Week 7: Questlove, you're not in the house.

For quite a few weeks now I've been struggling to decide what brief I was going to choose for this last project. I really didn't want to do the low poly fully stylised brief, as I would rather get more practice in the production of realistic characters before FMP. I considered doing the Shopfront project, but twiating the brief into a character project, by making the show like a travelling merchant stall on the back of a giant tortoise, however that brief still felt fairly limited, maving only 10,000 triangles to play around with. And again, it felt like I was choosing quite an ambitious idea. I also considered doing behind the door or behind the gate, and having a small scene in which something a long the lines of a giant stone golem or robot has collapsed and their surroundings have begun to consume them (foliage and the likes), essentially making them part of the environment. However, again, this seemed too ambitious especially considering my lack of knowledge with environment work. I don't feel confident enough that I could produce a scene in engine that could match the quality of my current characters. I toyed with the idea of a 2D concepting brief such as the Leyendecker Vikings but I was worried about having 3 whole weeks withough any practice in 3D.

I ended up going for one of the character concepting briefs, but decided I would give it my own twist to suit my needs. I chose the realistic armoured character brief, but I am going to be doing the bulk of my concept work in Zbrush and other 3D packages. This is because I feel more confident in my 3D abilities than my stecking and painting, and the project will allow me to get some more practice in the more creative and challenging stages of the character production pipeline.

I started the week going back and forth between this anatomy sculpt I had started in my spare time, and researching ideas on pinterest.

initially I had this idea of a more organic looking Bio-tech sort of Sci_Fi, something influenced by the likes of Katsuya Terada, or Evangelion, with strong Japanese influences because I love japanese sci fi.

Above are some of the sculpt iterations and ideas I went through for most of the week. I think I had produces a few cool shapes but everything looked very cliche, and just like generic Sci-Fi. The kind that you see conspantly on Artstation from people like myself just learning hard surface in Zbrush. And as a concepting brief I needed the design to be different. It couldn't just be generic Sci-Fi.

I realised after speaking to the tutors, the problem was I had no context or theme to ground my character. It was always going to look generic as long as it was just Sci-Fi. Through some internet research (and possibly because I watched Apocalypto a few weeks ago) I decided I would focus on Mayan and Aztec culture. They have quite intricate and fascinating designs, and personally have never seen someone attempt a Sci-Fi Aztec.

I used this bust as an attempt to work out the style I was going for and to see if what i had in my hear really translated into a readable design.

I worked into the design more and basically started from scratch with my designs because I felt I had really found something that might work. I started to look mroe at pascal Blanche's work for that more alien looking organic Sci-Fi. I got some useful advice from tutors on this character. I was given a few artists to look at such as Calum Alexander Watt, Cedric Seaut and Michael Vicente. It was poinetd out to me that sea creatures might be an interesting route to go down for non-human and unique looking silhouettes and organic features.

Mike kelly mentioned it might be worth taking some time out to produce some non-descript models and make my own Insert Mesh brush so I can quickly kitbash armour. he also pointed out that it's worth concepting the character in a stage of passes, rather than making, for example, a detailed shoulder piece and then moving on to somethign else, make things simple and worth into them in stages when everything is done.

Above is a quick render and overpaint I did to get a feel for colours mostly. I feel like now I'm really starting to get an idea for what I want visually.