Week 9, Year 2 Character redesign

So after last week presentation. I went back to my first moodboard, I was also told that if I wanted to do a stylized I should look at some stylized characters. I made 2 moodboards just full of different characters. When I look at them I saw that they all had very strong silhouettes and I knew the best way for me to do that was to make a bash kit.

I pick out heads, body's, arms, and legs, that I think that would work best.

These are the 14 silhouettes I made from the bash kit.

I then pick out the best 6 and add some detail to them to see what they could look like.

I pick out the fish cop and then I tried out some different color types.

I'm happy that i did start again from the start. I feel like that i have develop a much stronger idea then what I was going with before. next week i'm going to try and move onto modeling and texturing. I would like to try and rig but I don't know if I will have time.

Week 8, Year 2 Square circle and triangle

So this Monday was the hand in for the sentry gun and over the weekend I got some nice renders of the gun and also made the light bubbles to work on the barrel and the top of the pitch

But the very next day we were into the next project dynamic characters project. I have to design 2 characters that are different from each other but they would still work together. There is a lot of freedom to this project. We can go with any theme and can do realistic or stylized. I like the idea for so much freedom it means I go with something I want to do.

I had to get an idea ready by the end of the week and do a presentation. I’ve not really done a solo presentation in a long time and the last time I did one it did not go bad but not great. The first think I decided was to do something stylized. After last year and so far this year I have done too much realistic and I could use with a bit of a change. I also really like the idea of cyber punk. So that’s where I start looking up stuff.

When I was making my moodboard of cyber punk and old rock puck I came across and image of this rock punk guys sitting next to an old lady. When I was thinking about it more, it just sounded like a cool idea, the mean punk kid that like no one but his grandmother who was the sweetest person ever and love everyone.

you can see the image of the guy and the old lady in the bottom middle

Something we look at over the week was the use of shapes and how they are used in a character. You can see this mostly used in good vs. evil cartoons. The big strong hero mostly made out of squares and the super bad villain all shapes in his body and face you will see are all tringles. So how to use this in my work, seeing how I got a want to be bad boy I will try and use just squares and triangles and for the grandmother just try and use round shapes.

I make the heads a bit like a bash kit but only using Square circle and triangle.
The once with the red rings are once I like most.

I draw over the black Silhouette,
just to see what they could look like and then pick one.

This is incomplete drawing of what my characters could of look like. 

This time I felt it went really bad. I don’t know what happened but started to find it hard to talk and my whole body was shaking. I really was thinking I was about to pass out. I did not think I would be that bad but still I got very good feedback on my work. I was told that they could not really see the dynamic between them and I should go back to my first moodboard and try and start from there again.

 This week it well started off slow but ok until the presentation, after that I know next I need to be more ready and just prates before. I think that will help me a lot better for my next presentation I have to do. 

Sentry gun project post mortem

What went well?

Coming up with a design

I feel really good with the amount of work I put into this part because I’m really happy with my final design

Modelling

The modelling went very well and I’m happy that I got all of the original design in other then 1 or 2 things but the outcome was still what I wanted.

What didn't go well?

Texturing

I feel like my texturing was what let me down most on this project. If I had plan what textures I was going to put in and then got some feedback on them I could of done a much better job.

What did I learn?

Bash kits

Taking different shapes and putting them together to make a new one. I really like this way of working and will try and use it more

Blueprints

Unreal 4 blueprints not learnt much yet but I now know it’s there and I understand what it can be used for, like making a door, having a trigger event happen, and a lot of other thing that can be done. I will look more into blueprints because I know I will need it.

Emissive

Emissive are textures that have a light sources to them and this is what I used to make the lights on my gun work.

What would I do different next time?

I would try and do a lot more value breakdowns then just one and try more colour types and ask people what they like most, instead of me picking what I like.

Look up better ways to get detail and texture into my material or maybe not put in any at all.

Week 7, Year 2 Lock and loaded, with flaming Christmas puddings

This is the 3^rd and final week for the sentry gun project and last week I finished my design and planning. It was now time to make this bad boy. So for this to work it needs to be made into 4 different parts for it to work in unreal. You need the barrel, pitch, yaw, and base. Looking at my sentry gun I decide to work from the bottom up, thinking the base would be the hardest part to model, it would be best to get that out the way first.

So once I finished modelling I also had to make a projectile and shell to go along with it. I came up with this idea really from the start but forgot to mention it, that the sentry gun would be shooting caned Christmas pudding and what do you do with Christmas pudding, YOU SET IT ON FIRE. That is why there is a zippo on the end of the barrel. So the idea is the can is the shell and the pudding is what’s getting fired out. I just love this idea so much, it just made this project a little easier knowing how silly my idea was.

Now comes the part that I don’t find to hard it’s just the part where I start to loss a little interest in my work and that’s UV unwrapping. I don’t know what it is but about UV unwrapping but I just gets so boring and can take a lot longer than I plan. I was able to put my texture onto 4 different sheets that were all 1024x1024.

Barrel and yaw UV

Pitch UV

So now comes the texturing. I went back to the value breakdown and took the colours off there and used them as a base colour on my UV’s I then went back to my colour image and matched were the colours where placed, then made the colour layer overlay the value lay so the colours would be the right value. I then need to try add some more detail to it this I found to be a little hard to do because I did not plan for it.

