Lilu Bevan

I was super excited about this project, and it did not disappoint. I knew I wanted to work in a team, obviously for the distribution of workload but also for the ability to create more than just one asset, which could help to embody the world our character belongs to and emphasise their characteristics. Luckily, I saw a familiar face across the room. It was really great working with Andy, and I think we are alike-minded people, but just different enough to challenge each other’s ideas to progress. We were both drawn to the idea of a steam/cyber punk world, drawing influence from League of Legends: Arcane and Cyberpunk 2022. We created the idea of a dystopian, alternative reality, in which aliens and humans coexist, and both adapt themselves with robot technology. From this stemmed the idea of a cyberpunk, cyborg alien who travels on a steampunk hover scooter. We decided this best suited the theme of ‘Out of this World’. The idea generation stage was easy; we agreed on ideas and bounced off each other’s suggestions. I personally found the photo bashing was particularly useful when it came to the scooter design due to the inorganic shapes. Whereas the silhouette and shading technique seemed to work better with the characters. Once the A poses were done, we decided to split for the modelling. Andy said he wanted more experience designing characters, and as I had some experience with characters in Blender, I was more than happy to give a go at a more synthetic model. I had a small amount of previous experience in Maya from following YouTube tutorials in my spare time, however this only helped with the initial stages of modelling. I was quite anxious to keep the poly count down, so I didn’t add a lot of aspects to the scooter. However, on reflection I would have liked to include much more to give it more character and make it more realistic. Overall modelling wasn’t too much of a stress for me, but I do with I had started bevelling from the beginning to make a more organic shape. UV mapping threw me a bit. I understood what I was supposed to be doing and how it worked however when I unfolded my shapes there were all just a mess. I got a lot of help from my tutor at this point, and he put this down to me getting overwhelmed. I’m still not sure why I wasn’t getting it. Zbrush was one of my favourite parts of this project as I sculpted my asset to look exactly how I wanted it too. I was enjoyable being able to add finer details to make it look more realistic. It frustrated me when some of the smoothness was lost by baking the two polys together, however my tutor assured me this was the best look I was going to achieve. Painting was a slow process, but it was so uplifting finally bringing my object to life. I really like how Substance painter has bushes like mud splatters and bullet holes as these were aspects I hadn’t even thought of adding. Overall, I am so happy with my final piece; I wanted to create a realistic looking game aspect and I think I achieved that to the best of my current knowledge. If I were to go back, I would make my low poly slightly more detailed, although this would go against the brief of making it under 2000 polys. I am really excited for my team mate to complete the character, so we rig her onto the bike.