Mushrooms!...(lighting again)

Still designing away into the night, just looking into alternative terms of lighting for the cave environment- luminescent mushrooms? I dunno. let me know what you think ^^

Speed paint...

here is a speed paint i did tonight, just to get a different feel of the exterior of the cave. I like the colours not sure about the layout but I didn't dedicate so its fine ^^ comments welcome!

bugs!

just some quick ideas for cave lighting me and jay brought up. Im sure its been donr before and these probably wont be the final ideas however it seemed the most logical concept to fit the environment.
Having fire lanterns would give off a lot of fumes- being in a cave isn't so good for the locals. also it saves a lot on resources and Archims all about living off the land ^^ comment if you have further ideas, they would be considered.

the only other light we could probably look at is cracks hidh in the caves ceiling pouring in natural light or gemstones or geodes giving off colours accenting different areas helping the eye distinguish difference.

modelling Archim...

Towards the end of summer i bought a few books and started to teach myself z brush. The main reason being i like traditional clay sculpting and it seemed a lot more appealing than Maya. this model is more of a test than a usable sculpt/model but i have learned a lot just from it alone.
here is where I'm up to i hope you like the look of it, i enjoyed sculpting it greatly.
when sarting i created myself a basic mesh in maya. i then knew i had good strong topology to work from and the model size also. the preliminary stages were dominated by just using the move tool on the imported mesh to get a good feel for a base structure.

further rough designs: Weapons

Just a heads up these were drew in an animation pencil so if you have trouble seeing the images just click on them to enlarge^^
I knocked these up the other night, I wasn't in the greatest moods for designing characters so I switched to weapons for the night. In my first finished design for Archim he is wielding a Turkish compound bow- mongolians would use them because they were light, small and could still fire to 350 feet, extremely powerful. However I didnt want to rule out the chance of crossbows; even if i didnt equip archim with one a villager could easily do so.
In these pages i was just looking at overall shapes, possible blade attatchments and other variables. I came across a pistol crossbow and thought it a great idea. For missions where you would have to sneak and assasinate they are powerful yet small and concealable.As for the ones where they look as if a ladel has been nailed to a block of wood- thats more of a medievil grenade launcher. It would be useable with shrapnel, smoke or slime bombs.
hope you like ^^

Backgrounds!

So as as I mentioned in my last post i want to start creating some concepts for enviroments so Jay could start getting a rough feel of the world I wanted to create.Enviroments have never been my strong points but ill try my best to give jay high quality referance material.
Heres some thing i pulled together tonight- I'm happy with the outcome didnt spend too long on it.


here a tweaked version of the image i did recently.

Found the direction :D

Brilliant news for me. A friend in the sister games development course based in the main campus agreed that it would be great if we could bump heads and work together over the next year.
I think this is a great arrangement for both of us. For me there is the chance to collaborate and see my work in 3D without having to support 2-3 programmers/modelers along with the stress of creatively feeding the full group. For him I think the benefit would be direction/focus for his environment building and also some richer source material than what he is used to.
I'm really optimistic towards it and cant wait to start seeing some results. So this week I'm going to mainly focus on getting some background designs sent out to jay, we'll probably focus on the starting environment I think, hopefully getting it to a really high quality.

more sketchbook bits.

Here are a few more snippets from the pages of my sketchbook one is the ideas I scribbled down for an NPC dubbed the 'shielded one' a character that dosen't use swords as weapons but rather his many selections of shields- and as such is an avid collector of a many types as he can find.
The other is a design idea I had for wrath- Archim's most twisted adversary. I wanted a large stained glass window behind Wrath's throne depicting him in his self-proclaimed immortal glory. I had fun with it, I might drag it over to photoshop and add some colour.

...reading week.

I made the mistake I'm sure most people do and thought I had tons of time over reading week to do plenty of work- not the case Adam. It came to Wednesday and I wanted to sit down and blast some character sheets. as soon as the pen hit paper I was already hating what I had produced. That mixed with the poor mood I was in on the day meant it was Friday before I produced anything of worth.
My way around the 'drawers block' was to instead of trying to design all the finicky parts of my characters and justify them- I would just be indulgent and try to have fun while designing. This seemed to work and the image above is the result.

Story ideas

Ihese are the two pages of where I finally tried to make sense of my ,mad-mans scribbles.
on the left page is the title 8 kings and beneath were the attributes i wanted each king to have- Archim would be one of these kings. On the right was the first idea of a refuge Archim would create in this story after his banishment from his seat in monarchy.

..and so on.

so here are some quick sketchbook visuals of Archim, just a few different postures and a quick experiment with water colours of which I haven't touched since college. I enjoyed doing these but I need to start revising more of the core features that make up his character, I have been too settled and haven't been willing enough to try some radical changes.
The second image is an a3 sketch I did of Archim in his kings attire -before losing his kingdom.i like the body it looks like it has weight, not so sure about the face though.

the finished 'first'

so here it is the painted version of the hunter i designed i really enjoyed doing it but there is a lot i would change looking back. It was the catalyst for 'Astumora' so i like it for that alone- i need to revise colour theory before i next do a finished painting though i think. the black shadows made the overall image look dirty, buuut you live and you learn ^^

so, as I was saying

...I just decided to draw the character and make my story from that, that character is now called Archim.
I got the idea from talking to my closest friend from when I studied graphic design at Wigan and Leigh College. we were talking over Facebook and we got to the subject of setting each other projects- his for me was to design an old hunter. So that was the first step, here is the first rough sketch I did of him.

I like the image, it has a bit more realism than my later designs carried and im considering revisiting it.

*click the image for a larger preview*