Characters
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Protagonist for the western movie level. Intended to give off a Casanova Clint Eastwood look. Her pallet allows for her to stick out from her surroundings while simultaneously remaining harmonious with her intended environment.
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Protagonist for the horror movie level, heavily inspired by slasher icons of the 90s. His pallet sticks with the muted tones of the horror level, reminiscent of leather and skin.
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Protagonist for the romance movie level. Influenced by telenovela romance shows and romance literature. His pallet reads into tall, dark, handsome with a soft romantic side.
Main Characters
Enemies
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Designed to be easily discernable at a distance while keeping exaggerated features. The size and build of each enemy convey the amount of health, damage, and speed that each have.
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Designed to feel stereotypical to a western outlaw; grittier, older and meaner.
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The “final girl” for the horror level was designed after classic cheerleader looks, complete with high ponytail. We gave her a younger, brighter preppy look to contrast Syds design.
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The twin brother of the main character for romance. Model was reused from the main character while adding scars and a deeper, edgier color pallet to discern the two characters.
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The female romantic interest for the romance level was designed after classic telenovela outfits and hairstyles. We gave her a sultry mature look, similar to other starlets.
Workflow
Sculpting
I created a base mesh based off the rough dimensions of our western main character, that was then used for rapid development of other characters.
All characters were dyna meshed, sculpted, decimated in Zbrush before being exported to Maya with separate accessories for easy retopology and baking.
rETOPOLOGY
Retopology was optimized for animation, leaving a large amount of the polycount budget within joints and the face.
Main Characters retain around: 15-20k Tri count
Other Characters retain around:: 10-15k Tri count
tEXTURING
Texturing was done first in grayscale values. using generators and custom masks before going into more hand painted details around the larger areas of the body and face.
Reflection
What went wrong?
Looking back, I learned the importance of communication between the animator and character artist. Due to our rapid development with several characters in a short time frame. UV’s and texturing had to happen while weight painting occurred. We learned early on that edited UVs would effect the weight paints and thus had to communicate efficiently in order to not create more work.
What did you improve?
Over the course of production, you can see the quality of assets improve overall. Retopology, tri count and texturing became more apparent as the project came to an end. In hindsight, I wish I had more time to go back to the original character assets to raise those qualities to the standard that was set later.
