Major Project: Final Designs In Sight

  Today's priority was getting a final idea for what Four looks like I looked back on fighting fish and, entranced by the draping silk-like tails they had looked into giving something like that to Four. As can be seen, there are shades of dilophosaurus in some of the drawings which I want to avoid (this is mostly due to possessing similar frilled crests.) the main difference I think is Four's is a lot more swept back. It would give her an edge in swimming. I don't want ot go too overboard with the frills - these will likely be animated as ncloth materials in the animation (so lots and lots of flow!). Too many frills and she might lose her shape in the action. But I believe the most successful adult form is 78. 83 and 85 I believe were fairly successful bust shots.

  Perhaps she can retract these sails. We see this shape in its full glory during her escape. It makes perfect sense that she escapes from captivity when she is in her most impressive. She is at her most beautiful and David sees this. As well as this, I looked at the juvenile, which will be a much dumpier and less attractive look. While the adult is inspired by Asian fish, otters and ferrets, the juvenile was strongly inspired by naked mole rats and axolotls.

What is probably needed now is a final concept piece. I have plenty of thumbnail material, now would be an extremely good time to set to work on the final design.

Major Project: Progress on the Adult

  Following considerations, I considered the shapes Four's body could take. The start however was maybe a little slow. I put a lot of attention to Four's head, thinking of axolotls but after some thought I may have been going too directly. I feel it also started looking a little too like Colo Colo. I'm also considering avoiding horns, though the frills add a charming touch to Four's appeal.

  So I took a step back, looking at the two most successful colour thumbnails and building on them after the Maya workshop. There's still a lot of room for refinement however. I was looking at ferrets, otters, and Siamese fighting fish for possible features. The fighting fish direction I think brought back a lot of the sense of otherworldness to Four's design. Although utilising the fins is going to be an interesting prospect to consider.

Major Project: Developing the Alien Forms

  Looking to get back into my stride, I have set to work on the finer points of Four's design. As well along with a contact sheet which explores the larva's anatomy, its skin folds and what could be done for the eyes and mouth, I also looked at some possible cocoon forms 

  Designing Four's adult form I have decided to splice the marine creature and the brown lizard creature from the previous thumbnails, I'm playing about with fronds however at the moment they look a little like dragon horns. This is a hurdle I have encountered due to the axolotl inspiration. It may pass when I look into drawing heads to get an idea of head structure and facial expressions.

  At some point during the week, once I have a better idea for Four's body, I will consider a contact sheet of colour tones. I've started getting ideas for the juvenile form from designs made today. But I feel the grub/larval form is at a state it can be signed off after a few other orthographic sheets are made for the other potential angles.

Major Project: Four is the Priority

  Nulla dies sine linea was what I was telling myself this time last year. After a discussion with Phil on the current direction, I feel confident at present that a lot of the prepatory work for the environment and the story is done. The script is ready, the world has been crystallised. What remains now is the beast in question. I had the chance to do a bit of drawing after the discussion but my evening was busy as I soon found myself off to London for the night.

  So to uphold my personal promise, H took the chance to use my sketchbook on the train with the drawings above. Phil and I discussed that a touch of axolotl could be investigated. Dumpy body, alien features and a thick tails, it seemed useful. While on the train I sort of realised that giving the tail some kind of sail may restrict its movement. So I played with a vertical and a horizontal arrangement. As well as sails, I considered the sails could form a prong, and that maybe instead of big bulges of fat, the larva could have its eyes covered in a thin membrane (which on reflection may look creepy but this larva's adapted burrowing though soil, it'll need to protect its eyes somehow). Experiments, ideas, it was a better use of my time than waiting an hour or browsing the internet while I sat on the train.

  With the larva's body, I'm inclined towards the fatty consistency of 29 and 31. It seems more in line with the overall idea for the body than the direct segmentation of 28 and 30. The page above however is currently a work in progress. The intention is to create an orthographic sheet for the two grub/larva phases and the cocoon phase.

Major Project: Back Into The Thumbnails

  Recovering well, I endeavored ot get back to work, having missed half a week's worth of progress. I believe I am getting closer to a final shape for Four. I attempted more refined shapes but continued with a few experimental designs (as much as I like the head of 39, the neck seems just wrong). What I am leaning towards is the otter-like body shape as I'm excited at the challenge of animating such an agile creature. Adding colour using a vivid light filter I think really brings these creatures out. 38, 41 and 43 I think came out really well (though 41 might be a different direction to where I could go)

  As well as Four I looked into some further exploration for the key rooms. I was planning ot explore colour with these as well but that could be something for tomorrow barring other tasks.

