Day 10 of 100 [Alex_ADEdge]

First 1/10th of the challenge done!

In the initial few days a few of us talked about setting mini-goals for each 10 day leg (that work towards our primary end goals) and then aim to stick to those as best we could. That means a) setting realistic goals we feel we can achieve in 10 days and b) actually doing the work! (easier said than done on all counts)

Hour Stats:

My two goals for this first 10 days were:

1. dogeDIG: Create a (much needed) style guide setup and start new style tests
2. Trooper/Character Design: Complete the initial base mesh model for the entire soldier, ready for the ZBrush tutorials

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Progress Report (dogeDIG)

I’ve been struggling a bit to nail down proper constraints for the style for dogeDIG. I thought I had it worked out a while back but throughout March I’ve backtracked on a few things and ended up realizing on day 1 of the challenge (after listening to The Debug Log Podcast on World Building) that I needed some kind of formal ‘Style Guide Document’ or SGD. I have put a lot of work into a Game Design Document (GDD) previously but I’ve yet to jump into the details/constraints of the visual style.

Whats been messing me around most is the idea I’ve had for how the characters will look visually, of how they will animate and how their implementation within Unity itself would work. What I’ve had in mind is a multifaceted setup and if I want to avoid constantly backtracking in development then I’ll need to work out many things in advance – ie starting with purely the design language I’ll be using for the characters before things get too complicated.

In the March warmup challenge I got a bit frustrated with the initial ‘baseDOGE’ character design and switched to working on a Bat character. I’d made a concept a while ago and it turned out much better than the more complicated doge model. I think it was the minimalism that really did it. So to backtrack away from working on the doge in this first 10 days Ive been experimenting with the style of the bat – testing some animations and in-general examining what works better about this design.

 

So all-in-all by putting together the beginnings of a SGD I feel like Ive taken a few steps forwards and feel a lot better about the direction of the design. There is still a lot of experimenting to do but for days 11-20 I’m aiming to tackle some of the technical issues I’m facing in setting up these characters in Unity, which should help me constrain the design a bit more.

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Progress Report (Trooper/Game Art Character)

I easily put the most hours into working on the trooper during this first 10 days. Its nice to be back into 3D modelling and actually working on a full project. In preparation for stating the ZBrush  sculpting tutorials I thought it would be a good idea to get a low poly mesh of the trooper finished in this 10 days. It should give me a good foundation for the sculpting and in particular the concept sketches that come before. If I have a rigged trooper I can at least pose it and use some renders as the basis for some concept, since I’m not that keen on drawing it by hand – killing 2 birds with one stone!

Looking at progress: I finished the helmet on day 3 (I’d started this bit last year in my previous challenge)

By day 7 I’d worked on the legs and was starting on the body:

And then by day 10 (after staying up way too late on the morning of day 8 modelling) I had the entire armour setup:

Overall, really happy with how the trooper model is progressing. For days 11-20 Im looking at finishing rigging the character, getting concept art done. I’ll get to the ZBrush parts if I progress far enough (where I feel like I might be best to begin with a gun or the side pouches or something small for practice before moving on to the character) but I feel like I should put a bit more time into dogeDIG in this next leg so progress might have to slow down a bit.

Thats all for now!