Character Modeling 2 - Gears of War

I picked up the first book and plan on getting this too. Looks like a good book for our purposes:

www.ballisticpublishing.com Gears of War

Game Engine Links

Syd,

Check out some links involved for just bringing our character into a game engine. As discussed, there are 2, maybe 3 engines that I would like to port this character into. They are the Unreal3 engine - yet to be released but eta this year, the Source Engine, already released and the Doom3/Quake 4 Engine.

Unreal Links
unrealtechnology.com
udn.epicgames.com
wiki.beyondunreal.com

Source Links
developer.valvesoftware.com 1
developer.valvesoftware.com 2

Doom Links
www.modwiki.net
iddevnet.com
www.doom3world.org

update

3D from Massive Black

Here's a link to some 3D work from those bastards at Massive Black, the prolific outsource concept studio. They mostly show off their 2D art but here's a rare glimpse into their 3D stuff.

TITAN QUEST

sloperama.com

Here's an interesting site on how to become a game designer, you've probably seen it before. Very discouraging, but first things first, let's just finish this character.

SLOPERAMA.COM

Eternal Sonata

This is a little out of character for this blog, but here is the trailer for Eternal Sonata. It's more a game my ex would play and the characters are a little too doll like for my tastes, but nevertheless the visuals were stunning.

ETERNAL SONATA

Face over

NOTE: When I reduced the rez on the image the photoshop aliasing filter fubar'd her face so I included a closeup to show what her face really looks like.

This is what I'd like her to end up looking like. I stole the face off another illustration partially by design. As much as I enjoyed designing and rendering the original head for this project, I've always preferred and wished that this particular face I did previously would be used instead. The idea of a Caucasian face with Asian eyes wasn't really that compelling for me, a mere cosmetic treatment. Instead I found this particular face has a depth of character to it that the other face didn't. The big eyes are a bit caricatured but they don't look too manga/anime-ish either. There's a depth to her stare that speaks of hardship yet the rest of her face is that of a youthfulness that she still retains.

I'm still playing with the idea that she wears some kind of toque (maybe she's Canadian, lol). Other personal identifiers might be an interesting hairdo, a partial perm, bangs, etc, but it's got to be simple, nothing too high maintenance. Kids these days like to color their hair all sorts of colors, a white or red highlight might be interesting. I was thinking of dreds, this being an urban theme. Dreds are considered cool, but aren't always considered pretty. The one thing about dreds is that they speak of alternative or counter culture which is what I want in this character. So the challenge is to get those dreds in without destroying her traditional type of beauty. Maybe dreds with colored highlights?

Another note on process. I basically skipped over the ideation phase from quick sketch right to the final rendering stage. Basically I was doing final render as I was designing. That and my natural doddling contributed to an extremely long process, but I'm rather impressed with the result.

I've also been thinking of a pet or mechanical sidekick. More on that later.

Some notes

A few comments about the overall design. I wanted the pants to be clean looking but not boring. I wanted to keep the number of lines down, making each stroke that much more meaningful and not lost in a clutter of gratuitous detail, the idea being that years down the road it won't have that dated look. By keeping everything minimal (by most gaming standards), hopefully the eye is drawn more towards her gun and holster which is what she is all about. If you look at Lara Croft, her costume is even more simplistic.

For her footwear, it seemed natural to give her that badass look with large steel toed black leather monstrosities, but I decided to give her light weight racing flats instead. The idea is that she is extremely fast and mobile. Again the shoes tie into that minimalist look.

I added the wool hat and scarf at the last minute. It gives her that personal touch, tells everyone that she's just an everyday girl with a life and personality. It provides something that most people can relate to and she isn't just some humanoid abstraction that runs around with a gun killing aliens.

Narrative

I put together some initial notes on a story. Everything is subject to change, including names and details. I wanted to get something down in text and get the ball rolling. This will be a living document, hopefully we'll be able to also populate it with visuals.

MANGO CORE

Killzone trailer

Here's the trailer for killzone. Looks pretty kewl,futuristic but with a definite current day military feel to it. The dropships are interesting.

KILLZONE

Armored Core trailers and Heavenly Sword vid

Here's a couple of HD trailers for Armored Core 4. I'm not really into the big Gundam mecha genre, but I've always enjoyed the concept art for the Armored Core series regarding their technical detailing. Also being a Square Enix product, their production values are also equaly high.

ARMORED CORE 1

ARMORED CORE 2

Also a vid on the making of Heavenly Sword. It's mostly about mocap, but it does have some relevant stuff on characters.

HEAVENLY SWORD

Thigh design iterations

Here's a couple of iterations on the thigh part of her pants. On the left is a pretty straight forward, somewhat retro looking set of vertical stripes. Very clean looking.

In the middle I've added inward curving zippers on either side, the idea being to clear up space on the side for the holster rail interface. I've kept the idea of the pin stripes.

On the right, is the same as the middle without the pinstripes. Its a slightly more cleaner, more techy look.

Let me know which one you prefer. I'm leaning towards the one on the right, but admit, the middle one, is probably more aesthetically appealing.

knees } WIP

This is taking far more time than I had originally anticipated, but I want this image to be a portfolio piece, hence the attention to detail.
Worked on the kneepads. That little protuberance out the side is a SONY T5 transmitter/receiver. Could be used as a comm/data link, GPS receiver, etc. I thought it was kinda interesting by the knee, doesn't get in the way of anything, easily accessible and frees up the pockets etc. for things like... guns... ammo...