KittyKABOOM Evil Queen Consepts

Before making the enemies, I wanted to make the evil commander character so that I had a better idea of what the invaders look like. I was having troble thinking of the shapes I wanted to used for the commander, but I knew I wanted her to be very tall and slim. Because of this, I desided to uses Zbrush as a tool to get some ruff ideas out. I'm not very good at Zbrush, but I know how to uses most of the basic modelling tools, and as this was just for shape ideas, I didn't mind if it didn't look polished.

I then used this to start doing some different designs. At first, I stuck with more of  a demon/alien design aesthetic. I wanted to use a lot of sharp edges and sipcks to show that shes a bad guy. But I still wated her to look feminine and reagel, to she that she is very impotent/ has high statis. I then used more animal themes, just to help me think of different shapes. I ended up making a mouse themed one, as it would make more context with a cat themed tank. 

I wanted to work on the mouse design more, spasifacly getting the shapes and details down. I also wanted to practice some value work, so I did everything in gray scale. When making the queen, I still wanted it to look like a mouse, but I also wanted her too look evil and alien. To try and accomplish this, I used some mouse like elamants, like the buck teath and large rounded ears, but abstacted them with pointed edges to make her look dagarose. At first, I wanted the alain race to be more military based, so this character was going to be more of a galactic camcorder, but eventually I changed her to a bossy/ tatrent of a Queen, as I felt like her demanding/ selfish nature fits more for a royle character who is used to being spoled, then a solder based personality. 

Once I had finished the basic design, I added diffrent details would work for the enamies. With the frist design, people said it looked Aztec inspaired, which made her look very regal/ important. But I wanted her to look more sifi then mystical, so I didn't want to go with that one. The next two I tried to make look more spacy. The first one I tried to use mettle plates and rivets to make her look more matalic, but this became too busy looking and looks more steampunk/ had made then alien. For the last one I wanted to use more rounded shapes, to make it look more galatic/ spacey. 

After I had a better grasp on her design, I then tried out some different colours for the Queen. This was impotent as I would then use this colour scheme for the rest of the enmaies. I wanted them to look like aliens, but also look evil, so I used a lot of dark colours with some bright highlights for the detail, so that they stand out more. Thogh the red and black colours did make her look more evil, when people saw it they thoght she was some form of vampire mouse. To try and avoid this I when with the grayish blue colour to show the scifi element of it, as it looks more like metal.
I also included a little alien mouse solder by her side, just to show how much bigger she is from her subjects. I then used this to make a rended version of the concept. I was going to put her into a spaceship environment, but as environment are is my weekist skill it was taking too long. Additionally, there was no place in the game so far where the inside of the ship would be seen, so as it wane't needed for the game, I desided to not do it so that I had time to work on the more impotent thing for the game.

New Eden Mobile: Alien Animals

As the story behind New Eden is that it was a space ship from earth, I thought a way to include the earth element is to comind normal animals to make alien like ones. I wanted to make a flying one and a big cat/dog type one, but due to time testritiones i desided to just make the flinging one. The aniames I wanted to combined where a bird and a bat. This is so it could be easily recognisable, and the bat like parts will help make it look more dangerous.

I tried different ways to combined them, but I mainly wanted to keep it simple to both fit the look of the game, and make modelling and rigging quicker. 

When colouring the bat bird, I wanted it too look thretaning to a player by looking at it, so I tried to use scehems that envocke danger. The coloures I used where based off a poisonis plaint, a dragon/lizerd, a bee and for the last one I wanted it too look more alien so I used constasting colours and waired patterning. I liked the colours of the plant one most, but I desided to go with the alien one to show the game is based on a nother planet. However, I didn't like the colouers as much as it started to blend in with the enviroment of the level. So I tied out diffrent colour combanations. I when with a perpaly pink one in the end, as the rednnes made it look more dagorose, and it stood out from the greens of the level.

As I was still working on the grope project at this time, I desided to keep the enamies as sprites so I woden't have to model them. This helped me save time, but also keep to the ristricked poly count, as the character was more then ezspected.

Even thogh I didn't have time to make the tiger hedhog, I still wanted to use it for the title screen of the game. I had a lot of troble getting the body to look right, so I used the zsphere tool in ZBrush to quickly block out the shape I wanted. This helped me to pose the creature.

At first, I wanted to give this creaure a strange colour scheem like the bird bat, but it started to look to bizzare and didn't seem to fit into the world of the game. Because of this, I kept the colours ferly simple, and focised on giving it feacures that make it look alien insted.

My fist try at doing this creates wasen't so good as I tried to use the gray schale and overlay tecnque that I used for the bird. I wasen't really getting the blend of coloures right and I started to over complicat the forms. So I started again, this time making sure I kept it simple and saturated, so it matched the styling of the game.

ZBrush - Dirt Rider

ZBrush - Owl Demon

AAA Asset Assignment - Toy Carousel

For our tripe A asset assignment, I desied to make a toy carousel. I chose this as corosels are mostly sametical so I could do a lot of duplicating, but it still has a lot of small detales and separent parts that would make it interesting.

