Archive for February 2012

fighter details



Today has been an interresting day into creating the fighter, and putting in the details. After talking with Phil he mentioned that the fighter looks more of a enemy plane rather than a Hero sided plane, to sort this out and to round off the plane and to make the plane more friendly I decided to create scaled armour there for rounded, and also added in shading helps to  show the curves. I need to consider in reshaping the wings, it is very tricky to the get the shapes right and I'm still not too sure to the way they look.



the fighter turn arround



this has been a tricky hard day creating this, building the front view and creating the mid sections, I feel that now I am ready to break into working more into the this the same way I did with the bomber

Mud box character

 This is my Mud Box character, I'm pretty proud of him and they way he has turnned out, I'm not very good at character design, but maybe... mud box may help me in this secter... in more ways than one... I learnt also about simple joints and ,moving the characters arms.



The Bomber




finally out of working out I feel that this is at its completion, it has taken a lot of work trying to get this right, but I feel i'm happy to the way it has turnned out, from now I am not going to use big heavy blacks or blobs of shading, Ive learnt a new way and a better way of it.

bomber success


these are two final progressions of the bomber.




I feel that now Im at a very close stage to completing this bomber, I do apologise for the lack of blogging and will from now on blog every day. when creating this aircraft it has been a chalenge to work out the shapes and the contors and structure of teh plane, for example the body its self and the way it curves, the engine to the way it looks and its size and shape. Having the scaled silhouette of the man, it has been interresting to put together the engine, as I felt it would be good to have some sort of hatch and defence with in the engine. The scale of the engine to the man is very large so I was thinking that it could be an engine room. My next stage now is to figure out the wings and the cockpit.   

The new design so far

today has been a very long but progressive day,  this is the progress I hae so far with the plane, as you see it is not finished or complete, the most difficult part is the mid section, due to its shape, its been a bit of a trial to work this out, and also the front of this air craft aswell, but over all I feel that it is a better step forward to how it was, I am enjoying the more pencil style, I feel you can see the shape and the look of the aircraft more. But still, it is not fully finished and the parts in black are the parts that are still to come.

@phil (scale) and todays tutorial

todays totorial was a very interresting and had lots of areas that had a lot of food for thought with in it.

first I am going to show you the two worked in concepts I have done so far, phil adressed my same concern with them, on them looking cloudy.


this is the first part I did



 these are the bomber with the top gunner slightly changed


what came up in the tutorial was that the top gun turret, made the bomber feel too small, and that the texturing looks too cloudy.

I tottally agree with him on this, as when I was designning this, I was looking at too mutch of smaller bombers, like the WW2 Heinkel he 111, and also limiting my self too mutch on the scale and design.



phil prompted me to start looking at vehical concept design. This really did help, I feel that this hit the nail on the head and I have been starting it wrong.



(These concepts below are not my own and I am not taking any credit for it)

metaninja.com
http://eat3d.com/forum/contests-and-challenges/high-poly-vehicle-scappelle1



cheo36



http://thenewcaferacersociety.blogspot.com/2008/11/deviant-art-cheo36.html


I feel what I have been doing wrong is, creating the designs straight from black and struggling on creating the forms and the shapes along with perspective and size.




This is were I would like to point phil to, and ask the question of is this scale now too large for the person, as Ive forgoten my first ever main influence, and that is Laputa castle in the sky, with the big heavy bomber.

You may also see that I have put one of the men in the engine and thought maybe that men could have engine rooms powering the engines, or even another gun port or weapons area.





I feel that this would be a better scale for this bomber, or somewere close.

Also I have neatened up the silhouettes in photoshop, from quite messy lines to very smooth lines.

bomber plan complete


This is the bomber with a turn arround, you also will spot that I have done mid section plans aswell allong the bottom. It has been a rather very interresting creating the front and side view of this and planning out the sections in between. The idea of creating the sections between came from the inspiations of the plans below, the way the fuselage is cut up, I feel that doing this would make it easier when I come to model the two chosen aircraft. I also want the plans to look like as if they're being created by an aircraft designer as well. 



development of fighter 6

This the Topdown view of the idea. Here I am going for a hammerhead shark styled layout for the wing configuration. I feel that this would make the plane a lot more interresting.

@phil, Jacky and people... I need opinions


 Here are the finished off versions of ideas 5 and 6 for my fighter.

(fighter designs)



Talking to phil yesterday he mentioned that he liked the way the lion fish had the fins at the top, and the way it had a sort of Japanese fan effect, so I decided to develop the latest idea of number 6 on the sheet, and try and create this effect. I feel maybe I should create a whole new plane, with this idea in mind rather than trying to stick it on at what seems to be a last moment. I am also currently creating the top down view, also I am  trying not to make them have a bad guy look, so I'm trying to keep down the spikeyness.

