UV mapping

One of my roles in the group is UV mapping. As with 3D modelling, UV mapping is one of the stages in this asset creation pipeline that I enjoy the most.

With the UV map for the whippet body, I have taken a different approach from what I am used to doing. I have tried to keep the UV map of the car as intact as possible. I always found it frustrating with my other UV maps that had gaps which made it frustrating to texture. Since Andy will be doing the textures, I wanted to make the UV map as easy as possible to read and to apply textures.

Assets

To create assets, I have taken Annabeths advice of always trying to push the design of the assets. Rather than rework the same design until I'm happy with the final look, I have done various designs to add more variety and choice. It's easier to come up with a better final design when you have various designs to choose from rather than trying to rework the original one.

I've designed various lights for the game. I split the lighting into 3 groups, lamp posts, wall mounted lights and handmade lights. Here are the lamp posts.

I looked at art deco shapes and they worked really well with these designs. I really liked how a lot of them turned out. Some of them have banners to display these various adverts or banners I mentioned earlier.

Here are some various designs for cars. We wanted several cars, some wrecked in the environment, so I looked at old cars and car parts and stretched them or attached them to different car parts. Here are several of the designs.

After I showed these designs to the rest of the group, they particularly liked the bottom left one, so I reworked this into a turnaround.

I designed the turnaround so that it looked aesthetically pleasing. It could have been an advert for the car itself. I named the car the 'Whippet' and modelled it. You can see the model in earlier posts.

The Humour of the Game

We talked a lot about incorporating weird jokes in the game ranging from pin-up guys to having a Jeff Goldblum marauder character. One way we decided quite early on was to include billboards or posters for funny adverts. It is a fun visual way to give more life to the world and to also give the player more incentive to explore the world.

I came up with this character called guy pin-up and he would run this pin-up course. Here he is in his full bearded glory.

Rachel Chadwick

I was given the task of designing the lead character of the game, Rachel Chadwick. Although she is never actually shown outside of the mech, we still wanted a fully formed character behind the mech to give it some personality. Also, her face might be seen in dialogue screens similar to that of borderlands.

At one point, we were thinking of the soldier girl becoming the protagonist, however this was not the case. I think we all took some inspiration from it since Tim's character sheet was similar, so I used that image as a starting point.

I tried different looks to give Tim some choice. I personally like number 2 the best, however we finally settled on a combination between 2 and 4, with 4 having 2's hair style.

Luftrausers

I mentioned in an early post being inspired by Vlambeer's games. Luftrausers is probably the closest inspiration in terms of the themes of the game and its hectic gameplay. The game intends to make the player the best fighter pilot ever by putting them against waves of other flying enemies and fighting it out in the sky to another amazing soundtrack.

The game is inspired by old WW1 elements seen in the distinctive sepia aesthetic and in the marching soundtrack.

What I like about it and how I think it relates is that Vlambeer took the time to create a really responsive game. They take a long time in making sure that the player feels good all the time with whatever they are doing in-game which is something that we need to consider. Luftrausers can be played for free here

Process of Concept Art

I think its important to talk about my own process when I'm painting. I start by getting down basic shapes that would convey the idea in the best way. If it manages to convey the idea quite well, I usually leave it and move on to getting down other ideas. This process is more about churning out as many ideas as I can rather than focusing on make one piece look really nice.

With some pieces, particularly the strongman and the characters, I go into more detail and use more colours since colour can suggest a lot more than form. For example, colour on the strong man helped to suggest the tone of the mech. It's a process of showing ideas to the group and reworking them until it looks correct.

 

 

Environment

I found it difficult designing the environment. I couldn't figure out the aesthetic of the buildings and the space in relation to these buildings in photoshop, so I decided to work in maya instead.

I find it easier, when designing larger assets like buildings, that its easier to view them in the 3D space of maya. I can quickly see how it would work and how things like scale would affect it.

