Week 13 - Character Sheets

 I've finished both character sheets (for the most part) so now all I have to do is upload my aphid model to sketchfab, colour in the enemy designs and paint over the ant boss room diagram. I want to try and have a look at baking the aphid model and putting it into unreal, but I'll have to see how much time I have after finishing all the 2D work. I still need to go back and check/ develop any reflections on my work with all the MLOs in mind - I'm pretty confident I'll be able to finish, so long as the 3D aspects of this project all go smoothly. I might add one or two extra details to the character sheets, but only as the last step, I want to finish everything else first/ need a break from these for now.

 

Here's the first character sheet:

Here's a "clean" version without all the splotches:

 

And here's a version that showcases the bioluminescence - I imagined it only glows in the dark, and that in daylight it's actually quite transparent/ stains everything a much darker colour, hence the first version having very dark, almost ink-like splotches.

 

 

 

Progress screenshots from the rendered pose from this character sheet:

 

 

I like to do the silhouette in bright colours like red so that it's easy to see if I've missed any spots in colouring, and to break up sections like with the red/blue elements below. I use copies of these later for layer masks and to easily colour the silhouette in a much nicer colours.

 

 

At this stage I hadn't coloured in the main reference yet, so I was still deciding on the colours. I briefly considered making her green, but ended up going with purple - it makes the design look more regal/ important, and this is meant to be the higher class character.

 

 

 Close up for the chains, they're quite a small detail which will probably be overlooked, so I wanted to zoom in on them here:

 

 

for these I selected alpha lock on the lineart, then painted over the chain lines.

 

 

 More close ups on the jewelry for the same resons:

 

And here's a close up on the finished pose, minus all the ink/ fungus-based paint:

Given more time, I probably would've developed the masks for all of the ant colony members, maybe also the heads of the ants themselves, to be more similar to this mask - mainly the shape and the eyes, not all of them would have antlers and tusks. I really like the empty eeriness of this ones big, dark, round eyes.

 

 

Here is the second character sheet:

 

 

 I developed the five pose sketches from earlier to try and help choose a design, and ended up going for pose 4. I had no idea what to give them for a prop so I went with something like repurposed exoskeleton/ ant legs, similar to the High Priestess' staff.

 

The point of these character sheets in terms of the production pipeline is to help the 3D artist get a better idea of what they're sculpting, and for the animators to get a feel for the character they're animating. This project is only a proof of concept, more of a pre-production type thing, so no one would be modelling or animating the characters just yet. But, this is why I included the breakout poses beside the front and back A-pose drawings, I'm trying to give the hypothetical 3D character artist as much information as possible, so they know exactly what they're doing with these designs.