Character Designs

So to begin the character design area of my Final Year Project, I started looking into mechanical body parts. This is only the start of my research and design so there will be more of this to come. I am not sure whether to do a mechanical arm or a mechanical leg, so I decided to start looking into both. Because this is a character for games I will also be making up a back story for her.

Here i have started to look at female game characters who have a dominant roll in the games they are in. Top Left is Harley Quinn from Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. Bottom Right is Ada Wong From Resident Evil 4, they are both only support characters, but they are strong characters that are there to make the game more interesting. More of these mood-boards will come into play further down the line.

Here I have started designing my game character with a synthetic robot arm in the style of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I am thinking of adding a muscle weave to the joints and some sort of texture to the flat plates of the arm to make them look more battle worn. The design of this character may change if I decide to use a male character instead of a female character, which is the reason there has not been much development the the character itself.

Started designing a Wizard Type Character. Will definitely be creating this concept as a 3D game Character, I will start blocking out and decide where I want to go with it. I have not drawn the face yet but i have an idea in my mind that will fit with a cartoony style so I may pursue that.

Here are some thumbnail sketches that i have done in Photoshop. here are just a few pose ideas and it seems that i am getting better at using blacks and whites to show more detail in my thumbnail sketches.

Here is the very rough stage of my wizard reference images. I will use these images to start blocking out my wizard in 3D where I will create my base mesh. I will then import this model into zBrush and star to add more detail such as cloth creases and cloth imperfections.

On the left is my rough concept draft with no colour and all of my construction lines. On the right is my Concept with colour and basic shading. I do like this colour scheme but i will be experimenting with thumbnail sketches as well.

My main inspiration for this concept is the Skyrim Wizard Clothing. Because of this I have a lot of references that I can call on at the touch of a button and by looking through the art book.

Back Story to follow.

Been working on a new concept for my character. It is a trace of the Assassins Creed II Character Pose. I traced it for a quick reference and to try the clothes in the different pose. This is also going to be the Pose I will be modelling my character in. I will try and animate the fire for the turntable of my final piece.

I had to start working on a face design. after a couple of hours i came out with a design that i liked. 

i thought that because he is quite an angry person, i would give him a sort of defect on his head where the muscle has formed outward because he is always straining his face.

I have sculpted hair which i like the look of but am unsure whether or not to have the hood up on the character.

Here is my sclupt so far. i have the boots, bracers and the hands to do and i am ready to retopologise.

Low Poly Model WIP - retopolgizing takes a long time. after this will take it back into zbrush and get normal map generated to show surface detail. will also experiment with painting the model inside of zbrush to sae time. i have been using the wiki section on Polycount.com for tips on topology. so far my triangle count is at 6725tris this is still quite low for a game character of this era.

This is a render of the low poly model finished, the poly count is just over 10500 which is reasonable for a character. many characters today range from 15-30000 polygons.
i could lower the poly count by tidying up the inside of the coat. but i am fairly happy with this seeing it my first character.