Car Modelling - Mustang 04

Fourth workshop on the mustang, defining the basic shape of the rear of the car, as well as refining the overall geometry.

Character Design Development

Been a long time coming, but I've finally uploaded some of the character designs I've been working on for the second project. Refer to my earlier post for the underlying narrative behind these designs.

Theme: Soldier/Cyborgs

Hero








Villain




Sidekick

Character Design Workshop #04

In this workshop, we began to look at the various objects and props of specific characters. Their object, be it a weapon or staff, often retains the same principles of shapes given to the characters. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf wields a staff that is rounded with curves which creates a smooth elegant impression to reflect his nature of order and justice. Whereas the evil wizard Saruman wields a staff with many pointed triangular edges to reflect his disposition of towards power and chaos.



Effectively, the design of objects that a character wields or is associated with, must also be taken into consideration to further reinforce the nature of the character.

Later, we began to add character to a random selection of objects by manipulating the pre-existing shape of the object. In my case, the objects were associated to a living room, from a TV, couch, armchair, radio and speakers.

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) is the first of several film adaptations of the BBC television series 'The Quatermass Experiment' written by Nigel Kneale. The series features Professor Bernard Quatermass and his adventures as he confronts sinister alien forces that threaten to destroy humanity.



The plot of the film adaptation which is essentially a condensed version of the series, involves the return of the first manned flight into space with astronaut Victor Carroon, landing a rocket of Quatermass's design in the fields of England. However, it soon becomes clear that something is amiss with two crew members missing and with Carroon himself having been infected by a foreign entity, that begins to mutate his body into an alien organism. As the alien organism seeks to reproduce, Quatermass and his associates must race to track and stop the creature to prevent an invasion of global proportions.




Carroon naturally becomes more intriguing to watch as we witness his slow continual mutation. Sadly, he seems confused and tormented at the realisation of his inevitable fate, succumbing to the ill intentions of the alien organism as he devourers all in his wake in a seemingly uncontrolled rampage. Unfortunately, Quatermass and his associates are too late to discover and stop the mutation process, and are left with the only option to kill Carroon in his fully mutated form.




Interestingly, in the original ending of the TV series, Quatermass learns that the consciousness of the three astronauts still survived in some latent form inside the monster. When the professor confronts the creature in the final scene, he is able to appeal to these vestigial human personalities and convince them to will the monster to die, effectively committing suicide. I find the thought rather unsettling that perhaps the human side of Carroon was still concious and aware of his monstrous form and actions, and that the other two astronauts were 'apart' of him. Its probably best if he wasn't, and that he was simply killed as in the less convoluted ending of the film adaptation.

Remarkably, despite all that has happened, Quatermass turns to claim 'We're going to start again!' and ends by launching another rocket into space to send more unsuspecting astronauts to their doom.

The appeal of The Quatermass Experiment to sci-fi audiences is evident with the ever dormant threat from outer space. As critic Ali Catterall suggests, The Quatermass Xperiment is a 'thoughtful, hard-hitting, and bizarrely touching landmark of the sci-fi genre', which becomes particularly apparent with such iconic and striking scenes such as the rocket ship itself embedded in the fields of England.



Overall, the original film adaptation The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) is an intriguing classic and testament to the sci-fi genre, which still continues to influences us to this day with a recent 2005 adaptation as a television series.

Character Design - Narrative

I’ve been trying to come up with some narrative ideas for the given cartoon show to help fuel my character designs. Set in an alternate world with technology slightly more advanced than our own, the setup is as follows:

Our hero must fight to save the world against the evil cyborg forces of VILLAIN. Their terror and oppression has reigned supreme over the lands and has scattered the neighbouring nations into chaos and disarray. As the last surviving subject of the Renatus* Project, Hero must unite the lands before it is too late and stop VILLAIN once and for all.

*Renatus (Latin for rebirth)

Hero
Hero is the most advanced subject of the Renatus Project, a project designed to refit and augment soldiers with cybernetic technology. Having suffered a particularly fatal injury that left him on the verge of death, Hero required some of the most advanced forms of cybernetic technology to revive him. However, the process was never fully complete with the facility being destroyed under the attack of VILLAIN – Hero barely escaped with his life. Confused and ill-informed of the cybernetic technology invested in him, Hero soon becomes the last hope capable of defeating VILLAIN.

My initial thoughts for Hero is to be a young ‘coming of age’ male perhaps in his early twenties, to reflect his initial naivety of the technology his possesses. Therein lies the character arch where he learns how to wield his abilities and accept the responsibility that has been placed upon him. As such, perhaps he should be of an athletic build and not too muscular, while also having some visible scarring from his injury. A limb or two can be replaced with a cybernetic one, although the key is to retain his humanity with a visible human face and form.

While the technology of Hero may perhaps be more advanced than in the video below, the exoskeleton suit is certainly an intriguing idea and could perhaps be the technology of the standard soldiers that Hero will fight.



