Week Twenty Two

Third week, work on the characters continues. This week I have been directing my attention to Ariel, the apparition-like spirit who is to guide you through the level. We have also been discussing Ferdinand's role in the game and whether or not he even needs to have an in-engine model, seeing as you'll be playing as him in a first person set up. The general consensus is that unless we see the hands or feet in-game, a model (and therefor a design) will not be necessary. Anthony, who was originally set to model Ferdinand, will instead take on environment assets such as trees and rocks - something that is a little closer to home with role, environment concept artist.

Here you'll see one main drawing and a selection of the warm-up sketches from this week's life drawing class. The warm-ups were simply the product of attempting to capture the form to paper without your eyes leaving the subject matter - pretty much drawing blind, which is why they're so awful! The main drawing, however, I believe to be fine, sans the head being slightly too small. With the amount of time were given for this one, I probably should have aimed to get a little bit more done, but instead I strangely opted to stop half-way in order to get some shading done. That said, while the applied shading isn't completely useless, it is a bit weak with very little variation in tone - I can only spot about 5 different levels of shading strength. Instead of going for a sketchy, iterative style I have used very sure, clear single lines here, and I'm not sure whether that works to the piece's favour - it just feels like there's a little something missing.

So, here's the final Ariel design, which has undergone the same iteration process as Prospero last week. This design was a little harder to do, as the original concepts that Brandon had come up with didn't really give you a clear view at a lot of areas. For example, none of them showed her feet or how she was supposed to be covering her, ahem, crotch area. These decisions were instead made by me whilst cobbling together the stylised version. I made her barefoot, which is often to be expected of a spirit, and gave her a flowing loin cloth to match her cloak/cape item. We actively chose to portray her without too many items of clothing as she is the spirit of the wind - a celestial being, and therefor would not wear (or even have access to) man-made clothing. Naturally, being an immortal spirit with no true form would eliminate the prospect of anything of a sexual capacity, which is why her chest lacks "certain details". Her form flaunts her mimicked female humanoid appearance with little modesty, as she isn't really part of the physical realm.