I also had a go at defining the space in the second environment. Although it is shabby, I did the space in modular pieces. The idea wasn't really to get something that looks nice but to make something quickly while still maintaining some of the style we are going for. Working in modular pieces gave me the idea of applying to other things, like the whippet, to give assets more variation if they are in the scene more than once.

The First Few Assets in Maya

The Whippet is the first asset I have modelled for the project. Modelling cars is difficult since they need to look quite smooth while still maintain their distinctive shape.

Since the model is supposed to be wrecked, I modelled the car in parts for a lot more variety when it comes to putting several of them in game. Modelling assets in separate parts seems like the way to go.

The Spider Mech didn't require a turnaround since it wasn't that complicated to model. I used the initial concept art image as reference. It really is a rectangle with several other rectangles sticking out of it. Modelling without a turnaround and specific images in Maya really helped me to understand more about the process of modelling. Like painting, modelling is a series of small, well-thought out steps.

Tim modelled the weapon of sass destruction first. I later added some more features and changed the design to make it more efficient.

The sons of iron sculpture mech didn't require a turnaround as well. Modelling the mech was more of a challenge, just to see if I could make something like that from the concept art. I'm surprised at how well the it looks in the end. Although some of the verts are in awkward positions, the statue is far away enough for the player to not notice these mistakes.

After I finished it, I always thought it was kind of ridiculous, but from moving it around it only looks that way from certain angles.

If you are a person on the ground, with the statue aiming the spear right at you, then it would be frightening.

Other Media that Inspired the Project

 Mad Max's distopian aesthetic captures the style of the marauders really well. The mix of machinery and punk fashion works really well to suggest a dystopian world.

Backwater Gospel looks amazing. It looks dark but each character manages to stand out which I think is remarkable when the character are as gritty and dirty as the world itself.

Backwatter Gospel also provided some inspiration from the assets.

Although the Iron Giant isn't similar aesthetically, the film has the right tone and humour.

Games

In terms of the aesthetic, I have tried to stay away from games that specifically have mechs in them. However in terms of other elements like game play, animations and level design, its important to study these games to understand how these game work.

 Hawken is a free-to-play FPS that tries to capture the feeling of piloting a mech. Although the game is an FPS, we can learn a lot from Hawken. The mechs in our game need to feel responsive in order for the game to feel fun.

Brigador is an upcoming indie game. The game is an isometric shooter so our game has similar game play. Brigador is particularly interesting right now since it is still in development and the dev team, stellar jockeys, have been releasing devlogs on the games development. Its useful seeing how other people are doing things, particularly when we are beginners at this.

Although I've been avoiding mech games, I've been looking at games that have interesting aesthetic styles.

Dishonoured and Team Fortress 2 have been big influences on the aesthetic. Both games look vibrant and distinct. Everything manages to stand out while still being cohesive to the overall design.

Coding

Since we are making a game, it was important to focus on game mechanics early on in development. Since none of us are programmers, developing game play itself is new to us. I have had an interest in coding before the start of the module and Tim wanted to give it a try as well, so we both decided to code together. Since I am focusing more on the aesthetic of the project, Tim would be the main programmer since he was also writing the game design document which also included details on game play.

We plan to work in Unity and make use of the angrybots tutorial found in the unity package. Since the angrybots mechanic is similar to ours, we were thinking of taking that main mechanic and applying it to our own project.

Since we are doing it this way, we will hopefully always have a functioning game. This also lets us focus on our own specific roles and interests.

Ideas for the Resistance

The resistance are all about working towards one goal and the mechs should emulate that in their design. The mechs should be efficient and more army like but less technologically advanced than the sons of iron. The resistance don’t have the time or the resources to make their mechs as elegant so any artistic influence is painted on by the mech pilots themselves, similar to the planes in WWII.

I found it quite hard to design the resistance mechs so Andy focused on the resistance and I focused on the Sons of Iron. We both had a go at the marauders. After I had seen Andy's work, it gave me some ideas which resulted in this.