(fighter 6 development)




A very progressive day

Bomber development



These are early versions of the bomber, I was taking on board, the way of having two silhouettes and moving them on from stage to stage, this is of the squid and the lionfish silhouette. Im not 100% certain on these designs though, but out of them I do like 5 and 6, 5 being small and nasty and 6 being more sleak.   



Fighter Development



These are the fighter designs so far, I have two more to create and minipulate, but I've taken number 4 into early development 



Bomber

the very large corporate bomber is coming allong very nicely in its develepment, and is quite a sturdy design, I know I said against being a bi plane but number 5 really looks suites it, the deign is developped from a horse shoe crab, a manta ray and a lobster, with the engines from a spitfire silhouette.


Fighter

Here is the minipulation of number 4 of the fighter development page, I want a kind of back gunner or turret to the aircraft like the Douglas SBD Dauntless WW2 air craft, that also built to fight the japanese at sea.


I feel I need to develop more on the fighter though, being that it is more bodged together, I was thinking maybe you could see a lot more of the engine, and as you see on number 5 and 6 I started looking at the wing shapes as well, creating this more fishy characteristics and it being light and fast. I also added on the trailing tendrils.





Last week I started to back ground develop a logo and branding for this project this is an early idea, its a working logo, along with a working title, though these are back ground elements but I feel that its this project really does need it.

fish influence map



Amongst the coughing and spluttering and stuff, I managed to produce a texture and influence map. When I come to design later on, this shows me some of the interesting elemements and details of what could be used, such as armour, covering's, shapes, details, engine and mechanical parts.

fishy shapes





Today I went through and created many many silhouettes of all types of fish and fish parts, while looking at these fish I came accross many intriguing shapes that also could be used with in planes, like panels, body shapes, armoured parts, engine parts and other in builts details, so tomorrow my job will be to gather a influence map of all these shapes and all these details. Today has been awesome as I can see many nice shapes already in these silhouettes to be then minipulated and turnned into aircraft.

The big green light



Today after Phil's tutorial I've felt morally very happy I feel that it is an all stations go, and I can start developing and getting things rolling, I feel that it was a very good idea of recording the tutorial on my phone so now I can play back and re listen to what we said and make extra notes to move forward.  

with in the we mentioned tutorial about the two assets of the two aircraft and the binary opposites between the Pirates and the Corporate aircraft.

The Pirates:

materials being made from woods, scrap and canvas, also being very lite and fast, and I could imagine them having very tuned up engines where they've had to modify their engines and having scrap parts bolted onto them, a bit like the days of WW2 fighters were they would come back shot up, be repaired and be off to fight the next day.

this is a list of the possible weapons they would have

Trailing tendrils, inspired by jelly fish, they can be set a lite to ignite the gasses of the Corporate heavy craft, these also could be barbed to catch in the engines of dog fighters. The pirate would then release them, this also could be due to that pirates planes wont be as fast as the corporate fighters. A bonus for corporate I hear you say due to them being slightly faster, now your in a speedy fast plane trying to shoot down a slightly slower plane than your self, you then have to slow down, with out stalling, and behind this aircraft, with these long fiery or barbed wavering tendrils, that can get caught up in your own engine thus destroying you, plus you are trying to concentrate on hitting your target with these burning trailing tendrils masking the front and the important parts of the plane.



Puffer fish bombs,
bombs like a puffer fish when dropped into narrow cooling towers are thin, then they expand and then blow up, this puffer fish aren't the spiky versions.



Venomous spars influenced by the Weever fish and many other poisonous fish the Weever fish has spars that come out,  its reminded me of the Japanese fan that shot out darts, so I feel that this would be a brilliant weapon, or in stead of normal bullets, they could shoot more dart like rounds.



The Corporate dictator craft:

these will be more bulkey, and industrial bellowing thick black, out of funnels, the corporate styled craft will more like a large heavy bomber, with more armored plating and heavy.The bellowing smoke would be a form of defense as well as a weakness, as it is flammable toxic gasses. The smoke can be linked to the ways of octopus ink defense, not only this smoke is thick, it can also be used as a smoke screen, masking the contours of the bomber. though this smoke is flammable, if the attacking aircraft is too far away from the funnels, and the smoke ignites, it can then end up blowing up the aircraft, so it does have its advantages.