  These black and white thumbnails are starting to seem a little on the drab side but it is all experimentation. I was mostly inspired after discovering an Iamag page displaying 70 environment concept art pieces from Zootopia. Some being polished and others being quite flat (looking at it the flat-colours are primarily for depth of field), but it was inspiration nonetheless.

  Though I also want to train myself to increase my output, spend less time on the tiny details that just eat up time which is largely why these might look a little less polished than the last images.

Major Project: A Bit More Base Design

  I looked at more base designs. I went back to my concepts and looked at the city featured in the film Logan's Run. Using the primary shapes that the city features, I looked into possible alternative layouts. The reason I am so focused on the exterior is to get an idea of the shapes that will determine the interior rooms. I might go with an arched layout for the biolab and the corridors, as these are large structures that will take up a sizable part of the base. Curved corners on the various squares was a popular design element of the late 60s and the 1970s. Colour-wise

In terms of base design my next task is looking into room layouts and working out the arrangement of props. In terms of colour palette, many sets are white with bands of bold colour such as orange, red or green. Colour banding could provide some advantage as certain installations colour-code their different departments for easy navigation.

Major Project: Outpost Concept Ideas

  Along with a script and looking for voice-over actors, I've been looking at possible designs for the base in which the story will be set. I looked at various science fiction shows of the 1960s and 1970s for inspiration, taking ideas from various themes from this artistic period from productions such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Space 1999 and Frank Herbert's Dune.

  While inspired by moonbase designs of the 1970s, I am tempted to move away from the design of Moonbase Alpha. Although its design is quite ubiquitous which might make things tricky. There have been moon-base designs that feature a donut ring around a central core, much like the station in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Other moonbase ideas involve tunnels and prefabricated structures. Though a permanent construction makes the whole thing feel established as David mentioned he's been on the project for five years. I have considered that later in the story David will become less of a neat-freak, his workstation and dormitory will be progressively overcome with clutter.

Major Project: Third Time Is The Charm

  Confident after some initial drawings (below) I tried refining some ideas, going into more outlandish designs that could come from the puffy juvenile form I'm keeping with. I kind of like the amphibian forms - they relate to the swampy environment, they're somewhat bizarre and it's a form that could develop from the pudgy mass Four emerges from its cocoon as. They could also have some translucency to them (something I might need to practice drawing) to add that alien feel. I think I've hit the start of something that I could explore further.

These below were from a previous post today but I'm including them for context. 9-21 were I think when I started getting into my stride with this.

  Additionally, for the base I have taken to examining the original television show Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, which was broadcast in 1967. It's not 1970s but there are possible signs of the trends that would mark the 1970s within the show. It's more mature and serious than it's predecessor Thunderbirds, for one.

@Phil: Major Project: Reworking Four

  After some consideration that I need to be more experimental with Four's design. I studied some of the techniques of Feng Zhu and a few more bizarre creatures to get some inspiration. I feel that creatures 7 and 13 are my strongest designs but they could definitely do with a lot of work.

  I tried further to develop some more ideas but these don't feel as strong as the previous designs. 16 and 21 might be an exception though 16 veers into genericism. 19 may work as it is a bit more outlandish and less Earth-like though it is a rather drastic change from other designs, which could be good or bad.

Major Project: Early Base Thumbnails

  With the design of Four underway I decided to turn to the other key element - the base in which much of the story would take place in. To get an idea I kept to items rather than diving in and drawing rooms - chairs, tables, desks, computers, then moving on to doors and corridors.

  I was inspired by Moonbase designs of the 1970s and one inspiration that cropped up was Space 1999, A British science fiction show about a research station on the moon. Near to the end of the sketching session I came to a realisation about the moonbase shots I was looking at: They were all very clean. But they all felt a little too clean for a base that was supposed to away from Earth (the plot mentions a nuclear explosion sent the moon out into deep space); there was no clutter, no wear-and-tear, no panels kept loose for convenience, it was like the very white base was scrubbed and cleaned daily despite an omnipresence of huge panel lights.that dominated all the walls and the lack of regular supplies from Earth (The USS Voyager at least turned its cargohold into a greenhouse).

  One of the things that will occur early in the story is the viewer will receive a guided tour of the base, which could be when we see the showroom-clean version. But the base that we see throughout the story has a bit more of a lived-in look. Clutter, post-it notes, coffee stains, mugs, loose pens, whatever I can think of to give it a sense that people have stuff and that this place is their (at the very least temporary) home.

Adaptation B: Zeroing In On A Design.

