NUA art test
Setting the other design aside for the moment, I moved on to the character's daylight form. In contrast with the deep sea theme of the twilight version, I wanted to use a seabird theme for this design, as well as making sure that the designs have echoes of each other to link them. The base character remains the same between forms, so I already had a body type to work with, and began to work over the top with the intent of making a much lighter silhouette than the more weighted twilight version.
Choosing a colour scheme was something that gave me a lot of trouble for this form. I initially wanted to use an inversion of the twilight design's colours, but it simply wasn't a pleasant colour scheme. With that in mind, I took reference from the other design's colours, keeping some of the red hues and using more blues in place of the other design's dominating green. The feathered cloak I decided to keep a simple off-white, to keep the seabird theme and to keep the overall values of the design light.
After a lot of deliberation I abandoned the blue elements of the design almost entirely, replacing them with a dark red-brown for the most part, but keeping it as an accent colour in places like the necklace, eyes and hairbands. I felt the blue and red elements were very unbalanced in the design, and opted for a more harmonious analogous palette instead, moving from red through to tan. I also did some variations on the tattoos; moving them from underneath the eyes to above for contrast with the other form, and the face; rounding off the ears and making the eyes a more normal size.
The model sheet above needs some minor edits but I would consider it a mostly finished design. I've included the flat colour version to give an idea of what the outfit looks like underneath the cloak and what the local colours are for each element.
Moving on to the concept piece, I had an idea in mind for the piece but wasn't entirely certain of the composition. I knew I wanted the viewer to be looking up at the character, and had an idea of the setting, but past that I did some experiments to figure things out more clearly.
I didn't save any screenshots of the actual process, but I did take a few photographs that show it fairly well. The original pose wasn't working too well for me so I changed it partway. Looking back now, I think I prefer the way the original version looked, but the atmosphere of the final image feels perfect, with the gentle blues and soft light coming through the glass.
In particular, I think the character's expression came through really well; there's an element of playfulness in the direct gaze, half-closed eyes, and slight smile which I really like. I do think that I didn't quite manage to pull off Telltale's style as much as I would have liked, as the image doesn't look particularly 3D, but in terms of effectiveness and showing off the character I think it works well.
Finally an updated version of the character sheet for the twilight form, there are again some small touches I'd like to add to finish this off but I would consider it to be 95% finished. I added some material callouts and a colour palette and finished painting and adding textures to the main figure, and now just need to do a small amount of work on the face reference. I'm going to set this aside for the moment however to focus on the industry art tests, and add the finishing touches later.
Asset creation
Substance/UE4 Vertex Painting
This week's asset session focused on vertex painting materials in UE4. I can see a lot of potential in this method for creating dynamic changes in material across a surface, even animating between the two. I had some trouble initially getting the materials to work correctly, which turned out to be a minor error in how I'd connected my node setup.
The final look isn't quite what I would have hoped for, and I think I need a lot more practise to get this to a professional standard, but I think having this process as a resource is going to be really helpful in the future.
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