Vlog 01: Introduction and Materials

12. Skifter Crab

In the last few months, I have been focusing my efforts on the creation of several creatures with the intent of seeing what sort of quality I could produce in the final images.
I started this creature with the same armature style I discussed previously, a case of putting it into practice to see how it fitted with the workflow.

The design itself was done very much on the fly, drawing influences from certain things as it went. As it transpires this is definitely not the best way to go about design. Planning and sketching are vital and it is something that I should've done in these designs. It would save a lot of time when it came to finishing up the model in ZBrush.

Above are a few of the inspirations I drew upon when designing.

Above is the final Zbrush sculpt, something that too much time was spent on due to a lack of sketching and preliminary concepting. As discussed above it is something that is vital and something I shall be focusing on more when it comes to future designs.

In creating the rig that allows the model to move I struck upon a realisation in just how important understanding the underlying anatomy - and not just the superficial musculature - is. Understanding whats going on at deeper levels of the anatomy will help to figure out how creatures move. 

In relation to this I am wanting to adopt a method employed by Alex Alvarez which involves using a profile sketch of the design to create a rough rigged model, to help quash any issues with the characters movement at an early stage while its still easy to fix. Coupling this method with a greater understanding and planning of anatomy during the concepting phase will aid greatly in producing better creatures.

In the creation of this scene I wanted to extend the quality to all aspects of it, with the focus still being on the creature. In doing this I employed various techniques when it came to setting up the materials that provided me with a decent result while still being pleasing to look at.

The various trees and grasses are all created using PaintFX within Maya, a piece of the software I had not previously used and wanted to get acquainted with. While I was very pleased with the created meshes and the way they are able to be customised and edited. However I wasn't pleased with the shader created for them and so I created my own VRayMtl for each created PaintFX asset. A Blend Material that made use of a Ramp for the diffuse, and a map created in photoshop that serves as opacity/bump.

11: Researching and Planning Design

I have been watching a lot of lectures on creature and character design to get an insight of the methods that professionals use when trying to design a character. In designing creatures there is some very useful advice that I have picked up from artists. In designing the rock grubber creature pictured below. Jerad S Marantz stresses the importance of designing the creatures head, stating that "the head is the payoff" and that you can design the whole creature based off of its head. As almost every design makes use of repeating elements and patterns. As humans we are genetically programmed to focus on faces, this is the reason a creatures face is so important, its the focal point for a design.

Another technique he recommends is working in "thirds" that is when designing a creature that is based off of pre-existing animals, you end up at a more interesting place if you mix elements of three different creatures. Its somewhat similar to the rule of thirds and it strikes a nice balance between variation and making the design easy to read.

He also stresses the importance of how your creature would fit into the world "how large is your creature? What is its relationship to gravity." He gives the example of a dust mite, that - when scaled up - would not be able to support its own weight.  It is an important thing to consider, as evolution is the adaptation of creatures to their surroundings in order to survive, this makes considering the surroundings a very important part of design.

10: Real World Methods - Armature

In looking into designing creatures, and in the different methods that can be used to design them. It's important to look at a lot of real world methods and techniques. The clay armature is most often used just to support and hold up a clay model. When designing directly in ZBrush the same technique can be employed in the form of a ZSphere armature. In both methods this is employed to simulate the skeleton of the creature and its useful to give an idea of the broad strokes of how a creature moves, the silhouette of motion in a way. Given the importance of silhouette in a design then this stage of construction is vital. 

The only difference is that in turning a ZSphere armature into an actual model is different. The methods involve either sketching further "ZSpheres" onto the model (as pictured below). Or working directly onto the armature once its turned into a skin. This is different to what happens in the real world where the clay is stretched over the armature itself. 

Taking all this into account, I adapted the method slightly to show not only the skeleton but to help with the placement of muscles as-well. Particularly when designing directly in 3D, the technique is useful as it helps to depict the movement of a creature more accurately and give a better idea of how it would actually function.

In the manta-like creature below you can see where the model clearly has deltoid-like structures leading into his biceps. You can also see where muscles similar to the latissimus dorsi connects to the "elbow". The function of this being to pull the entire arm backwards so the creature can swim.

You can also see various other landmarks that have been approximated, siphons, eyes and tentacles/arms.  To simulate the real world construction, I used a ZSphere and dynamesh to pull it over the armature as if it was clay. I find this an extremely useful method as it allows the construction of a well thought out design. 

However I want to try supplementing this with initial sketches and trying to incorporate different methods, techniques and research that can lead to more interesting and better designs.

09: Mass Effect

I replayed Mass Effect over the last few days. It served to reinforce to me just how dull a lot of the alien designs are. For the most part they are just humans with very different proportions and heads. The more interesting creatures in the story are either cast as villains (Reapers) or are relegated to side roles, such as the Hanar. I found myself looking around to see what other creatures existed in this universe besides bipeds. There is some interesting designs such as the Pod Crab above, which seems to act somewhat akin to a grazing animal such as a cow, as in the game they spend most of their time in herds that roam the shallow waters of Virmire (presumably feeding on the molluscs there). I would have loved to see more interesting creatures playing a larger role within the game.

08: Creature One

A bit of practice in ZBrush. This was more of a technical exercise to practice sculpting than anything else. Though I'm very pleased with some of the ideas that are going on in this sculpt, such as the weird leg/arms. Though I'm less pleased with the long "crutches" that the creature uses for balancing on. It was inspired by octopi, squids and other cephalopods which I kept coming back to as reference.
Overall I'm rather pleased with the this and I feel like its a good starting point for getting some creature work done. 

I'm also currently in the process of developing a list of case studies to perform to illustrate some issues that I think there is with creature designs in a lot of sci-fi. From there it will allow me to develop a framework that I can use to analyse my own designs as-well as others, and aid me in coming to some more interesting places creatively.

07: Refinement

I had a conversation with another lecturer today. During this we went over a lot of points about what this project could become and some of the directions it could take. It became apparent that I'm less interested about how an audience reacts to a design and its place in the story overall, but rather how the methodology of design could be changed to produce something more original. Of course with the end users opinion being part of the final critical reflection.

Analysis of existing designs and design methodology is an important part of this as-well as examining just why a lot of designs tend towards being humanoid. There's a lot of scope for exploring the sort of technology and culture some of these creatures may develop as-well, would they wear clothes? Would they even understand the concept of clothes? These are the kind of things I want to explore in the designs and in the research.