   Today's focus was on the model for Mudbox, but I managed to do some sketching work that I think has solidified my idea for Colo Colo which I plan to explore with some more solid concept work.

  Inspired by the savagery that could be seen in the ink-stain work, I wanted to keep loose and expressive with these sketches to add a bit of style. But overall I think I am close to a final resolution.

Adaptaion B: Colo Colo Sketches and Silhouettes

   I spent a couple of hours today considering a design for Colo Colo, bearing in my mind it was some vicious, spiteful creature born from an egg nursed by a rooster. During my designs I struck upon the realisation that I do not need to stick to a feathered rat, and so looked at more bipedal designs alongside the mixture of rooster, rat and snake. My personal favourites though are 17, 19, 9 and 20.

  The idea for silhouettes came form some initial sketches done with pencil in my sketchbook. It was  by number 36 (I had done the sketches first) that I thought I could try a more bipedal route for the creature, with one possible idea being that it could alternate between standing on two legs and travelling on four. The main motivation for the silhouettes came from uncertainty as to whether give the creature a beak or a rat's snout. But I considered compromising by inserting a beak within its mouth.

Adaptation B: Solidifying Iobe's look

   Over the weekend I looked into some ideas for city architecture or layout for Iobe Cavern city, with further drawings being made today. What I know of the planet itself is that it is a desert on the surface, light comes in from the cavern ceiling and some of the areas are indicated to be grand locations. So over the weekend I looked around the internet for images of ballrooms, facades, row houses, skyscrapers, near-equatoral cities, modern cities and boom towns like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai.

  There might be something here. I was intrigued while drawing by the image of buildings that had entrances at different heights; one foyer on a ground floor, and then another to open out to a street on a higher platform. Perhaps there are buildings that rise though cantilever platforms.

  Veppers' bedroom might be another  key environment to model. In the story he heads there during his visit in order to secretly travel by shuttle to a station hidden within the system's Oort cloud (a shell of icy rocks around a solar system, the source of comets). I imagine it to be lavishly decorated in a high-class style, with the large circular bed positioned prominently due to Veppers' opinion of himself.

  ALso tried thinking of some possible logos for the Veprine corporation. As a mega-conglomerate I might go for something simple, comparable to the Nike tick or Apple's part-bitten apple.

Character project: OGR Feedback Development

  I had a talk with Justin today over the direction of the character project and by the sounds of it, I was mostly going in the right direction. But there were a couple of pressing issues with what I had done so far. But as I see it nothing that I don't think could set me back too much. 

  The most pressing concern is the hero. While the man I had designed was distinctly Chinese, Justin didn't think he stood out very much. He could have been anyone with that hat and staff. We talked about the general issue that in my circumstance while it is relatively easy to create a villain that people can get their teeth into because I'm designing monsters. My current character falls into the pitfall that as a hero that will be one of a roster, is anyone going ot pick him out? I need a character that looks cool and draws people to want to use that guy in the game. Being distinct and appealing would encourage people to use him.

  So I looked at my outlines to see if there were any heroes that could draw the player in. Previous feedback indicated that a certain large guy with a sledgehammer could be an interesting character. So after the feedback session I decided to sketch some initial poses and ideas for this guy. Who unlike the other hero is big, powerful and a draw that he looks like he could cause a lot of damage. His hammer won't hurt Nian but as I have discussed in prior posts, its not just Nian this guy has dealt with in his life.

  Other feedback included the smoke effect I was drawing. It was admittedly getting a little tiring drawing the same curls over and over again so I was recommended the work of Katsushika Hokusai and primarily look at the way he drew smoke. I needed something that will look less like tentacles or a perm which I may have developed a habit of doing. It was also suggested that maybe the Sha's horns should be more angular as he's pretty angular already with lots of sharp lines over his body. There was also some suggestion of back adjustment.

  This morning I also decided to draw some other designs for cards. The idea of tokens went down well but I wanted to make the cards look less like Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh cards for the sake of being distinctive, but more practically I don't need to include lengthy game rules unique to that particular card. Which leaves more room for graphics.

Character Project: Adventurer Outlines

  I made a start on some outlines for possible hero characters for my character project. I'm still getting the odd feel of genericism from a couple of them but some of them like 8, 10, 12 and 3 I an drawn to continuing further.

  Paring back detail to outlines feels really good for getting a rough feel for a character. While I have discussed giving the adventurers cloaks, I feel that adding such to the outline would either defeat the point of the exercise or make it more difficult to spot design ideas.