Spiky Puffer fish:

This time used as a defense and offence to shoot other pirates out the sky, these are shot and then stick them selves to the other planes and then explode with shrapnel sending spikes flying everywhere, tearing through the canvas of the pirate planes wings and coverings.     



the octopus tentacles:

I'm still thinking of what they could be used for, they could be a way of landing or a part of the look and design. I wouldn't really want them to play a role as a weapon as such, as I think that they would be too challenging for the pirates.


Crab pincers

crab pincers would be good to use as a sort of melee weapon getting up close and personal and chopping parts off the plains.




Looks


wile discussing the bomber, I thought of the hind and its heavy payload of weapons and its chunkiness,


This is also very fish like and bulky.  


This also could be said for the Avatars flying fortress, also its self having a heavy pay-lode.









              

Ideas, back story and Proposal concepts

Proposal 1


Square Enix have commissioned me to create the art direction of a new game called ACE PIRATES, the game is about two nations fighting over air space in a fantasy world, the game is going to be an online +12 MMORPG download, the designs of the planes are going to be based of marine animals, due to their seafarer past and traditions. The player can build and manipulate and customise his plane as well, the colours of the plains will also be gathered from fish.      

I will start pipeline for this by gathering mass imagery, of fish and a number of many planes,
I’ll then start working through silhouettes creating interesting shapes and designs and developing them into a final idea.
I would be building two of these planes; one plane would be sleek and fast with light weapons, the other would be large and heavy with lots of weapons. These planes will be opponents of each other such as the national force and the pirates. The colours and patterns of the aircraft will be based on the fish as well.   
The aim would be to have two fully rigged stylized models statically displayed in a combat scenario. 

What I would like to learn from this:
New involved modelling techniques
Texturing techniques
Rigging a vehicle
Lighting and world lighting

This idea is a great idea but it lacks the reason of why they are based on fish...

talking to phil he said maybe there could be two groups of fish and that I should look at ivasive fish and they could be fighting over a water space to the other fish.

I liked this idea so I started looking at ivasive fish to shape the aircraft designs:

Lionfish
Chinese Mitten crab
European green crab
white spotted jellyfish
New Zealand Mud snail
rusty crayfish
Asian Carp
asian swamp eal
The comb jelly
Japanese starfish
The snowflake coral
Sea lampreys
Darwins Barnacle



while thinking of the design and taking the instpiration of these fish, it then came down to the subject of why are these planes or two sets of people battling and why possibily over water, I also though of what can abrasive fish do to their environment, and I found out that they can spread diseases, I thought of could it be politics and that act as a diseas, but then after a while it led onto dictatorship, and then fizzled out. I went back onto the idea of maybe them fighting over water or salt water and fresh water. Then some ideas started to emerge out of this, and started building a back story and also to who these two sets of people were and why one secter were named pirates. I then started to create a strong back story of the world, answering the whys and hows.



The history of this world, the planet its self is a dying planet


People have taken to the skies, the land and sea are polluted, and to gather fresh water they have Rig points that purify the water, these Rigs fly up to the main flying cities above. Years ago the land became unlivable and polluted, so people moved to the sea, and then the sea became polluted and unlivable, then people moved to the skies, by building large sky cities.

The NF is a water supply company set up by the dictator before he came to power. When he came to power he started to control the supply and the demand of water, prices started rising, people became poor, the outskirts of the flying cities were the most poorest and distant, the dictator valued wealth above welfare, and wanted rid of the distant poorer sectors.

It was the poorer people in these sectors that maintained the rigs; they then got laid off, water became harder to get and the quality was getting worse, and taxes on the poor became higher, until one day one of the old rig workers went down to a few of the rigs and found that some of the rigs were sabotaged, later on they find out that the dictator is feeding bad quality water into poorer sectors. From this point the poorer people rise up against the dictator stealing back rigs, this then makes the poorer people pirates.


these are the pages and ideas of the idea growing


 These are images and beer mat drawings of drones and a rig.


And this is the idea its self growing, allong with another beer mat drawing of a possible way of how the secters are replenished with water.






sketch book development and ideas

This is just illustrating the ideas of monday and combining fish shapes together with plane elements, such as the tail with armour, engine and cockpit. These aren't designs its just a combination of illustrated ideas

 I was researching real gaming companies for my first proposal, and also thinking of the actual name of the game its self, and stepping away from ACE Pirates

 Here I'm taking influence from the Lionfish and its fin shapes and creating wing ideas from them
 Combining the shapes and illustrating ideas at the time.
 looking at flyingfish wings and studieing them.
 here I'm thinking of the biplane and at the time i was thinking against it, as they seem, too structured, and to ridged.
 illustrating the fish gills idea on a plane.




 This is after I spoke to phil and him talking about the invasive fish idea and allong with me researching the fish them selves
 Here I'm thinking of how the enemy could be attacked in some way.