Specialism Project

Mind Map I explored A lot of different themes, graphics, and mechanics which I could do for my specialism project. For the themes I wanted to do a Fantasy theme, however I also explored the possibility of making a Sci-fi character as well, in the end I went with a Dark Fantasy Wisp character. I also looked at different game graphics to figure what style I wanted my character to look like, for instance if they were going to look realistic or if it was a cartoon character. I also looked at different possibilities I could do with said character in VR like if they would be in a game with actual mechanics like Resident Evil 4 with the gun mechanics, or I could make a character with little mechanics like VR-chat where the character normally has nothing special except different facial expressions. lastly I looked at different Game Genres if I wanted to go a step further and make the game, also depending on the genre could impact how I want the graphics to look and the character, for instance ...

I believe that this will be one of the toughest parts to making the character as it is really difficult to style the hair without certain parts of it looking off or making the hair look natural instead of it looking like string cheese. To help me with the hair I watched this video. I must say it did help me with clearing up some parts I was confused about, for instance what I should try and make the hair look like, however it did also make me a little confused as the topology was curvy when there weren’t any verts or edges there to make that curve if that make sense. Also, the video was a time laps so it was a bit difficult to see how it was done when what I wanted to see was gone in seconds, but I just slowed down the video to help with that, but that meant that I also didn’t have any commentary to help if I needed it. The video also showed how to texture the hair however I won’t texture it yet until the rest of the model has been made. Reference 28 - Anime hair modeling & text...

This week I researched on how to make the body of the character, which is the hardest part to make for the character as there is a lot to the body, for example the feet, hands, legs, arms, torso, neck, shoulders and so on. I watched the same guy that made the head video and watched what he did to make the body. Like I said there is a lot to the body, so this video took a long time to watch but I think I have most of it down. He starts off with the bottom of the legs and then works his way up whilst keeping in mind the topology and anatomy of a human as for the knees and near the waist he adds a lot more edges and verts so that when the character is moving it doesn’t look like the characters legs are going flat, anyway from there he works his way up to the thigh area, then to the torso area, and then the neck area, he then adds the base of the arms. Once he has blocked out everything he then starts to add detail and makes previous areas look more natural with using sculpting tools in ...

For this week I decided to look at how to start making the face for the character. I first had to get a face image for reference for the character to model, which I could find on internet. So, to actually help with making the face I had a look at this video which helped me with making the face look like the reference image. Although the platform they are using to make the face is in blender, I will be using 3ds max so for some of the techniques they use in this video I will have to figure out a work around. Anyway, the video shows you exactly on how to make the face and how it should somewhat look like by the end of the process. I won’t discuss everything that happened in the video as it is an hour-long video, but I watched the video to the very end and then followed the steps until the face was complete. At the end of the video, I had learnt on how to make a face in 3DS Max and blender as well as what it should look like in the anime style, and I also learnt about topology which w...

  So now that I know how to somewhat draw the characters body type and facial features for this Week I learned how to draw outfits. Basically, for this week I researched how to make the clothing look more convincible with creases. As clothes are normally made through simple shapes the only way to make them look convincing is by adding creases. Lucky the video I watched could make creases look easy by using people in a similar position and look at the creases on them to add to my clothes. The video also makes it easier by simplifying all creases to being made of triangles. I think that is enough research for concept art, however I did learn a lot so I can use that knowledge in other projects. Anyway I continued with my characters concept art, by cleaning it up in photoshop as well as colouring it in. I think that it turned out really well. Most of the colours I used were from the reference images from other wisp/ghost like characters I showed previously. I did have a bit of troubl...

For this week I decided to research how to draw better, not saying that I will have a finale concept for the character to which I could model from, however I will have gained knowledge on how to draw in the style I was going for. Not only that but I could use some of the concepts as a reference on what I want the character to look like. To start I mostly followed this youtubers (MikeyMegaMega) (21,22) tutorials, because  for me he was the easiest person I could follow. I started with his Eye tutorial because the eyes are the most important part of a character. It was very tough to figure out how to make the eyes look different at different angles however I think at least I have a better understanding on how they should look. Next (23) I looked at how to draw the head shape at different angles as well as the features on the face with different positioning. The Youtuber had multiple different videos on different face types, but I went with the cute version as I think it would lo...

So, for this week I had to decide what type of character I wanted to make. In the end I went with making a Will O Wisp character as I thought it would be a tough challenge in terms of design. I looked a little into the mythology of Will O Wisps to see if I could use any details for the design, the best I could find is that they use Light and mislead people to danger. Details about the character: Hair: I want to either go with short hair like Ashley (12) from Resident Evil or Long hair like the previous example I gave (7) Eye Mask: I was thinks of adding an eye mask to the character as I think it would work with the design of the character as well as with the mythology as it would explain why they get people lost because they also can’t see, I could also make it that only one eye is being covered, If I did also want to cover an eye but not have the Eye Mask/Patch then I could just use Hair (13,14) Outfit: For the outfit I will be going for a Victorian Gothic or a Fantasy Go...

For this week I wanted to research the different options for characters I want to do for this project. Before I go into what type of characters, I want to make I just want to say that the character design will be in an anime style as that is what most avatars look like in VR chat, and it will be a little easier for me to make, then making a realistic looking character.     Option 1 – Demi Human, the first character I wanted to create was a demi-human character. The reason on why I wanted to create this type of character is because I like the animal human type designs that people come up with. I think it would be very interesting to make one of these characters as it means that I would have to give the character some animal details as well like big ears, horns or add some fur to the character. However, this is one of the most common type of Avatars you would see on VR Chat so if I was to try and make a demi-human, I would have to make it to a great quality. Examples of what ...

So, for this week I chose to research concept art for characters and learn about turnaround drawings for the character sheet. Although I won’t be drawing the face for the character and instead using a reference for the face, it doesn’t mean I can’t learn how to do a turnaround for the outfit and hair design for the character. I used this video (1) to help with the turnaround for the character. It helped me figure out positions as well as helping me figure out that I need to think about the overall design of the character and think about what I need to add to the design to fit the theme I wanted to do for the character. At the moment the character is still in the design process, so I don’t necessarily what I want to do for my character yet. Anyway, it also talks about character colour schemes and personality in the design. To be honest if worst comes to worst and I can’t draw what I want to draw then I could always look up other art work to use as a reference and then put my own twis...

Overview – For my specialism project, I wanted to make a 3D Model of a character.   Once I have completed the 3D Model, I will fully UV Unwrap the model and texture it.   Then I will rig the model so that it is able to move and will also animate the character to have different finger animations and face expressions. I intend to make the model compatible with VR so that the player can control the 3D model of the character. So basically, I will be making a VR Chat character. Methodology - As for the software I will be using; I will be using Blender to make the character model as well as unwrapping the character and rigging. I will also be using Blender for animating the character’s face expressions and finger movements. For the texturing, I will be using Photoshop, and for importing the, I will be trying Unity. However, as I don’t know unity very well, I don’t know how well it will go, so as a backup I will try importing the model to Unreal so that I can then import it to VR C...