Several thoughts on the first day of elective02 game arts.
I heard about what we will be asked to do during the holiday and I did nothing but some brainstorm to figure out what I want to do.
This one up here is a brief conclusion of my brain storm. Everything will go around one topic: Mechanics. Why? you may ask. It`s because comparing to flexible flesh, mechanic bodies are all about simple geomatry shapes if you break them down to pieces. It should be easier than modeling a curvy bended smooth body.
And I like mechanics.
From my moodboard you can see all those robots are huge. And that is the key element I wish I could contain in my works. Big things shock more. And bigger means more dangerous. Fitting the topic ‘dark and dangerous’. most of them are painted black for steel and brown for bronze. Depending on what they are made of. I am not sure what my robot will look like at this point. But I will find it out before Friday.
I really hope we can get one of these in real life. It will be a great show just looking at them walk through the field.
This is the one with things that actually exist. I got famous war machines from the history, abandoned train station, steam-powered trains, textures and robot legs. I hope they can be useful. I really hope they will.
The first game asset I want to talk about is this one. A robot that comes up with almost all my imaginations. It has extremely long legs, complex but beautiful mechanic systems and it`s steam-powered. That means there will be a lot of smoke while it`s working.
Second one looks way more advanced. It is a highly weaponized exoskeleton with self-sustainable abilities. It `s more human-shape than the first one as it needs a pilot inside of its chest to reach its best performance.
One of the clearest similarities will be both of them are mechanics. That means they have more straight outlines than curve ones. Both of them are bascially made of basic geometry shapes like cubes and cylinders. They are made of steels by settings, so there are less changes on their texture. Most of them are just chunks of color. There are parts that are made of different material. This feature gives them different appearence after the rendering.
The difference may be the amount of details and their designs. Their appearence also heavily depends on their designs. Automatons have more curvy lines than the titan, giving them more flexibility and they look more light and agile. On the other hand, BT-7274 got heavy legs and arms, a big body and a small head. Makes it look more chunky and stable. Giving a sense of protection and solidity. From the character design course I learned to use shape language to express the character`s identity and this rule also seems towork in 3D game assets designs.
The surface of BT-7274 has great details of scratches. burn marks and rust. The Automatons do not have those details. They got smooth texture with almost no changes. Makes them looks almost like lego products. Becasue of the game type. BT-7274 clearly has more changes on its shape. There are numerous bulges on its armor and even more details on its joints and hands. The design is heavily depends on robotics that all parts are placed in a certain logic.
Automatons look more like compositions of bunches of cylinders and cubes. They obey less physic rules making them more unrealistic and therefore more elegant and beautiful.
And I wrote this boring doodle below to add a bit more story to my future work:
An extremely advanced mechanical empire has created giant mechanical walkers with infinite energy. They roamed the world scouting for information, or as weapons of war destroying town after town. But hundreds of years later the empire fell and the knowledge they held was buried, leaving only the giant robots behind. The humans who survived returned to a life of farming and herding. Occasionally, they would see the giant machines from the old empire strolling across the horizon. No one in the world can understand their construction and energy anymore. They never seem to stop until they collapse from age and disrepair.
These four-legged robots have such tall mechanical legs that few birds can fly to the height of their main part. When they lose their balance and fall to the ground, the sound of their violent landing can be heard hundreds of miles away. People sometimes visit their remains in search of usable scrap metal, and many have tried to figure out how they move, but no one is clever enough to understand these mysterious giants.
The point is: it`s old, it`s mysterious therefore it`s dangerous.
Not sure if I`m going to model this. There are too much details. I seem to have trouble on balancing the workload. And if you look carefully you`ll find each sketches has some minor differences from the others. They are not actually describing the same robot. Seems that even myself cannot get clear where to put those armor plates. The Japanese texts on the first sketch meaning it`s not a spider. I keep writing Japanese as long as I am drawing mechanic stuff. I am not a Japanese but it seems to match up; Japan and weird high-tec.
Maybe I should find myself a psychologist.