to work.

My previous renders of Ralph, looking all traditional

I really want to highlight his athleticism and pride in his culture. He is Scottish through-and-through and aspires to be one of the greatest Scots to have ever lived. As such, I am gravitating towards traditional Scottish garb. However, as you saw in the previous renders, going too traditional brings him out of the future (where my story takes place) and loses some of the confident athleticism that I want to be readily apparent.

However, I really like the kilt on him (although I shortened it a bit just to see how it would look; I think I'll lengthen it back). I just needed to toy with different tops. My gut instinct was to give him a jacket modeled after Ryan Gosling's "Drive" character. This is the Ralph on the left. I also wanted to toy with the notion of a soccer jacket, with cleats, paired with the kilt. This is the center one. On the far right I went with running shoes and a full body Adidas-like sweat suit. I am flirting with the notion of designing a sweat suit with a plaid pattern, but I worry that it will look too much like pajamas.

In any case, this was my morning project. I'm excited to use this approach with my other characters.

Thesis Preview: Early Herbert Head Model

Spent a few hours working on Herbert's head. This is where I'm at currently after some Maya modeling. Don't be surprised to see some body shots soon. Plus, I'll be altering Ralph's costume soon, too.

Thesis Preview: Early Stages of Ralph's Body and Costume

Over the past two days I've worked on getting Ralph's body and costume together. I think the body is fairly representative of what I want the finished product to be, in terms of proportions. The costume needs some more work to make it unique to Ralph and I definitely need to create my own plaid texture, so that I'm not using someone else's. However, I needed something as a placeholder. I'm pretty happy with my progress so far and am really enjoying this process.

Thesis Preview: Early Stages of Ralph

I've begun working on one of my thesis characters. His name is Ralph (pronounced Raif). These are some early renders.

Back to the Drawing Board - Thesis Style

Now that the Summer Semester is over, my brain is starting to recover and I'm looking at my thesis project in a new light.

While my premise is strong, my characters are not. The personalities are there, but the designs are not. One thing I learned in my Summer class (which I strangely didn't learn in my Character Design class in the Spring) is that characters' personalities need to be spelled out to viewers visually, in more than just the facial expressions and action shots. It needs to be immediate - the way they are dressed, the accessories they wear, the shape of their bodies, their posture, their hair, etc. All of these ingredients should combine to illustrate what kind of character we're dealing with.

In a way, I always knew this, but I didn't know how to go about doing it. I got too preoccupied with drawing in a particular style and pleasing particular people that I wasn't doing the the main thing and creating endearing, original, and immediately readable characters.

So, I'm going back to the drawing board. I have certain concrete ideas that will establish my characters more fully. My first step is to write out personality traits in a definitive way. From there, I'm going to embrace research (something that has become much more of a useful habit than it used to be). And then the sketches and designs will come.

I'm excited to see where this reworking takes me over the next few weeks. I'm excited to see my characters begin to take more definite shape and come to life.

The Creative Man: My Thesis

One of the requirements for getting a MFA at DigiPen is to execute a Thesis Project. This is essentially over a year of planning, designing, drawing, painting, modeling, texturing, animating, and polishing in order to grow as an artist and show your stuff. It's an opportunity to work hard on something and let it represent your tastes and personality in the field that you are striving to work in. 

I had a choice of creating content that would inhabit either a video game or a film (or anything else that the professors deemed appropriate, depending upon my passion). I chose to create 4 characters for a short film in the vein of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries and Aardman Entertainment's Creature Comforts. I had originally thought it might be fun to have a cast of characters that were all entered into a county fair art contest (which I may pursue eventually, because I'm still attracted to the idea).

I eventually came up with the idea of an outer space dog show in which the "dogs" are abducted humans and the trainers/owners are outer space beings. 

Over the coming year, I will be going over the work that I put into this project, tentatively named Human Show, and sharing what I hope will be helpful information for others that are looking to do something similar! Keep checking back and looking to see how it's going.

Here's a little look at a "movie poster" that I had to cook up for my Thesis pitch (for which I have a video detailing how to approach a pitch). 

Do Work! - Pitching an Idea

Part of the program I'm in at DigiPen, really the main part, is to create a Thesis project from the ground up. It is intended to become our showcase for the two years that we spend there and a marker of our skills, motivation, and ambition. The project itself consists of creating 2-4 (or more) characters that inhabit a distinct world and taking them from inception through design and to final 3D rendering, rigging, and animation. Other aspects of the project can cater to the student's individual desires. For me, that is writing and humor (as you can tell by how hilarious I'm being), potentially working itself out in a short animatic.

As I work through this process I will be posting videos and updates about my working methods and progress.

This first video is about how I pitched my idea to the Thesis Committee. I give tips on what worked well for me and what is important when developing your idea and trying to communicate the premise to other people.

This video was filmed in a high-end studio made to look like a bedroom.