I may have eaten my chocolate early

I'm not completely sure when Easter is but the result was the same, I once again have no chocolate.

I had hoped to get all my work out of the way by the second week but I was instead challenged to a Ninja throwing fight on Saints row 3 and everybody knows it would be dishonorable to not accept.
I wasn't quite so idle this week. Got that the texture for the remodeled palace done.

I also made some really small changes to my character project based on the feedback I received. The feedback was pretty minimal, 'add more contrast to the colours'. What I'd done so far gotten me a score in the low 50's so I was left wondering if contrasting colours were all I needed to change...where are those other 50 points? But I did what I could without feeling like it was damaging the dichotomy of the colours, neatened up some topology and added some extra finger loops for better deformation.

Again, not much was changed at all. I put some trim on their shirt patterns using their opposing colours, made the bishop symbol on their crowns a shade of the opposite colour too and altered some on the contrast slightly so none of their whites and pure white and the blacks aren't pure black. I did also give Stonewall fingerless gloves to break his arm up a bit more since it doesn't differentiate in shape as much as Gambit's.

I don't expect my marks to change by much if they change at all but it gave me a chance get some better renders of them than the ones I initially had and I fixed some mistakes I over looked in my naming convention so who knows, maybe there's a point or two in there somewhere. 

 

Dichotomy Project Post-Mortem

Final outcome

It's finally over and we may rest easy once again, for a few weeks anyway. It's no secret this project has been a persistent monkey on my back and I've been really unsure through this whole process but I did like what I finally ended up with.

Stonewall and Gambit

Overall they still have things I'm not completely happy with, mostly with my textures and mostly with Stonewall the white Bishop. The tone of the yellow on his body washes out into the white far too much and it makes the details harder to see. Gambit despite being textured in the same pattern feels like his colours are broken up more successfully and they sit together a lot better and clearer. It was also pointed out at the final presentation that the opposite tones on the shoes draw the eyes down towards them as the pure colours seem to demand attention.

In response to is I did a quick paint over of the render using shades of grey so that they colours weren't quite as strong. I to me looks like I'd have to spend some more time to get the shades correct but the alteration does seem to help balance the colour more and helps separate them from the board they're standing on.

The project over all

Regardless of the finished piece I don't think I handled this project as well as I should have done. I spent too long working with the concepts and even longed doubting any of the work I produced which greatly slowed everything down. 

As for the transition from 2D to 3D my models were quite close to identical to my plans and orthographic images so was happy with this aspect of my work and I wasn't required to alter my tri count for the models to get my desired results. I had wanted to get a bit more depth into the diffuse texture and get the glow maps working for the eyes but I was required to prioritise other things.  

Even with all that once the dust settled from concepting nightmares and deadline changes I laid out a work plan for the time frame I had left and was able to stick with it more often than not, apart from a few hurdles at the end which affected the quality of the model rigging. 

For the next project my main goal will be to not trip myself up with concepting for disproportional amounts of time once again and to have a bit more confident to avoid hesitating the point of being static. 

Bishop Modelling Continued

It's been a long project but the end is finally in sight. This is just an update to add onto the last post to cover the second character. Both characters are modeled and textured and all that is left is to use the extra time to rig the characters and produce quick props and a base to use in my renders. Overall I do like the designs but I think the black bishop works better of the two, his silhouette seems stronger and his colours work better together. I look forward to getting them side by side in a scene and wrapping this project up.
  

Bishop Modeling

Modelling for the rest of the week and the weekend went with no problems. Having modeled the white bishop I could carry the model over and swap out the head pieces then use the various tools to make the other changes to produce the second character. 

I set a budget of under 3000 tris for each model. The white bishop finished at just over 2500 and the black bishop was under 2700. I cut the count down as much as I could to the point where anymore changes would change the shape of the model, though I did upset the topology on the head and feet in an attempt to lower the count..  

I used the symmetry modifier to cut down of modelling time and the time spent working on the unwrap but got to the texturing stage and realised my texture design was asymmetrical so couldn't overlay the UVs and had to go back and repack them a few times. 

I initially created a PBR map for the white bishop but the result wasn't the cartoon like feel I was aiming for so I returned to diffuse and specular maps. 