Villain
Her motivation for conquest is for the expansion of her empire with world domination in sights. Yet, the arrival of Hero and the technology he possesses sparks her interests, and thus begins a hunt to capture Hero and take the technology from him.

I intend to make the villain a female character in order to juxtapose the typical male archetype of a soldier cyborg. In this way, I must maintain a fine balance between femininity and power to ensure the character remains appealing as a woman while similarly appearing to possess the authority to lead her minions.

Perhaps a prime example of a female villain cyborg is the Borg Queen from the Star Trek series. She very much maintains her female form and structure in a sensual and compelling way that is also hauntingly frightening with her lack of humanity and relentless sense of power and authority.



Check out fascinating documentary of the borg queen herself in the video below, note her particular mannerisms that are quite captivating.


Sidekick
I’m still unsure about the sidekick character, whether he/she/it will be assisting the hero or the villain. My initial thoughts are to have a robotic/mechanical creature of a smaller stature that assists the major character, perhaps similar to that of Mushu in Mulan but in a more pantomime way such as in Wall-E. Although its not strictly a cyborg, I believe a robot/mechanical creature will fit in the world of the cartoon show.



Hopefully, I'll get some designs up soon but feel free to let me know what you think.

Car Modelling - Mustang 03

Third workshop continuing the car model, refining the front and side door.

Generi Guy Lipsync 03 - Tongue/Blink

Final part of the lip syncing process adding tongue and blink animations, along with subtle movements of the brow and eyes for added expression.

Character Design Workshop #03

In our latest character workshop, we looked further into the differing shapes between male and female characters. We began to de-construct some well known characters to identify their fundamental shapes which is essential in developing to a strong character design. Later, we also began to gender swap these masculine characters into female versions by adjusting the various shapes and forms respectively.

Here are the basic shapes of Yoda, Obelix, Jafar, Mushu, and Hercules, along with an alternate female form.


Here is a great example of gender swapping with the character Obelix by our lecturer Justin Wyatt. Notice the smaller nose, larger lips and raised bottom for a comedic female quality in such a large character.

KLED Animations Logo

Just wanted to update on the group project side of things, we've finally got the logo complete a few days back after some many revisions. Our studio name has changed to KLED Animations and we've updated the blog, so check it out and update your links to http://kled-animations.blogspot.com/.



The logo features our initials read as one word 'KLED', along with a fun astronaut character over the crescent of a moon to give the impression of a creative brand.

Here were some of the logo designs I contributed to the group.


Some of our previous designs, although competent, were simply too ambiguous to be recognised as a film/animation brand, becoming more like a product design label. Thus, changing the typography, the use of colour and the addition of a character helped to identify our logo as a creative, animation studio.

Eurogamer Expo 2010

Today I went down to the Eurogamer Expo at Earl's Court, a convention host to some of the up and coming games.


Me with some funky looking NVIDIA glasses for a live 3D presentation.

There were plenty of games on the show floor to play but the real highlight of the day was attending some of the developer sessions, which are presentations led by the developers giving an insight into their game and some of creative and technical decisions therein. Some of the presentations I was able to attend were Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Polish developers CD Projekt and The Witcher 2, Sega's Shogun 2: Total War and finally iD Software/Bethesda's new first person shooter RAGE.




Ninja Theory presented some great concept art for their game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, which was intriguingly inspired by Monkey King - a character from the Chinese epic novel Journey to the West that has seen many televised and film adaptations, something of which I was quite enthused about in my childhood. The game itself is basically a Western adaptation of the character, only with a completely different setting from the old Chinese fantasy tales. As such, it was originally titled Monkey: Journey to the West, although this had to change due to copyright restrictions. They also explored some of the creative and technical processes they do from sound capture to character animation block tests - a sort of previs if you will focusing on capturing the movement and animation of a character.

Character concepts



Motion-capture was used for in-game cutscenes and dialogue to give further personality to the characters.

Environment concepts



From the other developer sessions, it was great to see some gameplay with the added bonus of developers giving live commentary on the game itself with the design choices they made. They were all equally brilliant; although the developer session of RAGE felt particularly special seeing as not much of the game has been showed to the public, so it felt great to catch a first look on the game. Unfortunately, this meant that no photography or video recording was allowed.

Its also interesting to note that there is a career corner at the convention, where you can present your portfolio to some game developer companies for a chance at recognition.

Overall, I had a fun day out and will most certainly be considering going again next year.

Links:
Eurogamer.net
Eurogamer Expo 2010

Car Modelling - Mustang 02

With the basic shape of the model done, we next moved on developing the front of the car refining the shape and details.

Generi Guy Lipsync 02 - Phonemes

Next step in lip syncing. This piece now introduces the Phoneme movements of the mouth along with the previous jaw movement.