After building up the references for the house, it was down to actually modelling it. Keeping in mind of UV mapping, instances were used on planks and such to keep the uv planes intact and tidy.
I started of with an easy base:
I modeled the outline and moved the edges and vertex to make a nice shape and after that, start building it up with planks, boards and a door etc.
With the added planks and door, the house is slowly starting to take shape now
Also keeping track of the UV mapping, it’s starting to make a little more sense on how to work it and how to keep it clean, but its still a bit tricky on how to grasp it.
Adding all the final touches to it I added in the ambient Occlusion to make the whole model stand out a big more and give it a nice look.
After creating the dino rider, it started me thinking of what I wanted in the concept world. I know its something i’d love to carry on even after the hand in, so it has to keep my attention long enough to carry on working on it and/or complete it.
I made a list of things I know would keep my interest and explored ways to mix them into working:
-magic?
-post apocalyptic?
-dragon riders?
-skin changing?
-rivalries?
-colours
-elves?
-Tribal?
There are a ton of possibilities, and to create a good story it meant I had to research what would make or break a story.
I found this link helpful for tips on stories, not on how to write or what to include but just to keep in mind, such as bringing out writers emotions, and not sticking to the five basic senses eg hearing, sight etc
It also calls for revisiting Vogler: A writers Journey again from first year.
What will make my hero a hero?
Will they BE a hero or an antagonist?
What will prompt the story? What will happen to make the main characters break out of their normal routine?
Who is their allies? Their enemies?
What will bring the characters to their lowest, and how will they revive themselves?
These are questions that are important and its useful to refer to the Heros Journey graph.
These links were also handy to follow for the Journey too:
Also an article by author Natasha Lester on how to create characters that are likable to the readers/viewers, something that will be important to remember if I do carry on this project a little while longer
I was really excited to start the concept art world, it’s something i’d love to get better at with visuals and storytelling.
I didn’t get to explore it as much as I wanted or needed unfortunately, and I want to actually continue on with the world afterwards.
I had come up with a few ideas and settled on a story I had been planning for a bit, but was stuck on how to actually get started.
While talking to Natasha Crowley about the ideas we had, she had offered to create a world together with adding our own bits and pieces. It helped me get a good idea where to start drawing for environments and creatures, and I started researching.
The small villages, wooden houses and shacks are perfect for inspiration for our little village to model. But to some extent they are a bit too basic for a medieval Transylvania, so I started looking at other inspiration to suit the style.
Fable:
The houses in Fable are more suited for the old fashioned buildings and have a nice mix of the fantasy and real life that gave me a few ideas for possible houses.
Pinterest Images:
Aside from looking specifically at Fable, Pinterest also had a wide range of images for medieval, fantasy houses that were both fun and useful to look at.
The Fable games also have great castles in their games that can be great inspiration for our castle with some nice designs and simple topology.
Bringing this into effect I started modelling out my house model.
Character design is something I really love doing, and I had fun drawing out the species and their differences. Again colour is always an issue with me, but I don’t think the colours on the Beaks characters are too bad, they make them stand out from their duller counterparts, the Beasts.
Beaks would have the hierarchy of matriarchs, who would follow the advice of the more magic afflicted mages who, unlike the rest of their species, had more than one element of magic.
The rest were split into various roles of trainers of beasts, court members and security.
Beasts on the other hand the workers in the society, ranging from heavy lifters, guard dogs to socially important members of the Beaks and overall common rabble.
Revolts are kept in check monitoring the beasts using their magic tainted collars, which split the creatures into their selected professions.
Blue being common workers, blue being helpers to a specific trade eg medicine, and red being guards.
Environments are something that I would like to do more of, but lighting and colour are something that needs works a lot of work on. I have sketches but will be need to really practice at figuring out light sources.
Tried out some simple perspective, I really want to get better at figuring that out as well as colour and lights.
From previous ideas before teaming up with Natasha, I had had the ideas of the species in a constant state of rivalry, not one dominating each other. The non magic species having unnatural mounts to assist them for their hunting and defending:
There was ideas that the mounts would be horse like, simple vegetarian creatures to assist in travelling
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Pinterest:
Then the idea of a companion, a partner in hunting would be better.
Like the wolves in Lord of the Rings/Hobbit
Or the Dracolisk from DA: Inquisition
For the ideas to work with Natasha however, the ideas of mounts have been put aside for the time being, but it is something that was considered quite a lot in my ideas.
As well as creating a human walk cycle I couldn’t help creating one for the dino rig, and gradually added more to create a walk cycle, adding in a human rig and accessories to create an turntable for an idea for the concept art world.
I had found a useful blog that helped with creating a decent dino walk as well as watching the cycles found for the run cycle which had helped with making the rig walk.
I had also intended to rotoscope/ animate this in 2D but had very little time to do so, but sometime after the deadline it is something that I definitely want to keep working on.
A video I am including as research for weight is for the game ‘Dragon Age: Inquisition’ showreel. From the giant jumping to the dragon hopping it is a great example of weight and how its used to show the size of the creature. 1.15 in the video too has a great technique to show how heavy the rig/animation can be.
I would like to experiment more with weight and to best use it, but I made a few attempts at conveying it.
Trying a simple hop and landing, its not very smooth or advanced and in the future would like to trying bigger jumps and more extreme weight in animation.
Also playing about with body mechanic’s, a simple turning around and acknowledging that might actually be kept as a longer animation after stress has died down.
With practice, a walk cycle is manageable and it was something that I enjoyed learning. But a run cycle brought on a bit of a harder challenge, Following the Animators survival Kit I used the template on it to experiment and try to get a feel of the run. I also decided to use a Dino rig found online to use for running, as I love the controls of it and had fun playing around with it.
The cycle above is the basic one for starting, and I started on fleshing out my run cycle. With a few mistakes of course.
I found an amazing dinosaur animator however, and using their work as reference I tried again and again to make the run better.
Pelans-Feelins 