The journey.

          Alright let's writhe a little bit about the journey i took in making these characters.

       Lets start with stuff I had to change from the original concepts.
    Something i just had to redesign was the poncho of Jaag. In the original concepts ( as you can see in previous posts) his poncho is quite big and haves these "sleeves" that cover most of his arms. The idea behind was that first of all, the poncho is bulletproof and second it covers all his guns that he haves underneath it. Thinking it as a game character and putting him in the story I have the bulletproof poncho would explain, in game, why he is bulletproof. The metal bandana ( gotta regester that sucker ) covers most of his face following his heads movement and moving with it. Sadly that something as well i couldn't achieve - i am no tech artist. I just faked it in the screenshots, but would love to one day learn how to do such a thing and actually animate him. Talking about animation we get to rigging, something that was just beyond my head and didn't had the time to teach myself how to do it. As I said before I was quite busy teaching myself how to properly make a characters and use several programs in the process.
      So back to the poncho. I just had to shorten the sleeves of it, I had no idea how to make them work, curve and react to Jaag's movements. And let's not forget the hat. In some really old designs I have of him and some you can see in the previous post the hat is massive. Which I do like when it's drawn but didn't work for me when i modeled it, so had to minimize it a little bit.
     Guns. Something a gunslinger should have and in plenty. Left the guns for last, figured out it's a lot more important to actually finish the characters than assets. Learned from my mistakes because at least 1 week was lost making some assets I even didn't use. So at the end did only one revolver. But at least he haves a gun. Originally he was supposed to have at  least 4 pistols and a big ass knife.
    So, how did I make em? Well started in Zbrush and made them using Zspheres. After that placed them in 3Dsmax and everything else was done there - retopology, unwrapping, rigging and the metal bandana. Textures - of course in photoshop.
   Bataary was easier and faster to make than Jaag. Maybe because he doesn't have so many assets on him. The metal cyborg parts on him are somewhat metal but with a plastic cover, imitating skin, leather, wanted to get an organic feel to them, which i think i did and looked pretty good in UDK.
         Inspiration.
   Well if you haven't guessed it yet I am a massive fan of western movies. Nothing is better than the tension in a stand off. The other thing that I adore is sci fi. So mixing them together seemed like a pretty bad ass idea.
   Jaag.
   I wanted to make Jaag look like a guy who you wouldn't mess with - a bad ass. And to be honest with myself and with you - I did.
  Bataary.
 He is kinda of a mystery, but when you see him and his mask you get the feeling that he is a bad guy.
Giving him a reptilian and a bird feel to him made him look even creepier.Something I would like to change in him is the jaw, not the design but how it moves and opens. So you can see better whats underneath the mask.

Well, that's all for now folks!

LET'S DO THIS!

    Okey, lets make this more fun to read! I guess a design document doesn't have to be boring facts...well it is but as i said, I'll try to make it more easy to read.


    So in this blog I'm gonna explain what i have been doin for the past months, oh and what a surprise- i've been doing work! Last time I showed you how far I got with Jaag and Bataary and well, i'm gonna do the same thing now but at laest they are finally finished so you will see the good stuff at the end.




     As i said before i wanted to achieve a nice stylized feel to the characters, never wanted to do them realistic cuz that is just plain boring. Something a lot of developers cant get is that games shouldn't be about realism but exactly the opposite. So yeah lets see sum texture work! All of them are hand drawn and intentionally left a lot of brush strokes on em to get the feel i  was talking about.
   
    So first of all lets start with Jaag! Some pretty lookin' body textures.

     For the whole Jaag there is a total of 3 textures for him. Main body one which includes most of the assets and a head one. As well one for the gun. Next one - poncho and stuff.

       Something i was thinking of doing for the head is to add some flakes of hair but at the end I didn't like how the looked so I left him without em. Well they are still there so if I ever change my mind can put em on.
                                   

         
          And let's not forget about the gun. Did it real quick so i'm not so proud with it but a cowboy without a gun ain't no cowboy.
          

             Okey let's get to Bataary! He haves only 2 texture sheets - one for the body and one for the head. He looked kinda weird in 3dsmax when I placed the specular map but everythin was just fine and dandy when i placed it in engine. Surprisingly Bataary was quite quick to make, but i guess thats due the fact that in the beginning of this FMP I had no idea what I'm doing but i had to learn a lot.
                    

             

      Okey let's go to a different place now - concept arts! I couldn't do as much as I wanted but had to get along with the 3d work. So I'm not gonna talk much about them but I hope you enjoy!
 
             Well this is the original concept for the cowboy. When I think about it I didn't want to change him a lot, so I pretty much know what I was doing...well kinda...
                                       
   

       Had to do another costume idea, kinda as a backup or if I had the time to make him.
                                               

   And now it's time for some Bataary concepts. Originally he is the first character i did for this sci fi cowboy thing I'm doing. It's a lot bigger than i say here, but I gotta keep it short and sweet. Just to say - I had them in my head for about 7 years and I feel happy that I was able to make them in 3D.

