Skin Textures

Here are some textures I have selected as ideas for the skin of the alien character. If I do select one of the textures it would still have to be softened to give the same final outcome that we are going for with the actual environment.

Character Creation

I have started to model the alien character using a polygon cube in Maya. Hopefully the 3D creation stage of the character should only take a week maximum, as well as the main part of the environment which is being dealt with by other group members. If this holds up to be true as a group we will be able to do a rough block-out which may help us discover and flaws in which we may have missed in the project.

Design Update

The design of our environment has completely changed. For us as a group to have successfully completed this project with the element rooms animated using particle animation to the standard we wanted, would not have been possible in the amount of time we had for the project. Because of this we have changed our design to a simpler idea. This change enables us to produce a higher quality environment and character interaction. The new idea for the environment is a fridge. And no not just the outside of a fridge but the inside to. It will be based on the character's journey from the salad draw to the top of the fridge to turn the fridge light off as someone didn't close the fridge door properly. The character will not be able to get to sleep otherwise and so would be grumpy in the morning. To reach the top of the fridge they will have to interact with the food in order to reach the top.

Character Design Update

Due to the main focus of the project being about the 4 elements i have decided to completely change the character. The new character is of alien life form. My reason for this decision is i feel its better for the narrative of the environment. The alien is on the flying steamboat to learn and interact with the 4 different elements. Here are some initial drawings of what the new character will look like.

Alien Research:

I researched the web to get an idea on the different shapes people believe aliens to be. The most common was for an alien to be tall and skinny with big heads and big eyes. I didn't want to base the character on this common image completely so I decided to change a couple of features. I've made the character smaller and fatter, but have still kept the concept of it not really have much of a nose or ears.

Here are some pictures of what people beleive aliens to look like:

Texturing

The type of style of texturing that we are going for in this project is soft and friendly. One of our main influences in the form of texturing is the CocaCola advert 'Happiness Factory'. This is the style of finish we wish to achieve.

Here are some stills from CocaCola's 'Happiness Factory'

Design Update

Due new ideas we decided to have the main focus of this project on the 4 elements and not the fact that it was a dance/club venue. The groups new idea is to have the 4 elements, each in different rooms/pods, but now in the form of a flying steamboat! In each different room the character will be challenged in order to make it out the exit of each room. The idea to challenge the character was influenced by the children's game Screwball Scramble. The ball being the character has to overcome a series of obstacles to reach its end destination.

Character Design

This is the first design of the character for the project.

To get some influences on what to make the character look like i did some very 'interesting' research. I went to a range of different pubs and clubs to have a look at what the average male was wearing.

Initial Idea

The first main concept we decided on as a group for this project was to create a dance venue in which our character would explore. We then adapted on this idea by focusing on 4 main rooms in which the character would be exploring. The themes for these 4 rooms are going to be based on the idea of the 4 elements, earth, wind, fire and water. The character will discover and experience different emotions as it travels through each room. I've taken on the task of designing, creating and animating the character for this project.