  I might look into more dynamic poses and I'm wondering about a mix-and-match approach later. So this is something of a startup sheet.

Character Project: More Sketchbook Work

    I looked at doing more thumbnails today, this time focusing on the character or characters the players would use to play the board. This idea came about on Tuesday when my character design lecturer expressed that he loved using figures in board games due to their innate interactiveness. Players can use these icons to wander about the village (that makes up the board) to hunt down cards and chase after bad spirits. The use of multiple figurines brings up the question of how many players, whjich means how many distinct figurines are needed.

    4 feels like a fairly balanced number to me, but the number of players won't make the game unplayable if there are only 2 playing the heroes of the story. It might affect how many cards players can gather before Nian show up (still not specific) but in the legends there was only one stranger. 4 is also a good balanced number for the number of characters. 

    I wanted to give the adventurers an enigmatic feel; they'd have been wanderers, Someone unfamiliar to the village so I looked into designing them with a bit of mystery. All four (or maybe not all) could/would be characterised by a bright red cloak to identify them, which could be fun when it comes to designing images of the character in action.

    I also did some passing thumbnails for villagers that would be vulnerable to the spirits and Nian. This contribution to the story provides a window to include them as figurines into the game. What is evident when looking up costume, hairstyle and dress for the ancient Chinese on the internet is there is a lot of preference for bright, well-trimmed or elaborate clothing even in demonstrations of Chinese art. But I'm designing peasants, who most definitely would not be wearing long hair in elaborate buns or walking around in multicoloured robes. Which while great designs if the game was set in the streets of Beijing's administrative district but doesn't exactly fit with the image "rural village in China".

    Now there were cases in the colonial period where natives of foreign cultures were portrayed as dressing in highly elaborate clothing and positively covered in jewelry but that was to point out how "other" these cultures were to contemporary European ideas in regards to what is proper. I don't want to go there.

Narrative Project: Pufferfish Ideas

I decided today to do some concept art for the narrative project's pufferfish protagonist. As far as is known to science the only known species of puffer that makes the patterns in the sand that so inspired us is Torquiguener albomaculosus, more commonly known as the Japanese white-spotted puffer.

     Although I have not entirely nailed down a specific design, I decided to make a pattern contact sheet. Even if this is not the form that sticks, I hope these designs can remain transferable. I looked into making something distinct and perhaps show our fish might be creative in some way. But because of the inspiration I also looked into making something that could be described as cute. So I'm not entirely satisfied with designs 1 2 and 3 on the upper panel.

Narrative Project: Thumbnailing Stage One

I worked on some thumbnails for the narrative project today. Very few I admit are on the pufferfish when he's puffed up but the focus I found myself with was the emotions of the fish. So far we have yet to discuss if there will be speaking in our animation or if it will be an emotive one so in preparation I looked at expressions nonetheless.

I also focused on emotion because even if we use dialogue, we are creating a very expressive world for our story with vibrant colours and at least one energetic character. Expression could also be used to show our character is bright, thoughtful and energetic, he wants to express himself so it makes sense that his face and his body should show it.

    One of the ideas was that the pufferfish in focus runs into trouble that unsettles him, which prompted the question of what would trouble him. Other fish? Other puffers? Predators? It's more characters true but at the time of thumbnailing I felt a vibe of a rule of three if we were going for a group; three scary creatures that would unsettle him and trigger his nervous reaction.

    Because we talked about patters I wondered to myself "what kind of patterns?" so I looked into fractals, repeating and flowing patterns for a bit of early inspiration. And there was also the crop circles that puffersfish would use to try and gain the interest of a mate. What would his attempts look like? What would the others' works look like?

    I think the story is emerging. Something is starting to coalesce from the cracks.

Mosquito Development: Head

    I gained some extra feedback suggesting I change the head such as making it smaller and much less bird-like. In response, I have looked into what I can do with it. When I looked at Mosquito heads under a microscope I noticed a common pattern in that the heads were completely covered with compound eyes save for two places: a snout connected to the proboscis and the base of the antennae. So I tried to use these elements to create an interesting nose and cockpit window as I wasn't sure about making the head all-window considering the implied speeds this thing will be going. I like how the combinations of 4 and 5 turned out

Thumbnail Updates

 These are thumbnails I had been meaning to upload for several designs for the Fantastic Voyage project. The two bottom pages include designs that I had considered post-pitch for the legs of the mosquito jet although I am settling for fold-out legs with pincers on the foot in order for the machine to secure itself ot its host before feeding.

These legs will fold into compartments that I have included on the sides of the mosquito's body on the recent concept piece.