In this first blog post about my character modelling, I will be talking about the ideas that lead to me making my 3D model.
Character Design
When given my brief for my 3D modelling project, it stated that the character I had to model was to be strictly humanoid. This made it easy for me to design my character as in my spare time I had been drawing character designs from my imagination. I had previously drawn a knight character inspired by Lord of the Rings and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim which had a helmet shaped like a falcon or an eagle (the image is shown below).
After searching through my sketches, I then decided to use this particular knight (in which I named Falcon Knight) as it had both deforming (arms, neck, legs, hands) and non-deforming properties (chest armour, helmet, boots, gauntlets, shoulder pads). I then began making a turn around of this design to get an idea of how it would work.
The first design made it quite complicated to try and translate to a 3D environment because the helmet design lacked a visor for the front to lift off (shown in the turnaround).
The next part of this was to do a technique called photo bashing. Below is a short summary of what photo bashing is and also the design process.
Photo bashing
Photo bashing is a technique that most concept artists use when designing characters, backgrounds, environments, buildings etc. It is very simple to us as long as you know what you want to design. First find images that you want (I wanted a knight and a falcon's head), place them in separate layers in photoshop (or any program that has layers) in order of what you want the design to look like, erase any image that is placed over the first image (I had to erase all of the background around the falcon's head and the inside of its beak to reveal the facial area), and draw over the images on a new layer.
On the left is my first photo bash as an animated GIF to show the process of what I did.
Falcon Knight 1: Crusader design
For my character design process, this was the first to try and make the Falcon Knight from a different way. I had imagined that if he was made in another sense, the knight would be wearing a falcon's head as his helmet. When it came to choosing, I did not choose this because I discovered a flaw: falcon's heads are NEVER the size of a human head and would not make any sense as to why he would be wearing a bird's head as a helmet!
The other reason I chose not to use this design was because it felt like it was looking like a crusader knight, which I was not intending at all.
Falcon Knight 2: Elven Warrior
For my 2nd concept, I had inspiration from both Lord of the Rings and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, both of which had elves in. As you can see on the left, the photo bash process of this one included a new helmet design that looked like my Falcon Knight's very first design. I researched different types of medieval helmets as I recognised one of them had a beak at the end. This was known as the Bascinet helmet. The armour was used in LOTR for the elven army, and the gauntlet and boots are part of another elven armour but instead from Skyrim. Both armours had a nice golden colour to them as well as ease of mobility, something I wanted the Falcon Knight to have. Though this next design was better than the last, I felt that it was too detailed for me to model as I had a short amount of time to model, rig, weight and texture.
Falcon Knight 3: Simpler design and mobility
My third and final design I photo bashed was started with thinking of a simpler design to use for my Falcon Knight and also a pose that'll show the mobility he can have with the armour. I first looked up poses on Google to try and figure out what I would like my Knight to do in this photo bash. As you can see in the photo bash GIF on the left, I had found one that interested me the most to use. I then re-used the bascinet helmet as I felt it resembled the Falcon Knight the most and used a bastard sword for the sword design. I put less detail on the armour, shoulder pads and gauntlets so that I could model this easily, but as for the boots, I decided to keep some of the elements from the 2nd design as I felt they worked the best.
Falcon Knight 4: Final Pose
As I had to think more about my timing with this project, I chose to make one final design of the Falcon Knight that I felt would work best in the time I had to model, rig, weight and texture this character. As I had began modelling, I had added in less elements that I designed to begin with as they would be complicated when it came to moving the model around; I realised that the thigh pads constricted the movement of the legs and so I had to remove them. The gauntlet designs originally had one normal glove to hold the sword and another with falcon-like talons for a second weapon. I had struggled modelling the hands on my character, and decided to keep both gauntlets as simple as possible. I redesigned the helmet too as it was difficult for me to make the visor like above in the GIF. You can see where I made the changes from the GIF above to the Dynamic Pose on the left.
As I had to think more about my timing with this project, I chose to make one final design of the Falcon Knight that I felt would work best in the time I had to model, rig, weight and texture this character. As I had began modelling, I had added in less elements that I designed to begin with as they would be complicated when it came to moving the model around; I realised that the thigh pads constricted the movement of the legs and so I had to remove them. The gauntlet designs originally had one normal glove to hold the sword and another with falcon-like talons for a second weapon. I had struggled modelling the hands on my character, and decided to keep both gauntlets as simple as possible. I redesigned the helmet too as it was difficult for me to make the visor like above in the GIF. You can see where I made the changes from the GIF above to the Dynamic Pose on the left.
No comments:
Post a Comment