Here is the final render for my character model. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to texture it or finish off the face, however, I did try to paint on textures on the rendered image using photoshop.
3D Vehicle: Mood Board
My inspiration and initial ideas
From the get-go, I already had a rough idea of what I wanted my vehicle to look like; a round, spherical shape with the profile largely dictated by the cockpit. I owe this to my love for the game “Subnautica” which is currently in early access on Steam.
The vehicles I designed were obviously not land vehicles, and some of them were very futuristic in design.
In a lot of concepts for 1 person submersibles, the designs are either very slick and smooth or very boxy and defined, however I definitely favoured the slicker designs as they just seem right for gliding through the water at any reasonable speed.
This was my original mood board for my vehicle. The first image on the left is what I drew most of my inspiration from, it is the Seamoth from the game “Subnautica”
However, as the project moved forward, and I began messing around with some of the transformer tools in cinema 4D, I started shifting the design more towards a 1 seater space craft more than a submarine
These were some of my initial ideas
I was particularly fond of the drawing on the middle left, although the design was a bit too plane looking for me, however, with a few tweaks to the over all profile, I felt it could have been much more interesting. My first go-to drawing to model would have been one at the top right corner, the initial design had a few nice shapes that would have looked good in 3D, however, trying to model this proved a bit too difficult, as the shapes were just a bit too complex.
3D Character Model: Mood Boards
Pictured above is a mood board that I created a selection of different characters. Although they are all strikingly different, they all have 1 core thing in common; They have a sort of alternate/punk look to them. They are also all wearing street clothes and all have a a rough/worn look as well.
Each of these characters have a unique personality to them, with Delson Rowe from the Infamous series (top middle) having an angst teen vibe, down to Franklin Clinton from GTA 5 (bottom right) having a very confident and independent personality.
I was very fond of the visual design of Desmond Miles (top left), with his simple, modern hoodie and jeans. This was a much easier design to pursue for my character model and also allowed me to play around more with textures thanks to the design essentially being a blank canvas.
Concepts
This image shows my original concept for my character, with him having more of a roughed up look and a lot more detail’s and ornaments attached to his clothing.
This is after I decided to tone down a bit of the potential details and went for a simpler design.
3D Vehicle Creation – Final Render
For this project we were tasked with creating an original character as well as a vehicle to accompany them. Most people decided to make a standard car as their vehicles. This was my original idea too, creating a simple family car or maybe even a sports car of sorts, however, as the project progressed I instead opted to create a 1-person alien spacecraft.
This is the original engine I was going to use for my spacecraft (Although at the point of making this engine, my spacecraft was going to be a submarine of sorts)
This is the re-design of the engine that I made. It may not seem it here, but this engine actually looks a lot more futuristic with textures & lighting.
This is the tail end of my ship. It is just a collection of cylinders and tubes packed tightly together. I also used the cloner tool for the cubes scattered around between the cylinders.
This is the cockpit for my ship. It is just a sphere partway inside of a tube. I used the polygon selection tool to create the wings on the top and the sides.
I decided to add a taper to my ship in order to give it a less stubby and more interesting profile.
My ship was still looking kind of boring, so I decided to model a pair of wings for it.
Here is the final render of my spacecraft, with global illumination, ambient occlusion and caustics turned on. For the textures I used a simple reflective yellow and dark blue Fresnel shader and for the engine I just used a blue material with the default glow settings.
Heavy-Duty Supply Cache: Mood Board
On this mood board I have collected various images of sleek looking low profile containers. These are the images that I drew inspiration from when creating my model (especially from the colour schemes for some of the images)
Heavy-Duty Supply Cache: Final Render
The above images show the final rendition of my crate. It looks a bit a plane, however, towards the end of the project, I began focusing more on the texture than the actual model, trying to get them as looking as best as I could to help add some extra detail.
Basic Heavy-Duty Supply Cache: Construction and Unused Ideas
For this project, we were tasked with the creation of a 3D container , which we would later print out using a 3D printer. Originally I was going to make just a generic pirates chest, however as the project progressed and I explored other ideas, I settled on creating a futuristic looking care package of sorts.
This was one of the containers I was working on before I decided to scrap it. It was a Zippo hand warmer.
This was going to be a water filter connected to a larger machine. It was (obviously) meant to filter dirty water. I honestly think that if I stuck with this one, it might have yielded a better result than what I actually decided to create.
Below is the construction process in which I made my final product:
This is the humble beginning of my crate. All I had done here was used a boole to make indents on 4 sides of the crate, as well as using boole’s to get the corners of the crate angled.
Next I added most of the details to the top of the crate using simple objects such as cylinders and and cubes.
After that it was just a matter of adding some finishing touches to the sides of the crate, again using the boole tool to create simple shapes.
Mobile game pitch
Story & game progression
For our mobile game, we decided to create a combat flight simulator set in a future in which humanity faces the threat of an alien invasion. You, as a fighter pilot, are tasked with various missions and objectives with the goal of helping fend off the invasion. At first, you are just a captain, following orders set by your commanding officer, however, as the game progresses and the story unfolds, you are promoted by the council to the rank of commander, and get to decide which missions to take, vehicles to use as well as what equipment to use.
