When I was originally put in as a character modeller, I was pleased about the decision! After all, while the past few assignments, while I had done some character modelling and designing for my 2d character animation in semester 1 of 1st year, as well as creating characters for my group 3d short film in semester 2 of 1st year, I thought that I had done quite a bit of character modeling myself! However, I failed to realise about how difficult it could actually be!
First, I looked up more on what a character modeller does, and character modelling is simple in theory- create a character! Most character modellers create characters for various media-not just video games! Illustrations, architecture to have a height comparison, or even commercials will need a character modellers to create either intriguing and thought out characters, or just simple placeholders for a height comparison of a staircase! Character modellers also normally need to have a relating art degree, like animation or graphic design or fine art-but the most important thing a character modeller needs is knowledge of a modelling and/or texturing program! Modelling programs like Maya are perfect, but sculpting programs like Z-brush can be amazing to create more organic life like animals or humans, and can come with brushes to help with it! While texturing can be either separate from the workload, or part if it, its always good to know the basics of texturing programs like Substance Painter 3D, which help the character become alive with various colours and brushes that help them become whatever you would enjoy them to be, such as more realistic, or cell shaded comic book style!
When we starting our game ideas, our main one was going to be about a post apocalyptic robot trying to find their girlfriend and using various matryoshka doll power ups to find her! The power ups themselves would be based on the five stages of grief, similar to how the main character feels trying to find their girlfriend!
I was in charge of creating the power up concepts for the game, and this was the main concept I came up with!
Like a proper matryoska, I tried to make it so that all the various powerups would not be of a similar size to eachother, since in real life they stack together! I also thought giving the matryoshkas a flower to represent each and every one of the emotions given (such as carnations for denial, petunia for anger, peonies for bargaining, forget-me-nots for depression and columbine for acceptance), while there hadnt been a full idea on what the game mechanics would be at this point, us as a team already had the idea of making there 5 mechanics to go with the 5 stages of grief.
However, as the game idea changed, we moved more into a speed runner, game show style of a post apocalyptic robot world where people gain their freedom by participating in a game show called Vagabond, we soon shifted our focus away from the five stages of grief and the matryoshkas! However, the team liked the idea of the flowers, so we decided to shorten our five mechanics down to three, and try to make a more mechanical version of the flowers for the powerups.
I created two ideas for how the powerups could possibly look-one in which they are more like circuit boards with flowers around them, and one that was more shape focused, with the flowers taking center focus and the icon for the powerup in the middle of them. The team liked the latter one more, so I wanted to expand more onto the design.
The flowers chosen for the powerups are a daffodil, apple blossom, and butterfly weeds, and powerups are double jump, shortcut and speedboost. Double jump would obviously give the player a second jump, shortcut would unlock a shortcut that could be used at the loss of points, and speed boost would make the player faster. I also gave the apple blossom and butterfly weed power ups vastly different colours to how they normally look in real life, as they would stand out and catch the eye of the player more. The different shapes were also meant to be done in the same way.
The flowers themselves were meant to be symbolism of freedom, as actual flowers are organic, which would symbolise freedom in a world now filled with mechanics and robots-but the actual powerups themselves would be made of a metallic, circuit board material, as can be seen in the final design, which would nod into the fact that most competitors do not get out of here alive, so freedom itself is very far away.
While character designing isn’t always part of actual character modelling, as sometimes the roles are separate, the character modeller is still able to add or subtract aspects of the design to make it more interesting or easier to actually model. However, seeing as how we aren’t a big name studio, the aspect of character designing went to me and all of the other character modellers!
Character designing of Mr Fry
This was the original design I had for the main Villain/character, Mr Fry! The idea was originally conceptualised from Tristan in the game design team, mainly as a funny sentient microwave that would chase the player if they stood in the same spot for too long-but eventually the character grew more into a villain! He was also in the making from our-at the time newest- nagabond project idea, so there was nothing from the previous design with him!
I was originally inspired by 50s toys and microwaves-as a way to keep the character with his funny gimmicks! Mainly this Fisher price telephone and green microwave! The character, Frybo, from Steven Universe also seemed to fit the idea of a funny looking object gone sentient!
However, as time went on and we started developing the concepts for the other hosts and Sasha, developing a more cohesive style guide, it came time to redesign Mr Fry once more!
This was the inbetween design for Mr Fry-I tried to make him look more imposing and bigger-I also included some extra rules from the style guide, such as most robots having a similar mouth shape to eachother, headphones, as well as a power light with their specific colour, Mr Frys being yellow! However, the gloves and the boots themselves were too different from how the other robots looked, mainly because of how organic they looked, so the final redesign was this:
The main issues, such as the gloves and boots-were fixed to more mechanical hands and feet, as well as including kneecaps and almost animatronic like arm separations! These would later be turned into ball joints in the model!
