zoewilkinson
Zoe Wilkinson
MA Games Art and Design Student
85 posts
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Pitch Plan
29/04/2024
I have my pitch presentation of the 1st of May, so I have tried to refine my presentation as best as I could to get across my idea effectively.
I have added in pages that focus on the group aspect of the project, as well as my own personal work for the project and the background story for my character, which I'm hoping will show how unique our narrative is.
An additional thing I decided to focus on in my pitch is effective rigging and animation for this model. Since I don't have much animation experience as a games artists, I wanted to effectively show that I've looked into the proper techniques and believe that I can do it. I have animation and rigging experience from my Bachelor's degree, so I'm confident that I have the basic background knowledge to then be able to build upon in my piece. I have added extra time for my animation stage on my Gantt chart, so hopefully it will all run smoothly!
I'll be starting the experimentation process from next week.
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Artist Post - Dustin Brown
28/04/2024
(Brown, 2024)
While getting some final inspiration before submitting my pre-production work, I found this piece by Dustin Brown. This is a 3D modelled character made using Maya. Dustin is a senior character artist at Insomniac Games, so this is a really high quality art piece to take inspiration from.
Venom has a similar head shape to the character I want to create, so in this piece I'm really looking at the way he has modelled his teeth and mouth shape. Additionally, the overall bulkiness of the character is something I'm now looking at, so using this model as a reference for muscle placement in the arms and legs will help me with my own experimentation.
The overall shininess of this model is really effective for the character. Venom is meant to be an alien that attaches to a host for survival on Earth, wrapping around the human body. The shine gives it an almost slimy look, which is exactly what this character needs. I'm looking at making my character have a slimy look overall too, like its skin is always a bit wet, so I will need to look at textures with different roughness's to achieve this.
Bibliography
Brown, D., 2024. Venom. [Online]
Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lx0NZY
[Accessed 28 April 2024].
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Final Character Design
27/04/2024
I was finally able to get a character design that I'm happy with and think will be an impactful addition to our project. I had to go in and alter the head a few times to get a better shape, but I'm overall happy with this design.
Midjourney AI generated concept art.
I also went ahead and took a colour palette from this design, which I will work with in my experimentation to decide if i want to change any colours or tones around.
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Gantt Chart
26/04/2024
Before we combined all of our dates together as a group, I wanted to create a personal Gantt chart for myself to be able to follow, which includes all of the extra time needed for blogs and presentations.
I made my chart in Excel so I will be able to alter it if i need to. I also chose to make it a daily chart rather than weekly to give a really clear idea of what dates I will be using and how long each section will last for.
I will be using this chart on my pitch rather than the group one, simply because the group one is just too big to effectively show that I've planned out all of my timings.
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AI Characters
24/04/2024
To choose a final character design that looked professional, I AI generated lots of different ideas that could potentially work.
I really struggled to get the exact look I wanted from my own concept art, with a lot of generations coming out too human, too alien or just no where near what I wanted.
After many, many iterations, I finally got a piece I could work with and generated more variations of it.
This character is much bulkier than my original design, but the overall idea is much closer than anything else I've had so far.
I will be getting more variations of it top decide on a final design.
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AI Logos
22/04/2024
Since none of us are concept artists, we decided to use AI to generate some logo designs to decide how we want to brand ourselves.
I used Midjourney to generate these designs, choosing to focus on either the creature idea or the computer idea.
We decided as a group that while the creature logos were really cool, the cartoon computer design went nicely with our Cold War themed lab from the 60s, so we chose this as our logo.
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Artist Post - Luke Starkie
21/04/2024
(Starkie, 2023)
I found this brilliant creature sculpt today. Luke Starkie is a freelance creature sculptor, creating high quality pieces like this.
The sculpting of this piece is so inspiring to me, as creature sculptor is a job role I would love to one day be able to achieve. The sharp tendons under the skin around the neck are so eye catching and the overall design is really similar to the character design I was originally picturing for my own work.
From this artwork, what's really standing out to me other than the sculpting is the texturing. The hand painted vein lines up the legs are effective at creating a feeling of translucent skin, along with the discolouration throughout the body.