Game Types
The game will feature a salvage-type system where the player can deconstruct alien technology to research upgrades for existing equipment and vehicles or to research new weapons, vehicles or equipment. It will also have two different game modes; training mode, where the player can learn new skills and earn minor bonus xp, as well having the ability to adjust the weather conditions, to better prepare them for a wider array of scenarios. The game will also have a missions mode which will have the player go through several missions, including; Flying to avoid enemy radar, scouting enemy territory, fighting other pilots , delivery missions and more, as well as giving the player the opportunity to experience the story of the game.
Objectives & rewards
Missions during the story could feature several minor objectives as well as a main end-goal. It is up to the player to choose weather or not they want to complete all objectives or just focus on the main one, however, they will receive rewards based on how many objectives they were able to successfully complete. Rewards include things like honour, which is used to purchase new upgrades and vehicles, as well as unlocking tougher missions, experience points, which aids in unlocking tougher missions, and sometimes, new parts, which are used to research new upgrades and to construct previous researched items.
Variety & freedom
The wide array of aircraft in the game allow the player to take many different approaches to any given mission, for example; some aircraft feature more firepower than others, and allow you to take your enemy head-on, while other aircraft feature better cloaking systems, which enable you to take a stealthy approach and sneak around your enemies.
Upgrades & progression staggering.
The parts required to build and research entirely new aircraft and weapons are only available through the completion of missions. This is done to ensure that players do not get the “best” equipment too fast, as that would ruin some of the early missions. This also give players a sense of power when they begin unlocking some of the higher rank aircraft and weaponry, as we intend to have very noticeable performance improvements between each rank of aircraft.
Menues & options
Once the tutorial has been completed, the player gains full control of their own military base and aircraft hanger, which act as a menu for the player to select which different missions they want to go on, as well as allowing them to customise their aircraft and research new parts. There will be several different paths to research, including; ammunition, navigation, stealth technology and shield-speed generators.
A screenshot from the game.
Some concept art for one of the starting ships.
The concept for a type of enemy ship.
Goku: Finally done
I finally finished it, and the feet only took about 10 minutes, don’t know why I put it off for so long…
Card and board games
There is one thing that card and board games do that video games have a lot of trouble with, and its mostly due to how visual the medium is and the fact that you have to show everything, which is why leaving things up to the imagination is out of the question, and thats the idea of really weird themes, things that wouldn’t work in a game, and yet, in board games it often does with the reason behind that usually being because of the mechanics. Now of course video and board games are centred around their mechanics. While recently there has been an increase in very narratively driven games that are very light on game mechanics, the vast majority of games are mechanically driven and for me, as a gamer, I prefer games with competent and interesting mechanics over games which are mainly focused on the story, especially those that don’t let you create the story for yourself and that basically hold your hand through the story.
Now with card and board games, the game never tells the story to you, you tell the story using the board game and the game mechanics, as well as the people that you’re playing with, and that is an inherent strength of board games and table top stuff. I mentioned weird themes earlier, stuff that wouldn’t really work in video games, and a great example of that is a game called Sushi Go!. It is a card game which you play with friends where your goal is to score the most points by making the most sushi. Sushi Go! takes the card-drafting mechanism of Fairy Tale and 7 Wonders and distills it into a twenty-minute game that anyone can play. The dynamics of “draft and pass” are brought to the fore, while keeping the rules to a minimum. As you see the first few hands of cards, you must quickly assess the make-up of the round and decide which type of sushi you’ll go for. Then, each turn you’ll need to weigh which cards to keep and which to pass on. The different scoring combinations allow for some clever plays and nasty blocks. Round to round, you must also keep your eye on the goal of having the most pudding cards at the end of the game!. The interesting thing about board/card games is that you can make a game about pretty much anything and as long as you have a solid set of mechanics behind it, it still has the potential to become a classic. Now its not that you can’t necessarily do that with video games, its just that it is a lot more difficult, and one of the reasons for that is because of abstract thematic mechanics.
A hand in Sushi Go!
The box art for Sushi Go!
One of the big differences between board games and the majority of video games is that board games’ limitations can actually result in a lot of creativity from the designer, needless to say, board games can become overly complex. In board games you have to track all the rules and scoring, and if you over do it, board games can become extremely difficult to play.
For our card game we decided to base it off of the classic card game; Top Trumps, in which the objective is to eliminate all of your opponents cards from the game. The game relies nearly entirely on chance and luck of the draw mechanics and as such can never be played as a truly competitive and professional game, however, the reason the game is as popular as it is, is because of the vast majority of themes associated with it. There is a Top Trumps game for nearly every theme imaginable and as such, despite the game having very limited mechanics, it is widely played by people all over the world.
As I mentioned previously, our game is a variation of the Top Trumps card game with our theme being centred around characters from the popular video game series: Bioshock, such as Jack, Kyburz and Atlas each with their own unique stat line and card art. The game is designed to be played with 2 to 4 players and the estimated game time is about 15 to 20 minutes with the object of the game being to remove all cards from your opponents hand through the use of your own cards and their stats, for example; If I played a card and chose my primary stat to be intelligence, my opponent would then to play a card from their hand which had higher intelligence then my card in order to remove my card from play, however, if they cannot match my stat, I m then able to select a card (at random) from their hand to remove from play. The game has a solid mix of skill and luck and is designed to be played in a non-competitve light.
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