Uvs, Diffuse and Specular map

I also intended to use a glow map to try and get a slight glow on the eyes so they didn't look so flat and painted on but I couldn't manage to get the map working in 3Ds Max so I abandoned the idea. I had planned to just finish off the texture for the second character in the next though days but the project was given a extension so I should have time to rig the models and create props to use in the renders. There's still work to do but it's nearly at an end and I really look forward to a break for Christmas.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

The week so far has been rough with 40% on my time spent still working on a concept and the remaining 60% screaming into a pillow about my concepts. I've over thought everything to the point of feeling completely lost in it all. I don't seem to be the only thing getting a little lost, dichotomy itself seems to have gone on a journey through Chinese whispers about how different the characters actually have to be and there seems to be a huge focus on scale (no pun intended), leaving me fairly certain once again about my design as sitting in a room full of people who say it's not different enough tends to do.

After returning to the shapes again I instantly hit the same unyielding brick wall of seeming not to move forward. The ideas just weren't coming and by midday Tuesday there wasn't anytime to dwell on it any longer. I hadn't walked away with a lot of ideas for the shapes so with my minimal options I went with what I thought was the strongest one being, chess. A lot of the shapes reminded me of various chess pieces and by this point I needed something to go with.

Face Off dichotomy

Having been showed an episode of a special effects show called 'Face Off' by one of the tutors in the Wednesday lecture, where contestants had to design a pair of characters that were basically, good and evil but clearly belonged together, I took from it my idea would work well as a dichotomy to have these same pieces that must play for different sides. I designed a few different pieces, mostly the Bishop and the Knight and decided the Bishop had the most potential to work with in terms of shape and design.
This also fit well into my time frame. I'd lost a huge amount of time struggling with the concepting stage and now had a small window for modelling. I wanted to make both characters, it seemed redundant to me to design a character whose purpose is to be in a pair and to only have the one in the end. The overall similarities of the designs mean I can carry the first model over and make alterations instead of making a whole new model from scratch.

I moved through the rest of the work fairly quickly and didn't get to explore as much as I could with the costumes. My main focus was trying to make sure the tonal values from the first character was inverted for the second to create that link between them with the colour palettes. 

My final colour choice was purple and yellow. Since nearly everyone when asked selected the purple for the black bishop I wanted to use the contrasting colour for the white. With the orthographic images complete I can finally move onto the modelling which after all this trouble with 2D will be a much welcome break.. 

Week 8: Character Dichotomy

Batten down the hatches, we've got a character project.
What doesn't feel like a particularly easy project either. Three weeks to design a dichotomous pair of characters and model one (or both) of them. My last work with characters was a slightly boxy gladiator so this feels like very deep water but I guessed if I flail around enough it could pass for swimming. 
   

Dichotomy: A division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.

So characters who are opposite or different but still fit together and clearly share a world and we also have completely free rein on subject, style and tri budget. It was at this point my frantic flailing starting turning into drowning. As if predicting this would happen our first class was on idea generation and how shapes can be used to depict traits about characters as commonly seen in Disney and Pixar movies. 

Behold! The Villain Chin!

Starting with basic shapes and their stereotypes for idea generation, circles for friendly, lovable characters, square for big and strong, triangles for clever, agile characters etc etc. 

  Warping and combining the shapes in different ways to get various new shapes and silhouettes which had potential to become characters. We'd used this method of brainstorming before but it was for vehicles, which it seemed to lend itself to a lot better or maybe it was just me but after a while working like this, I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere.
After giving more hours to simple shapes than no sane or productive person should, I came to the conclusion I wasn't getting useful results and backed off from the shapes to return to work with the mood boards. I decided that this project was just going to sit stagnant unless I developed some kind of idea to give me more direction. That by itself was easy said then done without tumbling straight back into the sci-fi and fantasy comfort zone.
With my work flow and time management swiftly spiralling out of control I got to the point where I was willing to settle for an idea, any idea. I begrudgingly went with the idea to use an established dichotomy of cat and dog and was hoping to create a successful anthropomorphism from the two, planning for a male and female that would have characteristics of their assigned animal. Trying to return to the lecture on shapes I'd planned idea such as triangles on the female cat character to give the impression of being sleek and agile.
I did some quick colour work just to begin exploring that so I'd have a bit more to talk about for the presentation but the silhouettes were still not correct and don't say what I need them too. You could probably pick out characteristics if I told you want they were supposed to be but other than that they're just reading as generic people. The feedback from the presentation was pretty much similar to this and I was advised to either return to my initial shape work to try to Photoshop various parts of cats and dogs together as a new base for silhouettes to try and get more of their shapes in there.

I'll most likely be returning to the shape work, I hated this concept and need very little convincing to scrap it. This project has gotten to a particularly slow, painful and directionless start  so I'm hoping the tides might turn next week.