More Detailed Character Notes and Ideas

Cyber-Witch Project - More Detailed Story Notes and Ideas
James O. Ross
Monday, 27 Sept. 2010

Introduction:

I wrote out some of my ideas here to give a more thorough description of the character I'm trying to create in 3D.

Overview:

The basic idea of this project is to create a fighting game character that will eventually be rigged and used to create a few test animation cycles.  The theme of the character is a cyber-witch who uses a combination of technology and magic to do battle with.

Art Direction Aesthetics: 

I want to draw on a number of established genres / aesthetics / subcultures to create this character.  These include: (1) scifi / hardware look of speculative fiction novel illustrators, (2) goth subculture, (3) Victorian era elaborate dress and costume, (4) "Wicked stepmother" aesthetic from classic fairytales.

Character Look Challenges:

The main art direction challenge of this project is to somehow communicate that the character is using a combination of magic and technology to fight.

Setting:

One idea for a setting I had is a world of magic that has been invaded by a high-technology colonist / scouting force.  As the battle continues, the magic users slowly begin to learn the technological secrets of the invaders.
This happens as they reverse-engineer the technology found on dead soldiers.

Types of Magic Used:

In order to make things more interesting, I envision a number of different types of magical acts the character is able to perform.  She might worship a pantheon of different witch gods from which her power is derived.  In addition to this worship, she may also possess one or more magical relics.  These might be the mummified / preserved bones or fragments of a demigod or witchgod prophet.  The third source of power would be old alchemical or herbal lore passed down from older generations.  So some possibilities for magical acts are as follows: (a) Summon a demon familiar from the realm of the witchgods to fight for her, (b) Create potions to enhance her strength or give her some ability, (c) Create potions to harm her enemy in some way, (d) Channel the power of a relic for use in an energy attack, (e) Cast a spell / conduct a ritual to gain increased power, (f) Cast a spell / conduct a ritual to harm opponent in some way.

Character Costume:

I imagine that actual magic - spellcasting, creating potions and conducting of rituals - would be a lengthy and time-consuming process.  It would also probably require a number of potion ingredients, cooking equipment (cauldron, etc.), artifacts (ceremonial altar, ritual dagger, chalice), and take up a lot of space (to draw ceremonial circle), and so forth.  Therefore, in order for a fighting witch character to actually exist, everything on her costume should serve three purposes: (1) portability of magical paraphernalia, (2) spatial compression of magical acts, and (3) speeding up of time required to comit magical acts.

Costume Onboard Technology:

Various ideas for costume technology include the following:
- Lab on a chip
- "Porta-cauldron"
- Magical relic with wire tubes and leads running from it to various components of the costume.  These leads act as an energy transmission system feeding power from the relic to other costume areas and onboard magical weapons.
- Programmable LCD readouts capable of displaying various combinations of magical runes and symbols.
- Headset microphone to record spells cast and load them into the "ritual computer".
- A number of vials, beakers and test tubes to hold magical potion ingredients.
- Digital spellbook
- "Junk-tech"

Other Miscellaneous Notes:

The whole idea of magic is to use ones mind to effect the  external environment or circumstances in a desired way.  It often involves some form of spirituality / occult practice as well as mind alteration.  So this triad of will, physical manipulation and mind alteration should be explicitly shown and conveyed by the costume design.

Initial Drawings for Character Pitch 1

Here are a few of the drawings I did for one of my character pitches.  The pitch is to create a 3D character model of a cybernetic witch / sorceress character.  The main goal of the project would be to develop a workflow that allows me to combine the advantages of both ZBrush organic modeling and Maya hardsurface modeling into a single character mesh.

Here are the general design drawings so far:

Here are some drawings of facial expressions that could be used to inform corrective blendshape / morph target or rotation-only joint-based facial rig design.  This character is designed to be for a fighting game, so not a lot of variety yet:

Introduction

Hi everyone, my name is James Ross.  I'm a senior at SCAD focusing on organic modeling, and concept art / production illustration.  I hope to be a character artist or concept artist (or do both) in the 3D game industry.  Art school has been great so far and very enjoyable, but I constantly feel like I'm fighting two battles: (1) the battle to become a better traditional artist, and (2) the battle to learn all the digital tools.  It seems very hard to master both.

I'm looking forward to taking this class for multiple reasons.  I think it will give me a chance to synthesize a lot of what I've learned into a strong portfolio project.  I'm also really excited to meet the level designers in the class.  If you are a level designer and might be in need of a custom character / enemy for a UDK project, then perhaps we could collaborate in the future.  I'm expecially interested in projects with genre themes (scifi, fantasy, horror) but trying to push stories and visual styles outside the boundaries of what has already been done.

Test Post 1

This is a test post for my new game art blog.