FMP Week 3: 2 Spooky 4 Me

Week 3: 2 Spooky 4 me

Hello again guys

My third week working on the final major project has been one hell of a rollercoaster with a number of crazy events occurring throughout.

After feeling uninspired by the the block out of my Conquistador Character, I was worried that this would forecast a drudgery and tediousness for the rest of the 18 weeks on the project. I was very concerned and discussed my issue with Lead Character artist Del Walker.

Throughout the talk, I told him how I was finding it hard to get into this project, furthermore, I wasn’t sure if I chose my fmp idea in order to impress Character art employers, or because I enjoyed it myself. As this might be the last time to work on something I enjoy for this period of time, I want to work on something I thoroughly enjoy, whilst also making it tailored to a video games company.

After speaking to Del, I considered that it might be more beneficial to me to use the fmp to work on a project more personal that I might be more enthusiastic about. I took some time to consider my options as I did not want to make any hasty decisions just yet.

Whilst, I was pondering the correct action plan for the rest of my fmp, I decided to keep myself busy, by blocking out the female Mesoamerican character, based on one of the concepts.

On Monday and Tuesday, I spoke to Mike Powell about my dilemma, and how I had felt that the fmp hit industry requirements, however I was unsure whether it was something I personally took interest in.

Speaking with Mike, helped me acknowledge that I was finding the process of charactering a realistic character in 3D quite monotonous, especially as If I would have to repeat the same process 3 times over. We had a look at other character art, in different styles and I was fascinated to learn that there was more to character art than just the character’s appearance or technical attributes used to create the character. Even, low poly hand-painted characters can be just as impressive as the high-end character. He mentioned games like: Counter-spy, Non one lives forever and of course Team Fortress 2.

I spent the evenings considered my plan of action for my fmp because it was great to get insightful feedback, nonetheless I would need some time to figure out what is best for me.

On Monday evening, I was invited to my first SSCC meeting as a student representative for Game art design. It felt good to be part of the team and it was great to be among people who want to better the student experience on the course.

Afterwards, I stuck my head down, and began working on the conquistador character again. I figured that it might be best to forget how I had felt in the past about the character and just work on the character, in hope of reigniting my enthusiasm about the character.

Throughout this process, I used Zbrush to complete the anatomy for the character and imported the conquistador into marvellous designer to create his shirt and trousers. At this point, I heavily referred back to my sources of inspiration, as I wanted to make sure that the clothing design was believable.

Once complete, I moved into 3ds max to block out the armour pieces and items. This point was tedious at the start, but as I worked through it, I was having a good time experimenting, I felt that I was getting my mojo back. Throughout the process, I found a great source of inspiration for the character, ‘Markus Kruber’ from the video game Warhammer: The end times-Vermintide.

Here he is in the game:

However, I realized after a while I was getting quite burnt out from the project so I decided that it would be best to put this character aside for now and come back to it at a later time.

On Friday, I had life-drawing, and I must say it was good to be back in the studio. This week I didn’t feel as confident about my drawing, especially with everything happening with my fmp. Looking at my work, I can see that these sketches, lack confident strokes. Perhaps next week I will work on my confidence and perhaps try using a new media to keep things exciting.

Following this, I worked on detailing the clothes of my conquistador character in marvellous designer. I had to return to this phase, in order to get the seams and clothing creases in the right places. As I was working through, I was finding it increasingly hard to know where to move onto, thus after speaking with my tutors, I decided that would be more beneficial for me to move on something else. So next week I will be working on my next character, (the eagle warrior) in order to keep momentum going.

At the end of the week, the games development society hosted a game jam, and I was happy to be taking part. We were all separated into random teams, and required to create a game under the theme ‘Ritual’.

My team members were:

• Andy Simpson

• Daniel Thompson

• Alex Taylor

We only had 2 days to complete this game and so we could not be too ambitious with the design. With the time scale in mind we begin the project brainstorming a number of ideas. We knew that we liked the idea of a tomb or ancient setting, and originally wanted to create an Aztec shrine. However, after sleeping on the idea we realized for the time we had and the amount of gameplay in the original idea, we figured it wouldn’t work.

So we moved onto our next idea, to create a zombie survival first person shooter. The concept would take the same element of an ancient setting, however, the setting would be an Egyptian tomb, and furthermore, the level would be a lot smaller to meet the deadline.

We got to work through the game, it was my role to create the character (ghoul/zombie-scary thing) for the game. I was delighted to be able to work on this, it was a great opportunity to work on a creature, and moreover, it provided a chance to take a break from the stresses of fmp. I wanted to create something like this.

I worked quickly, working off the team’s feedback and was able to create this creepy ghoul.

Once this was complete, I went to work on rigged. It was challenging at first as I hadn’t worked through this phase in a long time nonetheless I was able to overcome the issue. Once complete, I used Mixamo to add animations to the character.

With the hardest part complete, all that was left to do was to put the ghoul and animations in Unreal Engine 4. It took a while to get right, and I had to follow this tutorial.

And Voila:

Thanks to this, I was able to overcome the issue. So without further-a-do, here is our level, ‘Tutankahboom’

I am extremely pleased with the final outcome of this project, I feel that it is impressive for the time scale we had, and additionally it shows great teamwork. Nevertheless, the best part about this project is how I was able to have so much fun I was able to have throughout. Thank you guys for a great experience, I couldn’t have asked for a better time.

So there you have it, my busy week. It is hard to believe that at the start of the week I was in complete panic and now I have been able to turn it around. I’m still unclear about the future of my FMP, but the game jam has taught me that no matter how bleak it seems at the start, if I can dream it, I can do it.

See you next week!