The makings of Mr Fry
Mr Fry himself was a large and difficult character to properly model, mainly because of the various details given to his model! The mouth itself was particularly difficult to create, esepcially since I had mever had to make a mouth in 3D modelling before, but Charlie from the animation team was able to help me the creation of it! I learned how to use the multi cut tool more properly-as I used it to create a lantern in semester 1’s project in 2nd year, but I had completely forgotten it- as well as the target weld and bridge function!
The arms themselves were also difficult to recreate, as I had never really done anything like ball joints before, but it was surprisingly easy to get the hang of once I started doing them!
The legs themselves were also a bit of a pain, mainly since the kneecaps had to be a sort of cylinder-esque shape, as well as figuring out how to make the bottom kf the legs that would lead onto his feet!
This was his final look for a bit! I gave him his kneecaps, as well as his hands (which took a bit due to ball joints), the fert and I reduced the polygons on Mr Frys hat, as it was made on blender and sculpted, so it had many polygons! I also was able to make the mouth opening as well, though I had to get help on that as well! I also had to make him some hips to make it easier for rigging-which allowed for me to use more target weld and bridge practise!
However, during gave development Mr Fry was stripped of his legs as a way to reduce the amount of rigging he would need! As well as that, this was around the time where the story changed a bit more into the setting changing to a more computer-esque area, with Mr Fry becoming a virus and the main Villain, so without his legs, he would look a bit more ghostlike and creepy for a villain! Eventually his final look was this:
This was him ALL lamberted, without his legs and given all of his original colours, as seen in his design sheet! While it was difficult, it was very fun to learn new things with modelling!
Prop modelling
I was also given prop models to do, due to my secondary role as prop modeller, and was given only a sandbag and wire coils to do, as Mr Fry was difficult and would take a lot of time! While I was the one to do conceptual designs for the power up models, the actual modelling of them went to William!
The sandbag itself was pretty difficult to get a full hold of for modelling, as the object itself is very organic and cloth like-so I used blender to try and figure out how to make a low poly bevelled sandbag, since low poly and bevelling were part of our style guide for prop models!
I used these as my references for how sandbags are meant to look, and while I tried to make them look fuller, it’s was again, difficult! I also omitted the top part of the sandbag, as I could not figure out how to recreate it in 3d modelling, the ruffling of it was difficult to replicate!
Since I imported it from Blender, on maya its only really known as a cube, but I used cubes and circles to try and sculpt the sandbag!
The wire coils themselves were a bit trickier to do, mainly since I didn’t know what one was before I started making them! I knew what they were once I saw them, but I didn’t know that was their name!
These reference images were used to help model the two of them, and I decided to make specifically different ones, one with a cylinder and one without! The one without was simple, as I just needed to use a helix, while the other was more difficult, as I had to make a cylinder, and poke holes at the top! However, I was able to figure it out eventually! I used more of the multi cut and bridge tool, so hopefully this will mean I won’t forget about them again! I also used a helix to make the wires for the cylindrical wire coil!For the outlier, you can see that I used a lot of transformations onto the cylinder to make it look then way it does!
I do not have many images for the texturing side of things, as Substance painter doesn’t work too well on my computer, but I had fun texturing it all! The sandbag was pretty easy to do, as all I really needed to make it was some fabric and some dirt brushes to make it look as if it has been there for a while! I only really had one lambert for the whole thing, so it was easy to export textures as well!
The cylindrical wire coil took a bit longer a it had more lamberts, but the same thoughts were applied to it-giving it a plastic brush for the top of the cylinder, as well as some aluminum brushes and rust for the bottom!
As for Mr Fry, he was more of a challenge just because of his larger size, but I had some trouble trying to place a lot of the pieces of the model onto the same lamberts, just because of how the uvs would stack onto eachother, but I was able to get help from William in animation onto how to properly do it!
I mainly tried to use similar brushes that William and Charlie used for their robot models, so I used aluminum, steel, and various other metallic brushes to try and get a similar look!
However, Mr Fry is meant to look more broken down and rusted, so when shading and adding extra onto him, I decided to add in some rust, dirt and dust brushes to give more bumps and imperfections for his model-as well as adding his yellow “eye” onto his glass visor screen!
In terms about how I felt during this project-it was a fairly stressful time! I did not expect a big workload, and I had to sleepover in university multiple times to get some of my work done-but it was also strangely fun! In a way, I felt a sort of parental connection to Mr Fry, so I would get really proud looking at his growth and how much he had changed throughout development-and I was finally able to get a better hang on maya, which is something I have found difficult for a while, just because of how much different options and tools there are to make models! It was also fun to talk to people in the group, as I am fairly socially awkward, so being able to actually converse with others was a pleasure! I also really enjoyed conceptualising for the game as well, as it felt like people enjoyed my designs, and I was able to add my own twists to things, like the flowers!