Developer’s Blog – Post No. 21

Well firstly thank you to André for pointing people towards my blog in order to vote on their favourite designs, whether anyone listens who knows but its still very kind of him.

Now onto the main reason.. i modelled the body =D

i finally got it done after leaving my one at college and forgetting to save my other =[

So here it is

This was what the model looked like when i made it in Maya, although as you can see the model has been imported into Mudbox ready for me to sculpt it. oh i had to add the hands and the feet in Maya before exporting it again, i only thought after id already exported it once so i ended up having to re-sculpt it from the start, obviously with the extra details on the hands etc. being put in

Sculpting was really fun and i am really happy with how my final piece turned out. I had a few problems getting the breasts and shoulders right, especially the back of the shoulders. Well here's my final sculpted version, let me know what you all think. Its my first proper go of Mudbox too so go easy on me =P

Constructive criticism very welcome! unless your just going to point out its missing the head =P

well here's the model then

The models here have been exported back into Maya, for the simple reason of you can see them much clearer here.

Well thanks for reading all and Kind Regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 20

Helmet Wings Iterations

Please Vote on your favourites, Thank you all

Kind Regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 19

Headpiece Iterations

Please Vote on your favourites, Thank you all

Kind Regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 18

Visor iterations

Please Vote on your favourites, Thank you all

Kind Regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 17

Mouthpiece iterations

Please Vote on your favourites, Thank you all

Kind Regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 16

Now i have finished my helmet iterations i drew the 7 i liked best on photoshop. these images are below.

After i drew these i picked the two i liked best, and picked the first one to iterate. This one was helmet 7.
Helmet 7 was my favourite in many ways, i like the over all design and believe it would make the best impact on the player when they see it. But i also recognised that iterating is an important process and so decided id iterate each part of the helmet and pick the ones i like best. More than just picking the one i like best id also like my readers to pick their favourite ones and give me some feedback maybe =]

So in the next 4 posts there is going to be 16 designs for each aspect of the helm. Just scan over them and then vote for your favourite in the polls on the side. Also feel free to post any thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading and Kind regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 15

NEW UPDATE!!!!!!!!! YAY! =P
Okay so after the last post where i outlined my first experiences with Maya and modelling a hand this time it was a foot!
After loading the reference images given to me by my tutor, Simon, i began to start modelling the foot. only a couple of us in the class were actually ready to move on as a lot of them were still back modelling the hand. I was quite happy being ahead of the class as i was one of the ones with the littlest experience on Maya and one of the most resilient to make the switch from Max.
So onto the model itself. First thing obviously was getting the shape right, which was quite hard without over tessellating my model and sticking plenty of extra poly’s in. but i found a way to make it work i think. Then after that i modelled each toe, using the same technique as before just copying the one toe and then copying it again and again and just moving verts to make it the shape of the new toe and attaching it to the foot. After i made all toes Simon pointed out that my toes of my model had too many cuts in the, and that when it comes to putting it into a 3D sculpting programme and tessellating it so it can be sculpted the model would get completely screwed up and maybe even cause the computer to crash. so i removed some of the poly;s of the toe and i ended up with the below model. there is a softened and a smoothed version of each angle, though i know i shouldn't smooth to model i promise i didn’t. I only used to see what my model did look like smoothed
Angle One

Angle Two

Angle Three

Im really hoping that the next thing we model is the head, it would be really cool to be able to model the head., and start to see my model come together as a whole. 
Now im off to bed to sleep. Hope you enjoyed the new update as much as i enjoyed the modelling

Thanks For Reading And Kind Regards,

Daniel young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 14

Last Wednesday was my first day i got really hands on with Maya modelling, wait for it… a HAND! yes it was a pun but i kept you wondering.

I modelled my first ever model and i was quite pleased with the results. i know its not the best but here it is

There are a few kinks  in the fingers which need to be worked out, i found the thumb extremely difficult, but in the end i felt quite happy with it for a first try. I know there's a lot that needs to be done to it to make it look good, but any feedback would be nice. Be kind and constructive only though please since it is my first try =P lol

Ill keep you posted on how my long dark fall into Maya is going and i look forward to receiving any feedback given,

Thanks for reading and Kind Regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 13

The following week we began thinking of characters, drew has given us a couple of presentations since, talking about what makes a character, from colour to art style and has also set us on our actual brief. It feels good to be working towards a goal again, though as fun as these last few weeks have been i have been itching to get our coursework started as i have had some ideas bouncing around in this old head of mine for some time. I knew almost immediately that i wanted to do a female character, though i probably cant tell you why i think its just my preference for this given unit. I drew a quick first sketch of an idea which is below;

 

The sketch itself is not very good and i also decided that the normal fantasy sort of theme was not for me, so i drew up several different ideas for other themes in which my character could follow(below).

These are military, research, romance and space. For my character i decided on a mix of military and space theme and have decided that this is the one i would enjoy most. I also think it is a good way to come up with a story that is not entirely cliché compared to all the fantasy games like RPG’s which its almost always, there's the bad guy, kill the bad guy. I think there is a whole diversity to space and ideas for creatures and so forth that can be drawn from a futuristic space setting.

So after deciding upon my theme i began some sketches of ideas. The first thing i started to design is the helmet, there are 23 designs which i have drew and would like your opinion on. These are the sketches;

I have circled a number of my favourites. these are 1, 5, 9, 10, 15, 19 and 21. These images are the ones i wish to embellish on further, perhaps mix some of the designs together and see what happens but first i would really like to know other people’s opinions. Tell me what your favourites are and why please? or if you like only bits of different ones and think they would go well with another design let me know, any help or criticisms would be greatly appreciated as always, just leave them in my comments.

Also i did a quick first sketch of some of the upper torso, these aren’t concrete and not finished as there is only one design here but here it is

I think that's it for this post guys, any feedback is great and ill see you again in a mo with my next post, 3D.

As always thanks for reading and Kind Regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog – Post No. 12

The other week Simon sat us down to do an unusual exercise, though it is one i have countered before. The basics are, you scribble several time on a sheet of paper, over lay a sheet of tracing paper or something similar and then you draw a creature or something you can see in that scribble.

Above are my scribbles, i did 6 as you can see and next to each i wrote a number 1 to 6, though if you cant see the numbers they obviously go from left to right on the page. Using these scribbles and overlaying a sheet of paper i drew the following images;

     

See if you can guess which picture went to which number as my little game to you! also sorry about the 3rd one down on the left(i think its that one), the page must of creased as i was taking it =[

As a final thing of the day i began to mess around with drawing some similar pictures to the 3rd one along this image is also below.

Its not very good but it was only quick as my long day came to an end.

These sort of exercises have never appealed to me and in my opinion i didn’t do very well on it, but that wont be the same for everyone, i urge everyone to give it a go, and if your especially brave feel free to post a link to the picture or the picture itself(if you can) in a comment to this post. Well that's about it for this post, criticisms always welcome

Thanks for reading and kind regards,

Daniel Young

Developer’s Blog- Post No. 11

Hellooooooooo everyone,

This is just a quick post to apologise to everyone as my computer broke down a couple of weeks ago, but hey my new one came yesterday so i can start posting again, as I'm sure many of you will be happy to hear.

My next few posts will be about my messy scribbling… literally, before i delve into the beginnings of my character design and finally when i got hands on for the first time in Autodesk Maya.

Thanks for reading and Kind regards

Daniel Young