Our next uni assignment is to find an online competition that requires you to use skills used in game art. This includes 2D artwork, 3D Sculpting and Modelling and animation. I chose the "Armed & Dangerous" Mudbox challenge. The aim of the competition is to sculpt a character that is "armed and dangerous". I have spent the last week creating orthographic concept art of a character I call (working title) "The Six Armed Nutter".
I started with an initial sketch of the sort of character I wanted. and then worked out each element of the character as needed. Looking back, I should have created several initial sketches and picked my favourite.
The initial, very rough sketch.
Since the competition allowed a lot of leeway for personal tastes, I picked the same sort of mad, surreal kind of character I enjoy drawing. This was a bad idea. Since this competition is just a way of increasing my abilities, I should have tried something novel and learnt how to draw a new type of character.
Once I had my initial sketch I began looking for images online that worked with the sort of character, and the style, I wanted to create.
A collection of images used for reference and influence for the concept art.
I wanted the character to be insane and, much like the joker or the cheshire cat (American Mcgee's Cheshire Cat inparticular), the character needed a nice wide, evil grin. Already having a cartoon style, I wanted to make the bigger than it proportionally should be. After playing around with proportions I decided to move the top of the mouth to where I would usually put the nose (halfway between the brow and chin) and make the chin slightly smaller. I also made the skull slightly elongated to make room for the mouth to reach right back without making the jaw or cheekbones seem small or non-existant.
Studies of mouths from American Mcgee's Cheshire Cat, Jamie Hewlett's Murdoch and Marvel's Venom. On the right I have tested out a few different mouths and head shapes, finding out what works best.
Once I had the mouth, figuring out the rest of the face was fairly simple. I already knew that, if a character is grinning whilst the eyes are frowning, the character looks more than a touch sinister. I found that by keeping this expression and raising one eyebrow, I could make the character look even more mad and unnatural.
On the left are the final workings out for the head shape. The profile and front view on the right side of the page are the final designs.
The final thing to do was to take a quick look at his anatomy. I already knew that I wanted him to be skinny, with tone. I also know enough about anatomy that I only occasionally need reference for a more cartoony character. The only real problem I had was figuring out how the extra 4 arms where going to attach. All drawings of Hindu Gods have the arms one on top of the other. This only works when working in 2D from a front view. I figured my best option was to have them running down the side of the torso. One on the side of the ribcage, the other one the external oblique just before the character's jeans begin.
Once I had worked out what each part of him would look like, I put the parts together by drawing him in photoshop in front and side orthographic views. The only problem I had here was that he seemed too human. His face, and the fact he had an extra 4 arms, were the only things that made him seem off, I want to really throw people off. I looked into how the hands of Yoda and the District 9 "Prawns" where design and decided to do a similar thing, making him feel more alien.
Final Orthographic Concept Art
I plan on making one more piece of concept art before I start sculpting. A 3/4 posed, roughly valued and coloured digital painting of the 6 armed nutter. In the meanwhile, I plan on creating the base mesh myself in Maya using Digital Tutor's "Creating Digital Humans" series. Although, I only intend on creating a rough block out with good enough topology to sculpt with. I want as much of it to be sculpted as possible.
So far I have blocked out the torso.
Having now sorted out the idea, I just had to put the idea into a design document and, hardest of all, communicate the idea visually for the presentation. I started out with the plan of creating a full concept piece for the entire scene.
The first piece of the scene I started work on was the face. In order to make my concept art for the face clearer I researched the planes of the face and played around with the idea to get an angle and face type that suited my needs.
My research into the planes of the head, face types and angles.
I wanted the face to look wise and slightly sinister; what I imagine the face of an old building to be. After a bit of playing around, I drew a face I thought suited the job.
My final template sketch for the face.
Not having precticed with colour a lot, I found the step of adding it extremly difficult. I felt that, being a mapped projection, the face needed a more realistic effect than what I am usually used to drawing. Not feeling confident enough in my digital painting skills, I decided a photo manipulation would be best.
On both Photomanipulations I used clone brushed textures of the brick and concrete from photographs I took of the wall I want to project the mapped projection on to. On the first (left) I used three seperate layers with different levels with clipping masks to create tone. Although I think this is the best looking of the two, I don't think it gives the effect that the face is made of brick and is coming out of the wall, the second (right) does. For the second picture I gave the image a more 3-dimensional look by using warped textures. This makes the face look as if it is coming out of the wall. Unfortunatly, It doesn't amazingly professional because I am relativly new to this technique, trying it out as I made the photomanipulation. It does, however, give the feeling of 3 dimensions and that it actually has volume, which is why I chose the second over the first.
The next element of the scene I wanted to create was the glass cursor sprites made from the shattered fragments of the windows. Drawing on the design from the previous post, I found this relativly easy compared to the face. The next design I drew, I liked, so I stuck with it.
These creatures are much more light hearted than the face and slightly less intergrated with the building. I felt like this meant I could stray away from (attempts at) photo-realism for these guys. I enjoyed painting them. Due to their entire bodies being made of flat shards of broken glass, the shading is done in a way that almost felt like painting by numbers.
Surprisingly, the hardest things I found to draw were the holes in the wall for the screens and the game. This needed to be intergratable with the faces photo-manipualtion style which made it especially tricky.
The above picture is of the screen. I wanted the screen and games to look like they were holes that had been ripped open, leaving jagged edges. The jagged edges, it turns out, are extremly difficult to do when paired with the brick texture i used for the face. Although the picture of the screen, above, is passable, I could not get the more rectangular shape where the game would be played through to look right. After a while of searching for a solution I decided it would be better to present a quick sketch of the game, that would look like a sketch and not like something I had spent hours trying to make look good and failing.