Well hand in is next Monday so I have a little time to do touch up over the weekend and again this week I have not done anything in unreal.

Week 6, Year 2 Christmas is coming and I’m making a new toy

Week 2 into the sentry gun project and last week I upload an image full of different sentry gun silhouettes and left it over the weekend for people to comment on it. So now was the time to find out who the top 5 wins were. In first place was number 17, tide both for second was 9 and 10, in third was 13, and just getting in number 7. With the top 5, I will use them to make more silhouettes but using them as a base because now I had to add a bit more and try and make them look more Christmassy to fit the theme. Right now I really like the look of 7, 10. And 13 but I’ll see how I fill after round 2.

For the second stage in the silhouette design. I made it into a table and copied the original down five time. I then add the Christmas and other bits to it. This left me with 25 new designs and I did what I did the first time and uploaded it to Facebook and wend around asking some mates for their opinion again. I’m very happy that I did it this way because it was easier to make something that look like a gun and still had the right theme.

I only left this one over night because I need to get working on it as soon as possible. Got a lot of responses and a winner was decided… 2C!!! I’m a little surprised because that was not one I was really looking at but because it got a lot of votes I’m going to go forward with it anyways. This is good because I’m not picking what I like and that’s taking me out of my convert zone, what I really should do a lot more.

So in my class we look at value breakdown. We look at how Valve team that made Dota 2 used this techniques on their characters. A value breakdown is using 5-6 different colours values from white to black and adding them to and image. This is to help break up the colures so it’s easier for people to see what they are looking at and tell what each part is. The Dota 2 team used it so that darker colours where at the bottom and more lighter colours where at the top. This is because the game is from a top down view and the player will mostly see the top of the character. The same thing can be done with my sentry gun because I need to make sure the player can tell it’s a sentry gun and the best way to do that is have lighter colours on the base and barrel of the gun, then use darker colours closer to the bottom.

After I finished my value breakdown it was now time to add colour to it. I went back to my Christmas moodboard and pick out some colours.

Out of the 4 I went with the red and white because looking back at my moodboard that is what was mostly there.

I’m very happy with the progress I have made over this week. I do wish I had got this done sooner and get to modelling quicker but because I told a little long with the designing of my sentry gun I feel like I have come out with a much stronger idea then I would have if I just rushed throw it all and only picket what I like.

Sadly this week I have not taken any time to learn something new in unreal.

Week 5, Year 2 Time to unleash

So are after finishing the film room project and having a bit of a relaxing back weekend, It was time to move on to the next one. The SENTRY GUN PROJECT, I’m really looking forward to this one because I have a lot more freedom to do what I want to do but I’m not going to go crazy with it and come up with an idea that will take me to long to do. I am going to take it at my speed and just be relaxed with it because I know a lot of the time that if you come up with an idea to quick and work on it too much. I know that I will just get board of it and will just want to start again. That is why I’m going to try and come up with an idea that is just funny and maybe a little stupid.

So last week in one of my classes we were shown a fun way to come up with an idea. All I had to do is make a list of different categories and make sure they had between 2-6 different things in them, then number them and roll a dice. Whatever number it landed on I would take the from the category then go to the next one till I finished and had a final. I started with a mind map just to get things rolling first and from this mind map came up with the categories. I came up with 7 different ideas, some of the ideas did not really sound like they would work that well at all but from the 7 I pick the new, stylised, magic, food, Christmas. I really like the sound of this one because it just sound really fun and something that I can get really into.

So something new we were told about was how to make a bash kitI started with a moodboard just to help get the ideas flowing and so I could make a bash kit. I started looking at sentry guns and after a bit I look at different Christmas stuff. I soon realized that I need to put them into 2 different moodboards, 1 for guns and stuff and one just for different Christmas stuff. This help me get more ideas.

We also had to add an every day object to are sentry gun, so I pick my zippo lighter. I pick it at the time because I had it one me at the time and when I saw it, it just gave me the idea to make a sentry gun that shot out something on fire. 

So now was the time to make the bash kit. In Photoshop I make an outline of anything on the moodboards that I like the look of then just filled them in black and copied it over to a new Photoshop file. I put them in to different groups, just so I could pick 1 from some groups and a few from other groups just to make I got a good mix of different shapes so I cloud make Silhouettes.

So when it came to making the sentry guns Silhouette, I wanted to make sure that it still look like a gun but with a Christmas theme to it. I decided to do it in 2 parts. The first one would be made out of stuff from the gun moodboards then I will pick out 5 and then add Christmas stuff to them and pick the best one out of them. So I made 20 different silhouettes and put them onto one image and uploaded it to Facebook to find out which once look the best to other people. I also went around and asking class mates for their opinion. I did this one Fridays, so over the weekend more people can tell me what they think. To help me get a better idea what looks best.

also over the week we were shown how to set up are sentry gun up in unreal 4. There was already a ready-made file with an example in it. This leads to what I learnt in unreal 4 this week was blueprint. Blueprints is a bit like coding but without the pain of having to write lines of code but because of this it does have its limitations. It’s still a very good tool to learn and a lot easier to learn. I don’t have anything to show right now but I’m going to take some time to learn it because I know I will need it for future projects.