I really like this colour palette used, and will be going forward with a similar colour palette for my own work.
Bibliography
Starkie, L., 2023. Dancer. [Online]
Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VJVE15
[Accessed 21 April 2024].
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Personal Learning Project
20/04/2024
I wanted to create a piece for my portfolio that could be submitted for the internship I previously discussed.
I wanted to experiment with something new to balance out my portfolio, so I looked at hard surface modelling a prop piece.
Staying on brand for the internship, I chose to model a light saber because I think the shape is really interesting, while also being fairly beginner friendly as someone who has very little experience with hard surface work.
I used a reference image and a circle in blender, and extruded the shape to be exactly what I needed it to be so i didn't sculpt any part of this piece which is very different for me.
I also used the texturing tools in Blender which I haven't done much experimenting with previously, but I think it was very effective for this piece. For a first try at this kind of modelling I'm very pleased, and considering looking more at this style in the future to research.
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Human Experimentation Research
19/04/2024
Since my character is based around human testing and genetic experimentation, we decided it would be beneficial for me to research into real cases of human experimentation in history for background knowledge.
Obviously this isn't a nice topic to research, but I think my character's background information will benefit from it.
I found that a lot of human experimentation was done around different wars, like World War One, World War Two, and the Cold War. In World War Two, the Nazi's performed "medical experiments" on their prisoners, which involved mutilation and torture.
During the Cold War, the CIA experimented on people to try and perfect mind control by giving people psychedelics and hypnosis.
After World War One, Japan started developing germ warfare tactics and exposed their prisoners to a number of toxins and diseases, including anthrax, to test what would happen if they were used in a bomb. They also performed dissections of living people.
These cases are really horrible but also very real. While I will not give my character any of these background stories out of respect to the victims, I have been able to form more of an idea of where my character came from in our narrative.
Bibliography
Trimarchi, M., 2024. 10 Outrageous Experiments Conducted on Humans. [Online]
Available at: https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/10-outrageous-experiments-conducted-on-humans.htm
[Accessed 19 April 2024].
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Pre-Production Feedback
17/04/2024
We had a chance to show our pre-production document so far to Neil today and got so much helpful feedback for what to add or improve upon.
My main focuses for the next steps of our pre-production are to research real examples of human experimentation in history, to show an overall background knowledge of our idea.
I will also be looking at AI generating some artwork, bot for logo ideas and for my concept art to have a more professional looking piece. For this I will be using Midjourney because I know it's a fairly reliable software at making something at least close to the idea you imagined.
I will also be adding in more artist inspirations to my section of the document, and adding in some film and game research for the group as a whole from research I have already done in my idea generation process.
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Tutorial Inspiration
16/04/2024
youtube
(BlankFaceStudios, 2021)
I found this amazing video of changing a basic base mesh into a terrifying monster that I've taken a lot of inspiration from. Using sculpting techniques, he completely deformed a human model into a humanoid monster.
I plan to experiment with this idea and try and achieve a similar outcome. Using a base mesh would really help with my overall time constraints for this project, so if i can find an effective way to use one to build my character from I absolutely will.
I found it really interesting watching his texturing process, as he completely texture painted the model in Blender. I will still be choosing to use Substance Painter for my texturing, but I will be looking back at the techniques he used to texture his work.
Additionally, he used some sculpting tools that I haven never thought of using but looked like they would be really effective for a project like this, so I'm taking that information and keeping it in mind for my experimentation.
Bibliography
BlankFaceStudios, 2021. I Turn A Human Into A Monster In Blender || Blender 2.9 Monster Sculpt. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxWmcgWL1mc&t=47s&ab_channel=BlankFaceStudios
[Accessed 16 April 2024].
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Finished Concept Sketch
14/04/2024
Continuing to plan my character design, I decided to finish my original concept art sketch to get a clearer idea of what I really wanted this character to look like.
I wanted to follow a certain colour palette for this creature, looking at muted skin tones with pops of pink and red throughout for discolouration. Currently, I'm still liking the idea of a scrawny, bony character design, something that looks a bit malnourished. However this could still change.
