WEEK 3 & 1/2 OF WEEK 4

• 1) Body Blockout in Maya and ZBrush (confirmation asked from 3 tutors)

• 2) Clothing Concepting in Photoshop, and getting opinions on the direction and my approach from 14 people, including 2 tutors

• Writing the Narrative behind the Design Choices in a game context, with a few small bits refined from feedback

• 3) Clothing Blockout in Maya (confirmation asked from 2 tutors)

• Refining Body Sculpt (current images not included)

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3) CLOTHING BLOCKOUT

Got all of the blockout for the clothes done in one day, 9h 20m worth, except the fishnets as they can be done fast a different way and the coat as I'm finalising its design.

Method: Maya Quad Draw onto the active Base Body Mesh. There is an equivalent in ZBrush - although I chose Maya to ensure that, if any issues were to arise, my experience and practice with Maya's modelling tools would allow for quick and easy corrections.

My primary focus was to produce and refine the clothing items' 3D silhouette and placement of how everything sat together on the body. Definitely was a struggle with the chest harness, as the concepted design was made in 2D - meaning that of course there would be issues when trying to replicate its appeal and design in a 3D space. Hoping to realistically distort the outermost straps to give keep the appealing thickness consistent.

Due to the body and clothing sculpt set deadline, I evaluated and went through with the decision to begin the clothing blockout stage, as I'm certain the clothing can be simply morphed using ZBrush's move or transform tools to fit the new surface forms of the body - as long as I don't start sculpting the clothes before the body is done. This is important as doing this would lose the time spent creating sharp detail.

Started making a belt buckle before realising that task can come after everything else, and those faces can then be extracted and combined onto each clothing item that requires this mechanism.

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2) CLOTHING CONCEPTING - 'Alternative Girls'

I'm actually so happy with the final designs and the fact that I pursued, despite feeling nervous that I couldn't possibly create anymore designs from being pretty set on the simplistic yet appealing bodysuit designs. But I wanted something not so unbelievably simple as the working full-time portfolio piece that is supposed to demonstrate as much as my strengths as possible.

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1) BODY BLOCKOUT

Main reference: Mercurial Forge

Photoshop warping and liquify explorations to obtain the body shape I was intending to create but with a grounding in pre-existing successful and appealing character sculpts.

Imported reference images into Maya to compare to.

Used various anatomy resources.

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After unexpectedly spending a week refining and getting feedback on the base body, concepts and character narrative, I thought it would be the most important thing to, at the very least, get the clothes in. Especially as they won't be ruined. I hope little extra time will be needed to fit the clothes to the body. I also realised (through tutor feedback and some tutorial videos) the methodology for producing my base body sculpt didn't do me any favours. I'm approaching the full sculpt of the body with a new technique this week in week 4, agreed by my tutor, except I'm nervous how much this could impact the project timeline.

I'm actually so happy with my project's developments so far and the fact that this project is actually coming to life... to the point where I ended up actually happy crying from passion/excitement!!! :'3

NEXT FOCUS:

Refining the smaller design shapes of most items in ZBrush (that could've been done through drawing or iteratively designing), as well as the orthographic designing I could've done, yet a week had already been spent on the concepting phase - a role which is not a 3D artist's focus, and my aim isn't to have a well-rounded perfect design as this requires much more time.

Refining the body, sculpting the clothing.

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PROJECT CONCEPT

My aim is to produce two 3D posed characters, if the time is available, one game-ready to display my skills with industry-standard software and pipelines, the other would remain in its sculpting stage due to time constraints - yet can display my skills in creating another type of face and clothing type.

They would be stylised characters with a consideration for realism and realistic detail that would primarily belong in a team-based fighting game whose gameplay mechanics derive from multiple abilities and a secondary HUD stat bar. I've designed their concept to consist of clothing and makeup from the widely appealing 'alternative/goth aesthetic'.