        His story is kinda of a surprise. The main idea is that all the characters I'm doing are bounty hunters and one of Jaag's bounty was Battary's head when he was still human. But something went wrong and in the process he killed his family, bringing the house down on them but Bataary somehow managed to survive, but he was mangled and all that was left from him was bits. But ya know sci-fi so he is a badass cyborg and nobody knows his Identity aaaaaand he wants Jaag's head for what he did.


      Well there is yet another surprise - another character. Sadly I couldn't make him but one day he shall live! There is a sculpture of him. Gonna make sum nice fancy photos of him and post them soon. But for now a little bit of concepts.
      Some back story for him:  
                          Name: Sodom
                          A psychopath, uses only knifes or any kind of a blade, likes to make it close and personal. one of the last of his kind, because he killed almost his entire race. Has a brother who is still alive but he is a psycho as much as he is. Haves healing abilities so killing him is quite hard. One of the strongest aliens in the story.
               
               

                          

     Well I guess about now you wanna see sum actual screens of the charters! And you shall! But before that some technical talk.
               Jaag is - 26 750
               Bataary is - 24 023 triangles.
       So let's get on with the screenshots! Placed them in UDK and rendered in game.
            

               " What are you looking at, punk? "

 Aaaand Bataary!

 

                 Oooo secrets!
                             

        
                   And the money shot!

Well i guess this is enough for now. Not really what else to say about this project except I learned a lot and feel a lot more confided in what I do. I still want to do more but that will happen in my own time. I am happy with what I have done. So yeah I hoped you enjoyed it as well. If i figure out something else to say and add I shall in a next post.

Peace.

THE BIG ONE!

Well well i haven't been posting in EVER! But now i bring you the big post!
So what have I been doing for until now? Quite a lot of poring stuff.
So lets get started first with my main character - Jaag Grey and where i am with.
First of all finished the damn Zbrush model. I did get carried away with it and even reached the small quantity of about 44 million polygons in Zbrush. All off the Zbrush work i had to to in the labs because my poor old laptop couldn't handle the pressure of even the mere 1 million polygons. So In the time away from the labs there was some asset making. This character is taking too damn long now and i just want to finish the bastard! Okey lets get sum screns.

First of all the Zbrush model. I did change it a little bit - shortened the legs just a little bit, made the crotch more,how to say, normal, and gave him the belt which ended up being one mesh with his marvelous pantaloons. I will do post some newer shots of him soon.

Lets go to the head. There are actually 2 head variants i did - one of them is this one,which is the main one, and the other one is just slightly changed - giving him a beard and some bad ass scars. If i have the time i will give him the second head as well for some variation images of him.

Being all asymmetrical gave me a shit ton of work to do when it got retopologizing. The only parts i could symmetry were the hands and the boots. Well , one lesson learned there - if you wanna make your character more cool and original, get yo ass ready for sum ass woopin work. But I finally did it and the main body of Jaag is retopologized and unwrapped - assets not included.

One thing i've been working on and still am is the Metal bandana from the original concept. Something i have to get my head over is the way to animate it.Because it haves to be able to go up and down but when its up to move with the head.
Other thing i've been doing him is a kick ass pistol. Almost finished. The bad thing is he haves a lot of guns and i have no idea when im gonna go them.
The poncho will be the problem because i have this specific vision of it the wait it sits on his shoulders and moves which will give me a lot of problems.

Now lets talk a little bit about the second character - Bataary.
His zbrush model is almost done. Good thing about this one is the fact that there is a lot of him being symmetric which will ease the retopo.

Stay tuned for more! Probably not soon....

Heads.

Well, slowly but surely starting my FMP project - the space cowboys.
The first dude I'm gonna make is the main character - The Good.
I want to give him really sharp features to the face and body. In a way when you see him you know he is a bad motherfucker. But good...in the same time. Let's say he is a nold dog that haves seen some shit and has a itchy trigger finger.
So first of all did some sketches of his face and after that jumped right into Zbrush to model some heads.
This is actually the very first head I did in Zbrush - first human one that is. As you can see i want him to look bad ass but different from all those already seen outlaw with the small noses and  handsome as gods. Wanted to give him more of a natural face, with some stuff that you normally don't see in a character like him. In the same time keeping all the features of a badass - small eyes, low eyebrows, sharp edges, and my favorite - big cheekbones. Enough talking for now, will discuss what im making with these characters later on in the posts.

The Aviator.

Well, I did take a different path with this guy , cuz there was no way i was gonna make the concept that was given. So what did I? Well he is an aviator but from who knows what plane, basically he is an alien. I had a little story behind him. In a way i made him to test my skill in character making. When i think about it this is the first serious character i have made. ( first one that doesn't look like crap) There is still some stuff to be finished on him but FMP is taking over and it's more important than this guy, but he will be properly finished soon! Okey so this was the original concept for him.
 Changed him a lil bit:
 
And at last the 3D model with baked normal maps. Whole model was sculpted in Zbrush from Zspheres and retopologized in 3Dsmax. Was sure that i wasnt gonna make the 9000 triagle budget but at the end he is 8846.