I think the mech captures the aesthetic of the resistance quite well. The mech looks like a military mech while its marking signify the personality of its pilot. However, the mech itself was wrong for the project we were making. We were mainly focusing on mechs that had guns and since this mech was based on melee it just didn't fit the world.

We liked the idea that this mech was an earlier design and its ruins can be found somewhere in the environment.

Marauders

The marauders are a band of different tribes  and cultures trying to survive while causing havoc at the same time. They are drunk most of the time and will live anywhere and are able to build anything out of everything.

I started out with developing some characters to capture the aesthetic of the marauders. Since the mechs are put together out of things they can find, there would be elements of them that would be quite human and personal to the people who made it.

Although the marauders were dirty, there was something modern about them. They have a punk aesthetic which provides an interesting contrast to the other factions. Although the resistance are punk, the marauders are more brutal about it.

We did some research into metal bands and album covers, which can be found in the marauders moodboard, so I tried to incorporate these elements into the mechs. The mechs needed to look like they were old and built out of scrap but strong enough to be a withstanding force against the marauders and the resistance.

The first mech wasn't really a mech but a really big battering ram since I wasn't sure of how technologically developed they were. We talked about the marauders being former miners or steel workers so I added a large circle blade. (This later was changed to a drill)

 These later designs I felt were a bit too technical and I struggled for a bit trying to work out how they would have the tech to be a powerful force against these other factions. We eventually came up with the idea that the marauders would salvage parts from other mechs of other factions.

 


















The design above was inspired by the zeppelin mech from the Sons of Iron faction. The bottom half had blown up so they turned it up and added long clumsy legs to it.

Since the marauders were so ramshackle and random, it was difficult to nail down a specific style that would really identify them as a faction but also make each mech feel singular and personalised. The mech above was the first design I really liked. I think it captures the aesthetic of the marauders while still being powerful and menacing.

Ideas Behind the Sons of Iron

The Sons of Iron are one of the most technologically advanced factions in the game. I wanted them to look powerful and menacing but not by portraying them as dark and evil. I wanted them to have some elegance to their design and through that they would be menacing.

I looked at flourishing societies and realised that the role of art and its development becomes increasingly important as that society and its culture continues to grow. The Renaissance flourished both technologically and artistically. Many of the famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Bernini were not only artists but designers and architects and many other different things.

Bernini in particular influenced a lot of the architecture of the renaissance. He was primarily a sculptor and his sculptures were large and powerful and I think that shows in these grand and elegant designs.

After looking through some of Bernini's work, there was something powerful about incorporating art into other aspects of design. It suggests a distinguished power that shouldn't be ignored.

The first design was for the spider mech. Although it has only six legs, spider mech sounds better than ant mech.

I was partly inspired by Mad Men and the Jaguar in season 5. I liked classic cars and retaining the shape of what made them look classic in the first place. I felt that the Jaguar was too vibrant and wanted to keep the cold granite look of Bernini's sculptures so I looked further back.

The shape was classic but still felt quite cold. I worked the overall shape into the design and added the legs as a contrast to the sleek body. The legs look sharp and unwelcome and kind of act like a warning.

In later designs, I focused more on the sculpture element. I liked the idea of just being extremely blunt about it and just putting a sculpture on top of a mech.

Bernini's 'Santa Teresa' felt like an iconic image so I worked the pose into another design.

I liked the idea that these statues were faceless and were like a crazy rendition of the pilot inside, like these mechs were known for the statues on top of them.

I carried on with the sculpture theme, even incorporating elements of architecture seen in churches.

Here I exchanged the pilots cockpit for a grave and trying to incorporate elements of sculpture into the actual mech itself. I didn't like the idea because preferring the more toned down mechs above so I didn't continue with the design.

Other designs include this zeppelin mech. I think another element of these designs have been quite insect-like which adds even more to the odd designs.