Progression 2

Today i finished building the mesh of my robot by adding the shoulder mechanics, the head features and wires.

I also rendered a picture of my model with occulsion, for realistic shading effect. I changed some of the settings to make the shadows more visible.

Tomorrow i will start creating the UV maps for each part of the model and i will be drawing the textures. This will take a few days minimum.

Pitch model progress 1

Once i had finished the sketches, i decided to go with the spherical robot design to create as a 3D model. I made the torso first of all, and added the window at the front of the chest. I then created a low poly version of the robots head as a placeholder until i create it properly, this was just to give it the full effect even without having a proper head in place.

Once the body and head were complete i looked at my design and decided i needed to draw some basic orthographics for the legs in order to make them properly. It isnt enough just drawing a design and making it there and then, an orthographic will help you create it specifically how you wish it to be made.

I drew a side orthographic of the leg in separate parts so it would be easier to make each individual piece. I made the separate pieces, then fit them together with bolts i had made. 

After looking at the completed leg for a while i made the upper half of the leg longer as it looked too short for my liking. Then i adjusted the position of each part of the leg to create a hunched pose. I created a piece to join the body and the legs together.

I then drew the orthographics for the arms, this took a bit longer because i was trying to think up the mechanics for the shoulder. I didnt just want a ball joint, i wanted there to be a realistic shoulder like movement.

I havent created the shoulder joint yet but i did create the arms and put them next to the rest of the model to bring out the full effect of the yet to be finished model.

3D start

Today we started our new project, the project this time is to create a 3D game in groups again.

Like the previous project, the artists and designers have to each create their skill pitch to the class, we have 1 week to create said pitch.

I am working towards artist once again, mainly because this is a 3D game project and my main skill in game creation is 3D modelling. 3D modelling is what i wish to pursue in the future.

For my art pitch i have been creating some doodles. For my art style i wanted to go for the cartoon style look where the characters are out of proportion with giant feet and hands. I looked at the art styling of Fable and Kingdom Hearts for this, i love the art style of both and wished to use aspects of the style in my art.

I have started sketching some ideas for my pitch model, i wanted to go for a sort of steampunk style robot. I wanted to differ from just human forms as i have created 3D humanoid models in the past and am happy with my skills in it so far.

I couldnt quite get the hang of the joints of the robot form, i looked up various robot styles on google, and found a cyborg from Bioshock Infinite. This reference helped me a lot with my designs.

Here was one of the first sketches i made, inspired by a creature i found in the Fable II art book. I had the idea of a robot whose chest was a tank of blood with a heart in it connected to wires and tubes. the tank would be surrounded by 3 metal ribs. with a metal spine going up the back containing the main wired to keep the electric flow going around the body.

After becoming frustrated in not being able to create the joints for the body or being able to come up with an idea of what the rest would look like i decided i would try some more doodles.

One idea i came up with was turning the rib cage robot into a human in a body suit, after starting the sketch i realized this was too human for my liking and i stopped working on that image.

Another idea was a bat/human hybrid, but after sketching again i found it too human for my liking.

After my first sketch, i drew this little robot fellow. He has a round chest piece with a window at the front, a head with one eye piece. He also has electrical tubes attaching to several parts of his body and big hands and feet as i had intended in the first place.

This is probably my favorite design out of the lot so far, above the original sketch i incorporated the rib style into the chest. Now while this looks kind of cool i just think the body is a bit too round for that style. I may just stick with the original design and start the modelling process!

2D Graphics

 since all the concept art had been completed and i had made all the base sprites, i started to animate them, the pixel sprites were on a 64px by 64px grid. i created the sprites in Gimp, a free image software similar to photoshop. i created each frame in Gimp also, before moving the frames to photoshop and using its easy to use animation feature to create the gifs. 

working with pixel sprites was a challenge for me as i had never done it before and due to the limitations of detail available, this made even more challenging. i managed to get used to the process of creating humanoid shapes using pixels very quickly, once i had made one, it became easier to make the rest.compared to 3D art, pixel art was a lot easier, but 3D for me is more entertaining to create. we chose to use pixel art instead of vector art because we already know how to use vector art, i had never created pixel art before and now was my chance to push myself to learn it. 

 When creating the sprites i started with looking at the concept art and deciding how to make the body bade look, when i had a blank base on the screen i started drawing the details like facial features, hair, clothing and such onto another layer above the base layer. i erased any overlapping lines and created a clean, uncoloured pixel character. before i coloured the character, because of the limitations to detail i knew i wasnt going to be able to give it the desired shading, so what i did was i created gradient charts. a tower of colour showing a gradient in pixel form. i used this gradient tower to shade the pixel sprites after colouring them in, the gradient towers ewnsured each sprite had equal shading, mathematically.

after i was happy with the sprite i created 3 more of the same character, one facing to the left, to the right and behind. these were the start of the creation of the walk cycles. when creating the walk cycles i created 5 frames showing the sprite walking, after doing so i decided just moving the legs wasnt enough to make it look like it was really walking. i made the character bob up and down as he walked and i made the arms sway. these added features made the character look as if he was really walking and not just sliding his feet back and forth. when all 5 frames were created, i put them into photoshop in the same order, but repeated the last middle 3 backwards, so when the animation played it would loop back and i would have a clean walking animation.

with the attack cycles, i used the walk cycles as a base, i erased the arms of each frame and created 3 new layers for each frame of a punch. i kept them seperate from the walk frames to make it easier then duplicating and attaching then to the walk layers. 

we had originally created 4 characters for the game, but near the end of creating all of them, ellis told us he wanted a new one. we replaced the wheelchair character that anna had created due to the fact that we couldnt figure out how to animate his attack cycle. we did manage to create a walk cycle where he looked like he was rolling along but thats about all we could manage. we designed a new character together, a chinese martial arts master. we loved the design and created the sprite strait away!

the five frames of a walk cycle:

 

Our group for this 2d game project was made up of 2 artists and 1 designer. The artists and designers have very different jobs when creating the game, the designers were using a program called construct 2. Construct 2 is a simplified way to create 2d games without all the hassle of bade code. Base code in games, is the code which controls all the basic movements of the game. From a scrolling background to damage, the base code controls it all. Construct 2 hides the base code underneath a user-friendly interface, and makes it easy to create your desired 2d games. You can import your own ready made sprite gifs, or make them in construct 2 there and then. Creating collisions around each frame of each sprite creates physics for your game, and stops certain sprites moving through others. Collision physics can also separate background sprites from foreground sprites.
 

title

little helpers

sainsmorys

morrislands