Weeks 10-11: Studio Practice

 Following the meeting/ session in week 9, we decided exactly what we were going to produce for this project. My role is to make two character sheets, some creature designs, and the boss area. If I have time, I'd like to model one of the ant masks, and maybe do something in unreal engine.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've made one of the two character sheets, the boss room layout/ functionality, and developed the design for the second character:

 

This is our companion character, I've got to do a pose with a prop for them as well but I'll do that later.

 

 

 

 Boss room plan; the idea is to have the big ant boss take up the whole room, the antennae evetually fall down so that the player can run up and attack the weak spot (presumably the eyes). There's platforms and places to swing from in order to get the antennae to come down, and to dodge attacks.

 

 

This next part I did during the last week leading up to the deadline, I included it here as there wasn't enough to warrant it's own post, and it's on topic:

 

I thought about painting over the boss room diagram, but our lecturer mentioned that this project is more meant to be a proof of concept, rather than loads of fully rendered illustrations, it's to get the idea for the game across and make our plans on how we'd make it clear. Concept art is important for this, but it doesn't all have to be super detailed paintings. I did start to paint over the diagram, aiming to also redesign the boss ant to make it more similar to the design on the High Priestess character (both the mask and the emblem on the back of her robe):

 

 

 

 Given more time I might've done a reference sheet for the redesigned boss, and the rest of the colony. I am happy with all the designs I've made for this project, but they don't quite feel final (except for the High Priestess' design). It feels so close to being a fully fledged set of designs, but I'll have to go with what I've done for now. 

Back to weeks 10-11:

 

 This moodboard is for the high class character, she'll be a sort of high priestess shaman/ druidic type character, with the main inspirations coming from druids and renaissance clergy (as well as ants, of course).

I did some thumbnails this time, starting with the shapes, and then some sketches, you may notice thumnail three and onwards takes some inspiration from one of my shape language thumbnails from last year again - I wanted this character to look much more old and mutated, so pushing the shapes and anatomy this way was a must.

 

Below is the refinement of these ideas, taking thumbnail 7 and adding details to it:

This last image is a sketch of the mask, I hadn't made any 3D assets by this point, so I planned on modelling and sculpting this as a backup. I ended up making the aphid creature, so I didn't need to sculpt this. I ended up removing the six dots on the mouth area, as they made it look too similar to Majora's Mask (Nintendo 2000).

 

 

Reference/s:

 

Nintendo, 2000. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask [N64 cartridge]. Nintendo 64. Kyoto, Japan: Nintendo.