Mask Design

After making the decision to have my character wearing a mask that covers the lower part of her face I started some research into some masks. I game that I knew had alot of masks on their characters was Mortal Kombat.

This picture nearly perfectly represented what I wanted to create. The mask is aggresive and intimidating and the blue colours in this picture is really something I want to recreate.

Another character from MK will a slightly different face mask, a lot of the masks in MK seem to cover the lower part of the face, these designs really helped me come up with my own mask.

I love the film Iron Man and when I first started thinking of mask designs, Iron Man

was the first thing to come to mind. The design of the whole Iron Man suit is amazing and has influenced a lot of my previous designs. The sharp angles around the jaw area are something I made sure I incorporated into my mask design. However I want my character to look as if she is still able to communicate with team-mates so ensures I had some sort of hole or gap around the mouth area.

My primary weapon design was influenced by steam-punk so I thought it would only be fitting to see find some steampunk mask designs. I stumbled across this interesting leather steampunk mask;

I really like the lines on this mask however it's covering the top part of the face.

Final Week

I have decided on my final character and drew a final piece in the poster style I was aiming for. My orthographic is yet to be completed.

My character has a slender, athletic frame and carries a medium sized water backpack inspired by the camelpack.

The primary weapon attaches to the bottom of the pack through a wide rubber tube, supported with bands of stainless steel on the outside. Aswell as supplying the primary weapon with ammonition the backpack is also used to carry the water bombs and water claymores. By putting the majority of ammo/weaponry on the back of my character it allows for alot more flexibility for my character making her quick and nimble.

She sports a headset on the top of her head to communicate with team-mates as she is a support character, aswell as a face mask that covers the bottom of her face. I think my final character meets the criteria I set out for myself at the start of this design log, I have spent a lot of time researching what my character needs to look like and hours fine tuning aspects of my characer, in particular the mask and pattern on the bikini top. I have designed an attractive yet suspicious and in someways quite mischevious looking character which I am very happy with.

Female Game Characters

After deciding that I wanted my final character to be female I did some research into female game characters to look at similarities, differences and trends. Here are some of my findings;

Lightening — Final Fantasy XIII

Morrigan — Dragon Age: Origins

Liara — Mass Effect 2

Sheva — Resident Evil 5

Faith — Mirror's Edge

Farah — Prince of Persia

Samus — Metroid: Other M

Tifa Lockhart — Final Fantasy VII

Miranda — Mass Effect 2



Lara Croft



Fang — Final Fantasy XIII



Sarah Kerrigan — Starcraft 2

All the characters have been designed to be attractive, characters such as Lara Croft are really iconic and admired by a lot of gamers despite her being taller than most males. I'm going to aim for my character to be slightly smaller in height than the male characters in the game and certainly slimmer and very athletic. 

Final Weeks

It has been a very productive couple of weeks for me and my character design. I have concentrated my ideas and have a clear vision of what I want to create. I have made a list of criteria which my character is going to be designed around;

• Water based weaponry
• Female
• Light
• Agile
• Character and weilded weapons are distuinguishable even as a sillouhette
• Blue colour scheme
• 3 Weapons
• FPS Based character

My thought process in deciding the type of character to create came upon when realising a lack of water based characters and weaponry in the majority of new FPS titles. I thought it'd be a nice idea to explore the possibility of perhaps implementing such a character to a game. I have stumbled across a lot of interesting and influential designs whilst I have been doing my research, in particular some cool steam punk waterguns;

These steampunk guns helped me get ideas and shapes for my final primary weapon. My primary weapon is essentially a very powerful water gun which reduces the speed of enemies aswell as doing damage, however the primary weapon also has a secondary fire which can be used to blast enemies and yourself onto higher levels or out of danger.

I have decided  to have 2 secondary weapons, a water based claymore aswell as a simple water bomb.

The third weapon for the character will be a simple melee weapon which can be used in close combat.

Water Cannon

Found some new inspiration for my primary weapon. Water Cannons used for crowd dispersion by the police are high pressure and perfect for what I want my primary weapon to look like.

Over the weekend I'll work on finalising my primary weapon design and work on my character design.

Different Nozzles

Whilst sketching up ideas for my primary weapon I realised that I'd need some sort of nozzle for the water to come out of, so he's a bit of research I've done into different types of nozzles I can think of that are used in real life.

