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. 

06: Abandoned Design

So the above image is a design that I am unhappy with. I feel like it could be a lot better than it in fact is. While I am pleased with the overall idea, I think that there is too much that could be improved, such as the locomotion of the creature and the exact design of its legs. Although I worked hard to make it look like the legs would work, I'm just not seeing it. As the design starts to fall apart towards the lower legs.

As this was an experiment in designing directly in ZBrush, I did not have any preliminary sketches beyond an idea of what I wanted it to look like. I feel like this was a mistake, along with some of the methods I was using to actually sculpt it.

The hellish, chunky designs of Doom 3, were the main inspiration behind this design. Although the main animal basis for the design was as a large quadrupedal crab-like creature. It changed a bit when the time came to start nailing down more of the smaller forms.

05: Some Initial Project Ideas

So after talking to one of my lecturers I've managed to nail down an initial idea for a question and a more focused area to explore. That area being how a given audience reacts to a given "creature" design, and how these designs are utilised in the context of the world around them. 

An example of what I'm talking about is why the basic bipedal design is so prevalent in the Mass Effect Trilogy, and why the more abstract and interesting creatures are often relegated to smaller parts within the story. Or indeed used as the villains within the various games. I think it's an interesting area to explore, as it gives the scope to look at a broad range of designs and how they are utilised. What is a popular design for a creature that is supposed to induce fear, for example. I think the smartest way to begin is to go out, investigate and gather a broad range of material pertaining to different designs. Then looking at how they exist within their various worlds, what their purpose is and seeing if any themes develop.

On a side-note. I feel like it's important to talk a bit about what will constitute a "creature" for this project. For starters it is something that is not human. The difference between a character and a creature is where it starts to be a bit less defined though. Broadly, character usually refers to a human or a humanoid style design (such as the Turian in the image above), but it can also be something that is decidedly not human but that plays an important role within the story. (such as the Reaper below). A character can in fact be a creature as-well, as both the Turian and the Reapers are characters within the Mass Effect series, but neither is human. 

The Reapers are a tricky one though, as they are built to be machines...but they act like a living creature in the way they think and act. For the purposes of this then, they count as a creature design. This is another quite interesting topic in this field of design, the blurring of lines between machine and animal. Though it is something that can be explored further down the line after some more research.

04: ZMats

So, I was kind of bored with using standard/downloaded materials in ZBrush for sculpting purposes. This led to me creating my own materials using Maya & V-Ray. I based a lot of them on my favourite sculpting material, the dk_hulk. I find that it is the best for reading the form as you are sculpting, with a front on light and rather strong cavity detection.

The final result of my experiments, a front on light with a very dark lower half and a brighter upper half. The rim-light is optional as I have a version of the material with, and without it.

Another material, with a slightly rough texture applied to it, similar to the above material but with a slightly angled lower light.

A highly specialised material, similar to things like car paint or polished latex. It is best used on relatively flattish surfaces, as the number of highlights can make other surfaces hard to read.

A top-down style material based on the final result. Its more useful for getting a look at the model in a dramatic lighting setup than for actually sculpting.

Quite a strong rough texture on this one, its also very good for checking sculpts in different lighting and not quite as good for actually sculpting.

The different materials applied to an older model of mine, as you can see the paint style material is applied to a much smoother model (a stock ZBrush skull).

03: Creativity - A Lesson from John Cleese

I found this lecture a while ago, and it has provided me with a set of principles that I've tried to stick to when facing any creative challenge. The most useful one of these I find is allowing time to ponder a certain design issue, how to resolve a specific area of creature anatomy for example. By allowing time to ponder the problem and by looking at a wider array of reference material, I've found I can come up with a much better solution that the first one I thought of.

Im hoping that by continuing to work in this way I will be able to come up with more original designs for creatures.