Hadiyah Color Turn-Around

Color!

The 3rd person camera will be looking at her back most of the time in-game, so I did color comps from a rear view. I also figured that since the camera is above her, she'll most likely be set against a tan stone floor color.

The battleship-style label grid is so that my teammates and I can communicate quickly and clearly about the different options over our online forum while we get only limited face time during summer semester.  

Hadiyah 1st Rough Turn-Around

Hadiyah Refinement

Getting closer to a final rough character design. I took my team's feedback and mix-and-matched our favorite pieces. 

Bladed or Blunt?

Can't design a warrior without her weapon. I've been exploring the options: battle ax? mace? war hammer? We've even toyed with the idea that she made herself a weapon out of an old anvil. The anvil-hammer is probably too humorous for the tone of this game, but it was fun to try out none the less. 

Hadiyah Character Exploration

We've been working on our story, character relationships, and visual exploration simultaneously. 

I've been doing the visual development, starting with silhouette, stance, and general body build. We knew we wanted her to read as strong and capable, so I'm leaning toward a stockier build and heavier weapons. She's almost certainly a melee fighter.

Jay W. Aplegren

Meet Jay, the antagonist of my spring film project, Goes Around. Jay's kind of a jerk. But don't worry, he's going to get what's coming to him. 

Mo'kai Character Sheet and Still Frame

The final character sheet offers a comparison between the original concept art and the 3D model.. Below is one of my favorite frames from the film. 

Mo'kai is running a time trial through an obstacle course as a right of passage. The film opens on him navigating the final stretch of a high-tech pipe gorge.  After nearly missing his leap over a deep chasm, he crosses the finish line and struts away victorious.

While the story is short and simple, this project was mostly about pulling off an entire film by myself. Character design, world building, and design documents were prepared ahead of time from a loose prompt. Then the remaining visual development, modeling, textures, rigging, animation, rendering and compositing were crammed into a single 14-week semester. Most of the work was done in 3DS Max, textures created in Photoshop, and compositing done with After Effects.

Phorbas of Argos, Armored Satyr

The idea here was that the creatures of Greek myth stuck around and were simply incorporated into the societies which developed in the Mediterranean after the fall of Rome. I placed this guy roughly in the period of the early Crusades, which gave me some liberty to mix and match periods of armor. He's a mercenary with a collection of pieces picked up along his journeys. 

When it came to the animal anatomy, the biggest challenge was getting the right mechanic without making him look dainty and unstable. He's supposed to be a warrior, after all. For that, I looked at the chunky hoofs of Clydesdales and beefed up the leg muscles accordingly.  

Polly Watson

My inspiration for Polly was the golden era of movie musicals, specifically a book I'd been reading about the backstage culture on the sets. As opposed to the typically quiet and good-natured backup dancers, "the knitters," whose body shapes and measurements are all uniform within a very specific range, Polly is a leading lady, and her forms are more extreme and exaggerated. As soon as she walks into a room, you can tell that she'd never fit in with the chorus line. Despite her talents as a dancer, her career will not last long because of her spoiled diva attitude, racy costume choices (Bare navel! In the 1930's! Scandal!) and tumultuous attempts to seduce the film's producer. 

Will Fain Concept Art

This is the concept art for my first human character to be modeled in 3DS Max. The face and proportions are modeled after my friend Will, and the character design was inspired by the story and world-building of Janelle Monáe's albums, The ArchAndroid and Metropolis. It is a retro-future in which it is possible for an android to be persecuted for falling in love with a human. While I didn't invent the concept of an electro-dagger, it was fun to imagine what one would look like.  

Character Design of Joni Johnston

This character design is based off a good friend of mine. I wanted to play with proportions and shapes while clearly expressing her personality and style.