Finalized Designs
Concept and designs out of the way, it’s time for some modeling.
This week was a rush to get as much character concepts completed. I may not have them all done but it serves as a lesson to not over-analyze things. I will most likely come back to them when I have more time but I must get to other tasks that are more important to get done. Assets we have learned are a constant thing to be worked on and can take quite some time and energy to produce.
Scientist Concepts
The scientist is currently planned to be the first boss of the game. When I designed this character, I wanted to communicate the evil emotions of greed and madness for his research in science. I used many references for this character and was inspired by Hojo from Final Fantasy VII, Dr. K from Changed, character design works from Kuroblood along with designs from the fictional universe Empire of the New Sun.
I had spent a lot of time thinking of how this character would think, talk and act and I have a very strong understanding of how he would interact and belong in this world. He holds a high position of intelligence in the Eclipse Mountain Complex, wearing his own armband to represent his loyal rank of scientist in the factions color of dominance.
On the left is the protagonist’s health system on his back, on the right is the first quick sketch of the scientist.
I wanted the scientist to have long hair and strong features, wrinkles with a long snout. His glasses are rounded in an old fashioned style.
Scientist Design
The finalized design of the scientist. His weapon of choice is a syringe, with sharp obtrusions for extra grip on his patients.
As you may have noticed, the color of the liquid inside the syringe matches that of the protagonist’s highlight colors. Whether these two are related is yet to be discussed.
Enemy Concepts
I interpreted Donnacha’s enemy designs with my own twist, so far nothing in full render. I do have sketches done however of how I expect the enemies to look in the game. The PAC (Pan-Arctic Coalition) is a wolf army of biomechanically enhanced soldiers. They are heavily inspired by the antagonists of the Killzone series, the Helghast Army and the faction of the same name in Battlefield 2142’s Pan-Asian Coalition.
I felt it was important to give the enemies a striking look with sharp features, making it difficult to distinguish whether the enemy in question is entirely mechanical or not. I wanted to ensure they look as if they may have gone too far in biological enhancement to the point where their former selves are no longer recognizable, similar to the Combine in Half-Life 2.
As I went on, I wanted to incoporate a symbol that would represent the soldiers, much like that of the scientist. I played with the symbol ‘X’ to communicate a clear message of an unstable nature and a military force of death. The player would confront this symbol not only on their armbands but also appropiately on their digital ballistic goggle interface.
I wanted to illustrate the goggles being the primary trademark of the enemy. Each are installed with augmented reality to improve their awareness in combat, which in turn also allows the main character tamper into their visual feed. The eye expressions vary depending on behaviours to help convey minimal emotion with the X symbol being their default to impose fear on any opposition. I found when playing through games like F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon), my confidence in battle was challenged when met with enemies that are replicas of each other, devoid of any visual emotion aside from their voices.
Upon more concept work, I wanted to give the wolves a more oriental look so I experimented a little, taking inspiration from anatomy designs in Lord Shen’s wolf army from Kung Fu Panda 2.
What I Will Focus On Until Our Presentation
- Model the player character and potentially more characters if possible.
- Give the player model basic animations.
- Lend a hand in touching up the project where needed.
- Implement the code basis for sight-jacking, platforming and grappel-hooking.
