Massive Attack (of updates) part 5

Finally, Banamadr posed ready for his turnaround:

And the smooth-bound skeleton in action:


I did have some maya rendered posed stills to upload but they are absolutely gigantic and also I have noticed the brightness / contrast on my laptop is completely different to this computer and others it gets displayed on. For that reason I'm going to rework those images and upload them at a later date. They were included on the showreel so I'll have them ready a bit later on.

Massive Attack (of updates) part 4

And again from the back:

The UV map for the wolf-pelt:

And a close-up of the nicely UV mapped face / pelt:

Added a skeleton to make him poseable, but I haven't rigged him for this project as it's loads of work that can wait for another time:

Massive Attack (of updates) part 3

Back view:
And a close-up of the wolf-pelt's new low poly head topology:


Had a go at using the wolf-pelt as an Ncloth object which was a failed experiment, but thought I'd include this shot of the cloth thickness anyway:

More skin!

Massive Attack (of updates) part 2

Close-up of his low poly face topology:

Skinned! (But still a bit naked)


The UV mapping for his skin:

Now with added wolf-pelt goodness:

Massive Attack (of updates) part 1

Right this is going to be epic so I'll keep words down to a minimum.

Ok, without further ado here's a massive image blog of my progress creating the Wolverine character Banamadr in Autodesk Maya, starting from his humble origins as half a box modelled body:



Whole body stitched together, now with tail, head and face:

And The Rest

Watching some of the behind-the-scenes for The Incredibles gave me an idea. As a sort of mid-point between assignments 1 (conceptual stage) and 2 (final character) I've built a rough draft of the character in plasticine to get an idea how it would work in 3 dimensions. I took a few photos in natural environments (my backyard) to give me further reference for colours and textures.

If you can't make it out, that's a Hard Rock Café toothpick (from New York, no less) he's holding as a makeshift rifle :D

I photoshopped this last picture to modify the colours a bit, make it seem more wintery, similar to how I envision the character's snowy Northern Old-World forest to be.

Job done. Time to open Maya, I guess!

Today's stuffs 2 of 3

This is just about everything that went into my presentation now. Here is a quick storyboard of Banamadr interacting with one of the Kodiak bear elders. There is some speech text in the version I presented, but it's not exactly Tolkien so I dont' think I'll bother repeating it here!


Here is the animated version of the run cycle sketches I did earlier.



And these are the sound clips I used to describe Banamadr's communication. The first is a cheerful chatter / barking kind of sound that could be used when he is happy or talking to another character.

Chatter MP3

This one is his battle-cry.

Battle-Cry MP3

The sounds are slowed down and reworked noises from actual wildlife. No clues for guessing which animal - yep, badgers! I scoured the interwebs to try and find a collection of Wolverine sounds but excluding the Marvel character, there was nothing. So instead I started with bears, wolves, lions, any big predators until I found they were all very characteristic of their respective animals. That's how I ended up slowing down the badger noises to make them seem bigger.

I think in-game or in the animation the animal noises would make more sense than human voices and could just be subtitled on screen.

If I could be so furbolg...

Just a quick post with some research images from a character along similar lines, the Furbolg from Blizzard's World of Warcraft game. This bear-like creature has styling that was obviously influenced by native American / tribal costume. They also appear to use natural materials such as wood and leather, along with objects like fangs and feathers for decoration.

I'm including these as a reminder to try and differentiate my own character, though I may adapt from the colour palettes on some of these pictures. I like that you can see the tribal influences, and I'd like to somehow capture the Old Norse theme in my own character in a similar way, without being too obvious (ie: horned helmet, beard, axe etc.). I may try applying rune symbols to Banamadr's fur or something.

First some concept art:

And lastly some in-game images:

Not-so-deadline

Another big update: basically a whole batch of stuff I was preparing for crunch-time which I had thought was today, but turns out it's been pushed back 2 weeks which gives me some more time to refine.

First up, a few sketches of my character in different poses.


Here is a board of facial expressions I'd like my character to use. For my presentation I also set this page up as a sound board to express the kinds of noises I'd like my character to make. Using slowed-down animal calls and howls, I drafted some quick mp3's for his basic talk sound and his battle-cry. I may work on them some more, so I'll post them here later.

Finally, a last-minute colour draft as I'd realised I hadn't actually put the character into colour for my presentation. This is a first attempt on my laptop, so the colours may appear a bit different on other displays which I'll also work on later.

To do list:

• Character interaction storyboards (figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and put interaction / storyboards together)
• More research
• Add some brief notations to presentation

and that's about all I can think of right now. More pics up soon!

Cheers CoG!

The market research has been running a couple of days and I've had some very useful feedback from the forum-dwellers at Colony Of Gamers. Here's a revised character draft trying to incorporate some of the ideas mentioned in the thread.

A much less bulky shape to bring a bit of speed back to the character, along with some human relics to reinforce the post-apocalyptic setting I made up for the bio. I also tried to bring out a recognisable silhouette. I'll see what my new critics think and perhaps work up a colour version.