Fire hose

Garden Hose 2

Garden Hose 3

Garden Hose



Garden Hose 1



All of these hoses are relatively short in comparison to normal weapons in games. I think that when a weapon is smaller it is natural for them to do less damage. A good example of these would be TF2, the primary weapon is always larger than the secondary weapon and always does more damage. The same concept applies to real life, the bigger the weapon the more damage it is likely to do for example a 9mm pistol is less powerful than Cobra attack helicopter.

To combat this I'm going to make sure that the primary weapon for my character is larger than my secondary and melee weapons. Along with this I need to make sure the shape of the weapon or the shape of the character when it is holding the weapon can be recognized from a distance.

Octoman Revised



Octoman



Production Phase

Aswell as working on my own concept I have tried to improve my skills by drawing art that has been done by J.C Leyendecker aswell as drawing some quick sketches of my favourite weapons in Team Fortress 2.

This week I'll complete some ideas for weapons, character size, posture, costume and accessories and decide on what I will use for my final high concept design. I have considered including more than one type of weapon in my high concept design and provide details of potential alternatives and secondary fire.

I also thought about how my character could be implemented into a game such as TF2, how it may work and how the weapons could be balanced. I have already made the decision that my character would counter the a character who uses fires like the pyro;

One of my ideas would be the secondary weapon to be a something like a water bottle which would extinguish players who are on fire or perhaps slow them down or hinder their sight for a small amount of time.
I plan to draw my final design in the two remaining weeks.

Octopus Attack

F.L.U.D.D

In an attempt to come up with ideas for a water based weapon I remembered F.L.U.D.D from Super Mario Sunshine which was released in 2002.

When it F.L.U.D.D first appeared it wasn't so much of a weapon, F.L.U.D.D had different nozzles for different things, there was a turbo nozzle to make mario run faster, a hover nozzle to make mario hover, a rocket nozzle to reach higher areas such as roofs and a squirt nozzle which was primarily used to clean Goop off buildings and roofs. The squirt feature was introduced into Super Smash Bros. Brawl as an attack feature although it wouldn't do any damage it would blast enemies away. F.L.U.D.D was also chargable, the longer it charged the higher the power of the blast would be.

I want to incorporate some of the ideas and functionality that F.L.U.D.D has into my weapon design, for example blasting water at the floor will be able to get the character onto higher levels and objects. If my weapon was to squirt water as an attack it would have to do damage, unless it acted as some type of secondary fire for the primary weapon.

Monday 6th April

I have been brainstorming some ideas over the last week in an attempt to finalise what type of character I am going to design. I have came up with a few requirement that I want my final character design to meet, these are;

• 3 Weapons
• 1 Primary, 1 Secondary and 1 Melee
• The sillouette  of the character has to be recognisable and unique
• Water based weapons, attacks and design

http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2007/NPAR07_IllustrativeRenderingInTeamFortress2.pdf

I found an interesting pdf from Valve about Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2, although the majority of the content is about the rendering of the characters the pdf does touch on some of the art style and illustrative techniques;

Although some of the points made refer to the 3D Rendered model of the character I am going to try and incorporate similar features to my final design.

I have been practicing drawing some of the 20th century commercial illustration art, I think I've managed to understand the style and I think I am equipped to replicate some the style in my own designs now. I'll be designing 3 weapons over the Easter Holiday.

Final Open Project - Overview

This blog will act as my design log for this open project. I will be designing a character influenced by the 1940 poster style and artists like Mike Mignola and Dean Cornwell.

"Unfinished Business" by Mike Mignola

My character will be designed to fit into an FPS game with a similar art style, throughout the next 9 weeks I will explore weapons, styles and personalities I could use for my character. I will also be writing a research document on the importance of research in the games industry, aswell as exploring anatomy, shapes and themes used in games that have unique art styles.

As for my time-table I'll spend the rest of this week and next week writing my research document aswell as sketching anything that comes to mind. I'll also use these first two weeks to document any inspirational work I have come across. In week 4 I will focus more of my energy into creating ideas through sketching and sourcing reference material. Week 5 and 6 will be easter break, I'll spend a few hours a week sketching ideas and progressing my ideas towards a final design. After the break I will start my final high concept design document, I will collect all of the relevent reference and inspiration material aswell as my final designs for weapons and the character. Week 10 will be spent writing my evaluation.

The first 3 hours of today have been spent researching 1940 poster art and relevent artists, I have collected over 80 pieces of art and put them into a mood board. The mood board represents what I art style I am aiming for in my character design.

"1940 Poster Art Mood Board" - Josh Walton