Danny Rollings: line art

Showing posts with label line art. Show all posts

Thursday, 8 December 2016

The Sad Robot, How it Came to Be

Back in the summer of 2013, fresh out of college and having chosen UCA's CG Arts & Animation course (now known as Computer Animation Arts) as my go-to destination for University, our course leader-to-be set us the task of adapting 13 random objects (Fig. 2) into 100 concepts, before translating 3 of those concepts into orthographic projections of a machine, life-form and a structure; concepts 24, 88 and 41 respectively. Looking back I remember worrying over getting all 100 sketches done, but once I got into it I was well on my way to 101. Wow, 19 year old me stressing over 100 thumbnail sketches, oh how little I knew back then!

Roll forward 3 years to post-graduation, looking for inspiration I decided I'd use my improved graphic design and 3D modelling skills to turn some of these hand drawn sketches into clean orthographics, and finally a working 3D model. The aim is to build the robot to work like machine, one that that can be rigged and manoeuvred appropriately. In my next progress update I will be publishing screenshots of the digital orthographic development and modelling process up to this point.

Fig. 1: 3 years in the making, 1 & 0 (on & off)

Fig. 2: The original objects

Saturday, 3 January 2015

[Character Design] 45: Compass Spinner; Line Art Development (Top View)

Influence Map

Royalty free font: Flexsteel

Thursday, 17 July 2014

Creating Characters: From Desserts 03 - Alien Creature Development 02

Previous 'Characters from Desserts' post

At this point I finally compiled an Influence Map to help with further character design beyond that of the alien queen's head. Until this point the design process had only used a single image as influence, in the form of the dessert the original character was derived from.

With the character's features having become similar to that of a mosquito, I took the "winged" approach in thumbnails 15 and 16, but I soon disregarded these designs in favour of something less predictable. I do, however, like the anthropomorphic features of 15 as well as the spikiness of the anatomy.

Thumbnail 21 established the 'lanky' frame of the species while 22 provides a nice example of the possible spikiness of the alien body. Between 23 to 34 I focused on developing the foot and lower leg...

My preferred foot design is the one found in thumbnail 32, however further leg development will aim between that seen in 31 and 32 - not too thin and weak looking (32) and not as smooth and birdlike (31).

The foot design seen in 34 looked more suitable as a hand so I decided to begin designing the hand from this, as seen in thumbnail 35.

Thinking Ahead - Character / Species Height

I like the idea of the aliens outmatching humans in height, reminiscent of the human to Na'vi height difference as seen in Avatar (2009) but probably less extreme, with this height emphasised by a slender yet menacing frame.

Avatar to human height difference.

It might be useful to note that humans wont necessarily feature in any possible story involving my alien species - no actual plans currently exist as to a story at this point in time.

The Na'vi have officially been described as the males being an average of 3 metres, with the females being slightly shorter; while the Kaminoans from Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) have been described as being around 7ft / approx. 2 metres tall.

Kaminoan to Obi-Wan height difference.

I find 2 metres tall to be a more reasonable height for my alien species (I may push this to 2.5 metres), yet I also like the idea of the females being slightly smaller than the males, as shown in Avatar.