I chose this carousel as it had a nice diversity of matirales and many refrances photos from different angles. I also wanted to try making a reflective surface which is carousel has doted around.

Before starting, I decided to make a template for the main body of the carousel, as all the refrances where at an agle. I then used meany cylinders and esxrutions to make the basic shape. I then realied, as the deign around the bottom is repeated four times, it would be hard to keep them all identical if i did them separately. To solve this I cut a quarter of and made the design once, then duplicated and rotated it to comple the base. To make the flowers and the mirror, I used the quad draw tool to make the basic shapes, then duplicated to make everything smetical. I also tried to keep everything very simple, as then I could used the non smoothed version of the high poly as the low poly. I did have to flatten ou the mirrors on the top so that they use less polys, and I also delated edge loops here and there to keep the count low.

High Poly Modelling

Once I'ed finished the mesh for the high poly carousel, I worked on making the horse. To lessen the work loud, I desided to just make one horse, and then make multiple defuse maps for the different colours. I first, I thought it would be better if I try to make the whole horse out of one mesh. That way it will be easier to make the low poly, as I woden't have to wory about combining things after. However, this brought up many complications as making sure the edge flow worked all the way around way very hard. As I was making most of the components separately, I had to keep adding egde loops in places to make sure I could combined them. This became confusing and even made the topology of the horse really bad. In the end, I chose to start again from an earlier stage and made sure to make everything separately. Again, I made the mesh ferly simple and used the un-smoothed version for the low poly. I also removed the smaller details as they would be part of the normal map.

To create the finer textures like the leather and fabric, I used some alphas in ZBrush. I also used the spiel brush to make the spiels on the mirror, and the rake tool to make the hair on the horse. I also wanted to put wood paneling onto the bottom part of the carousel, but I couldn't get it to look right.

Finished High Poly

Quixel

Once I had finished the high poly and low poly models, I added smart materials in Quixel. I didn't remember how Quixel worked, so I used the sadle of the horse as a test. I remembered that every different marital needed a different color, but by doing this I also learnt that if I want something of the same marital to be a different color, it would need a different ID colour. I also exspremented with the different matirales to see what would work well. 

I used what I'd learnt in the test to make the real maps for my model. I tried to get as much as I could onto one UV Map, but as there was so many different components with different matirales, I desided to split the carousel into three parts and have one for the horse. I exported the seprent parts in high and low poly so that I could use XNormal to make the normal maps. I aplayed the maps and colour IDs to the low poly models in Maya to make sure everything was aliened properly. I continued to tweek it and move things around until I was happy with it.

I then put everything into Quixel. I used the reference images to help me chose the right matirales. I desided to use mostly plastics as it was sapost to be a toy. I used the paint marital for most of the colours as it looks hand painted, and then I used brass for the gold bits. I was going to use gold but that looked too shiny, and other metals woden't look gold eanouth when I changed its colour. I then used a sliver for all the mirrors, as that was the most refletive matiral, and a wood texure for the base. I would perfure to use a plastic as thats that the orinonal is made from, but as I coden't get the wood panaling on using nomals, I wanted the base to at lest resemble wood. The one matiral I codent get to look right was the glass. There was glass matirlas available but they didn't have the translucency that I needed. The biggest problem I found was that the normals for the mirrors on the top didn't line up properly. This may be because I had to move it around when making the low poly, so they may be in slightly different positions in the low then the high. I also over lapped the UVs of the mirror which may have also affected this.

Unreal

I haven't used Unreal before, but it was similer to making seances in Unity so I didn't find it too hard. I used the assets already in Unreal to make a small room to display the carousel in. I also made it sunset as the pinky colours suited the childlike carousel. I found a glass marital in the unreal assests so I used that for my light bulbs and put spot lights into them. I also added lights to the top ring to reflect the reference image. I also got the carosel to spin by adding a rotating tab to the middle part and horses.

Over all I really liked what I've produced. I feel, even though some of the matirales do look different from the reference, the overall effect is very strong. Doing this has help me to learn more efficient ways to make low poly models look to a higher slandered. Its also hepled me think more criticaly about diffrent matirales and what makes them different.

ZBrush - Alien Empress

To make this model I started with the default , human head mesh and used different brushes to change it. I started with a very abstracted alien head, and it started looking very regal. So I decided to try and make it look like a old empresses. This was tricky as I had to make sure it looked both feminine, and old. The femanain part was similar as I just slimed down serten features and tried to keep it very samerical. I then used alpha brushes to add a wrincal texture around her eyes and mouth. I also pulled in her cheek bones to make her look more alien but also to make it look more like saggy old skin.

When painting it, I wanted to use very earthy colours, but that made her look very muddy. So I used lighter reds and yellows to further highlight her features.

Overall, I'm really happy with the results and I am slowly picking up how to use ZBrush. However, I do feel her eyes and ears could do with more deatal, and I'm not too happy with her colour sceam as it makes her look aquatic. This isn't necessarily bad, but it's not what I was going for.

Z Brush - ZSpheres