Obviously I am not a concept art, so this won't be used as my official final design, but I am using it as a base for the idea I want to get across and AI generating further ideas using Midjourny.
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Festival Research
10/04/2024
With the group now properly starting our pre-production document, I wanted to look at some possible places our final piece could be submitted, for festivals and competitions.
Unfortunately, we won't be able to make it in time to get into the Rookies for this year, however we'll still be eligible to apply next year since we'll be at less than a year of industry experience, so we will definitely be looking at getting it submitted next year.
I also looked at Raindance, which is actually a film festival. Usually I wouldn't say our work would apply to this, however because we're planning to make a cinematic I think this will actually look like a short film, and therefore fit the theme.
The final competition I looked at was the Independent Games Summit. This is a specific games competition, so this would be for the game created from this idea, rather than the trailer we're planning to make for this submission.
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Environment Research
09/04/2024
youtube
(ActionAdventureTwins, 2022)
I looked into a lot of YouTube videos to start getting some inspiration for an underground base environment and came across this channel.
In this video, these two friends are exploring an abandoned pool room at a nuclear laboratory (which actually feels similar to our group idea!). I'm personally not focusing on any of the water here because that's not something we talked about including in our environment, but instead at the textures in the pipework and the ceilings.
I like the way the building looks overall, with pipes and metal everywhere that now have some amazing rust from degradation over the years. The narrow tunnels are also incredibly unsettling, which would be great for a turnaround show to see the monster character.
Bibliography
ActionAdventureTwins, 2022. Poolrooms The Nuclear Laboratory. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2dsnOyq54A&ab_channel=ActionAdventureTwins
[Accessed 9 April 2024].
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Finalised Idea
08/04/2024
With Easter break being over, we were finally able to get together as a group and share all of our individual ideas. I had added some additional research to my PureRef.
We spent a long time as a group going over exactly what each of us had been thinking about over the break and decided to combine a few ideas together to create a really unique concept.
We settled on the idea of having the environment as an old, abandoned military base from the Cold War, that was sealed to keep a genetically engineered monster inside.
I think this is such an interesting idea for a game narrative. It uses the inspiration we found from other pieces of media, without directly ripping off anything.
We went off separately to research this new idea and share what we find. We have a Discord server together where we're putting all of our thoughts and ideas into, so we're keeping consistent communication.
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Artist Post - Julian Calle
06/04/2024
(Calle, 2019)
I've been looking at environment concept artists to get inspiration for my narrative environments. Justin Calle is a professional concept artist, focusing on environments.
This piece really interested me for my alien planet narrative. I can picture it being used as the entry to the damaged base, that the player has to walk through to find the horrors inside.
From this piece I'm taking a lot of inspiration from the overall design of the entrance, but also from the colour palette and lighting choices, Something I haven't looked into much yet is colour palette choices and how I can use colour to push my narrative, I've been focused more on the use of lighting for this. This palette of greens and blues in different shades creates a sense of foreboding, not being colours we really see in natural lighting. I will be looking at bringing this idea of finding colour palettes through to my pre-production document.
Bibliography
Calle, J., 2019. Alien 40th Anniversary Short Film: "Ore". [Online]
Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v1wvGv
[Accessed 20 March 2024].
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Initial Narrative Ideas
01/04/2024
I came up with a few narrative ideas to share with my group for idea generations.
Story Summary 1: After losing contact with the team sent to an unknown alien planet for research purposes, two astronauts are sent out to see if they can recover them. Upon arrival, they find the research base ransacked and destroyed, only a few remnants of their team leftover. While attempting to escape and save themselves, they come across the creatures that did this and have to fight their way out.
Story Summary 2: On a weekend away at a cabin in the woods, a group of friends are woken up by strange and unfamiliar noises outside. Unsettled by this, they decide to try and find the source of the noise and travel into the woods to see if they can find it, but don’t expect to find an alien monster, hungry and ready to attack. (Slenderman 2012 style)
Story Summary 3: Two vloggers with a sense for adventure find a way into a previously sealed crypt, what could possibly go wrong? They record themselves searching through the crypt, looking for items and areas that will make the best video possible, but soon find out why the crypt was so well sealed when they come across the creatures deep inside.
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