Although I will not be able to present the whole scene in one concept piece, like I would have originally liked, I am happy to present the project in each of its seperate parts. I had very little trouble developing the idea, although I would have liked to have come up with a more original game idea, the concept work was what I found to be the hardest. My two main problems to be addressed for and during the next project, are the improvment of my drawing skills, particularly in colour and improving my ability to focus without procrastination.
The first thing I wanted to do after my intial idea was to find out if my mocap face idea was actually do-able. The first thing I did was search for tutorials on live motion capture; I couldn't find any. Although there seem to be plenty of motion capture tutorials that involve processing the animation, there are none that feed back to the mesh in real time. This, however, does not mean that the idea is not do-able or even difficult, only that there is no demand for it as a tutorial. Next I began looking into the technology and software available to see if any of this could pull off the feat of motion capturing a face in realtime. The best software I have found for the purpose of motion capturing faces is Image Metric's FaceWare.
This software tracks the motion of the face without reflective markers. This means it can track things like eye movement which could not be tracked with reflective markers before. The biggest problems is the ability to render a detailed enough image at a fast enough rate to look good when played back in realtime. Although we know this can be done from looking at the more and more realisistic capabilities of game engines like CryEngine 3, it is mixing this with the motion capture technology that I believe will be tricky.However, we can also see that this is possible by looking at the Microsoft Kinect which is capable of capturing fairly complex degree of movement, without the use of reflective markers and with relativly cheap equipment, and use it to animate meshes with moderate poly counts with very little latency. This, to me, says that my idea of real time motion capture is more than possible with the right help and equipment. However, I will still be developing an alternative idea for the face as insurance.
The next thing that I needed to do was to go to the uni and figure which wall would be the best to project onto. The wall needs to be somewhere visitors will immediatly see it and somewhere and projector can see from. I decided that the best place to start would be the courtyard. Although the Guntons building and the main building opposite give a bigger screen to project onto, the podium that I want to use to allow the crowd to ineract with the projection would get in the way of passers by if it were placed at a far enough distance away to allow the whole screen to be viewed. I believe a similar problem would occur if a crowd stopped to observe the screen. This, I think, would cause the passers by to see the event as some kind of annoyance as opposed to something they might want to get involved in. If we want members of the public to come and have a look, as opposed to specified visitors, It would be much better to have them lured into the courtyard using a sign saying something promotional and then "ALL ARE WELCOME" in big letters.
I decided that the best spot would be the wall to the left of the entrance to the university bar.
I chose this wall for a number of reasons:
The interaction podium can be in the middle of the courtyard where it will not be in the way and can allow people to choose to go up to it at will.
It can be easily found and viewed.
The "olden days" feel works with the feel of what I want to project onto the wall.
The only remaining problem is that of the projector. Depending upon the prefered range of the projector, the projector could be placed in the front of the podium. However, if the projector needs to be further away there is a very annoying tree that gets in the way of the view from the photography building opposite. The projector could be placed on the far right, ground floor window of the photography building, but this means that people are likely to get in the way of the projector. I think the best way to perform this task is to have two projectors, each projecting one half of the image from two seperate windows in the photography studio.
view from the first window on the left when walking through the photography studio. Half the "screen wall" can be seen.
View from the third window on the left when walking through the photography studio. The half that cannot be seen through the first window can be seen through this window.
Now having the face idea and the scene sorted, I wanted to add more of an interactive element to the projection. In order to make this fit, I needed to work out the layout of the projection.
This layout is only a starting point and may need to be shifted around to make more room for the face. Wanting to have something more than just a face, I came up with the idea of having the windows smash and form into some form of being that could be controlled by the audience via iPad.
Glass Fairy: Initial Design
The two screens on either side of the face are there to show off animation and moving image showreels, as well as any other kind of showreel that needs to be displayed. If the audience member in control of one of the glass creatures taps on the iPad while the glass creature is over one of the screens and the face is not already answering a question, the face will talk about the current piece of work showing on the screen.
There will be two glass creatures and two iPads, one for each. The iPad will be either side of the microphone used to communicate with the face on the podium. This means up to three people can be interacting with the projection at any one time.
For the game, I wanted the gameplay to be quick and survival based so that players can drop in and drop out, giving anyone who wants to play a turn. I also wanted to use the game to help exhibit some of the university's work. The players can dip in and out of the game at anytime, allowing both glass creature to be in the same game at the same time. If the player crashes or gets hit by an enemy, they shatter and reform outside the game, allowing another person to play. The scenery and enemies are all based around students work. For instance, the background will show a scrolling gallery of 2D work the students have done, banners will be hung on the obstacles that exhibit some of the textiles student's work and enemies will be based around character's designed by students.
I believe that I now have a formed enough idea to begin the design document.
We have just been given a new project. Our assignment is to create a mapped projection to be used to promote the univeristy at the end of year show. After looking through some of the examples on YouTube, I found one in particular that interested me.
With this as inspiration, I thought it may be a good idea to use a face as an interface to interact with the audience. My initial idea is to have the face form out of the bricks of the NUCA building and then talk to the crowd using live motion capture. The audience can then speak into a microphone to ask it questions and for general chit chat.
This is only an initial idea for a small part of the show. The main problem I think would be the live mocap. From the small amount of research into motion capture I have done, it doesn't look like it could be done in real time, at least not without extremly expensive equipment. I intend upon asking in a forum for answers.
I still need to go to the university, preferably at night. After watching the following video, I noticed that lower light levels made for a much better quality projection.
I only want the face to be the interface the audience uses to access the rest of the show. For example, a member of the audience could ask to see the university's photography work, the photography work will appear on the wall opposite, while the face talks about the pieces and the photographers with a little bit of information on a computer in front of him.
