Modelling Olive continued and Feedback from Industry
First of this week I got back into 3DS Max and started to work on Olive a bit more. I started by fixing her hair, as I mentioned last week I was unhappy with the pointy fringe I made so I went back and made it more square. I also started to model Olive's body this week starting with a basic drawing I did earlier in the project as ref.
Olive's little potato body ref.
I started to have trouble getting the block out of the body to look in proportion to her head; so I decided to look at some reference illustrations that had achieved that I wanted.
I then took this into 3D and started to refine the shape abit. moving her ears down, filling her cheeks out more and fixing the body.
After I felt like it was getting in the right direction I asked Ben (Hazrat's mentor) for some feedback. He sent me over a photoshop document with a paint over and sent me a list of things he thought could be changed and things he liked.
TLDR version of what he said:
Keep the scarf over the face as it's a massive read of character and would be a shame to lose it.
Keep the S shapes that you have in the concept and try and get them working in 3D as it makes a more dynamic shape.
The little wellies are a great contrast to her body and head.
Make the bunches have more volume like the concept.
She has a lot of character and if it is made in 3D well then it should work.
The concept has refraction in the glasses so I need to decide whether to make a shader for the glasses glass to magnify her eyes or model them big and have a normal glass texture on the glasses.
After getting Ben's feedback I worked on the model more to what he asked and It is looking a load better. I also started looking at this: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:637902/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Which basically explains how to get a good silhouette and character read. It spoke about the rule of thirds; I already have this in my model as her head is a circle, body a triangle and legs a square. However it also spoke about how symmetry makes for an uninteresting character so I am definitely going to try and make her as subtly asymmetrical as possible.
I also asked Craig for some feedback on the model and he suggested this:
She's too thin
Add more shape to her body
Possibly have a half on jumper for asymmetry
Her hair is fine
Play with placement of glasses for more character
Here is a quick paint over with some notes showing what I plan to do to her next.
Me and Hazrat also made a massive list of companies and individuals that we wanted to email and ask them for some feedback on our work/portfolios and our game so far. We emailed around 40 people including companies such as Natural motion, Hello games and Media molecule. A couple people have gotten back to us and here's the TLDR version of the feedback we got on our game;
Jolyon Webb from Natural Motion:
Make Burnard larger.
Work on Burnard's shape and particle effects - shrinks, wobbles, changes colour and emits sparks.
Make a moodboard of gifs and videos showing how we want Burand to look.
When animating get him to look around so you can see his eyes.
Paintover a 3D environment from the camera view to make a visual target.
If we were having the camera high then we need to make sure that everything looks legible and attractive from this view.
Make sure the characters read well from above like in DoTA.
Gavin Price from Playtonic Games:
Look at their artists twitter accounts and analyse their work.
Gareth Noyce from Triple-eh:
Create a "art bible" make a small scene finished and textured with the correct lighting and camera.
Figure out what the final colour palette will be, do we need colour grading?
How are we using negative space and lighting to show off the characters?
By messing around with these things will we have to change the level design?
Think of the level as pictures; how will this inform the architecture, use of colour and space?
Mess with UE4's default lighting and post processing settings to get the scene looking less basic.
Olive's braids could be done with a normal map and the topology around her neck is messy.
Portfolio's are not bad but possibly need rethinking when it comes to choice of texturing colours in projects.
Use modding for portfolio work as it has a target and style to match your work to.
Trying to be a generalist in the industry is extremely hard, get a specialty and excel at that whilst still doing other bits on the side.
Pull apart what other developers have done before you and move away from playing games, to the point where you can analyse the designer's decisions and why they did something.
If we want to make a game then do a 1/4 of what we want to do and get that finished.
Going to uni won't mean you are the best, we need to be doing personal work as well.
Unless we get this game on the market we are competing against 100's of other people with the same skills looking for the same jobs.
Talent only get you so far, hard work gets you the rest of the way.
That's all the feedback we have gotten so far but it is all very important and helpful. We have also made a trello board for our FMP so all 3 of us can contribute to it so we know what needs to be done and what people are working on at the moment.
