FMP Planning & Project Start

15/01/22 - Week 1

I've chosen to do the character brief for my FMP project. This involves creating a minimum of 3 characters that are fully rigged, posed and game ready.

I chose to abide closely to the original brief, this time not making my own concepts after getting negative feedback towards my concept for the previous character brief and considering this is my FMP, I didn't really want to take too many risks in terms of how visually appealing and conceptually interesting my work is. 

My main focus then falls back on the quality of the characters I'm creating since I do not have the concept part involved. To compensate, I want to try to learn how to create game ready hair cards in xgen and hopefully get some basic understanding in marvellous too. This should amp up my industry standard techniques and create stronger portfolio pieces.

I started on artstation to find some interesting and appealing concepts or illustrations that I could recreate. I had a few things in mind to narrow down my search which included variations in race, age, body type and importantly to me, style. I didn't want everything to be one style and I hope to recreate the styles of the concepts I have chosen which will provide me with a wider portfolio that shows I am willing to abide to any style, though I am focusing on more stylistic characters.

The search was hard as I had to keep all of these things in mind whilst also thinking about how appealing the concepts were to me and others, I tend to like specific aesthetics and though I have pandered towards that a bit I tried to make it a bit more neutral and appeal to a range of people. Eventually, I found a few that I liked from 3 different artists and I requested their permission to recreate their work in a 3D medium, thankfully I got a response from all of them later that day and they all agreed.

Here are the concepts I have chosen:

Nia - By Jonatan Anjos https://www.artstation.com/jonatananjos

My first character I hope to display a more semi-realistic style with more realistic proportions and also definitely include the xgen hair I previously mentioned. There will be challenges with the intricacy on the clothing and the fact that I am more used to a stylistic process now.

The Boatswain - By Venus Bambisa https://www.artstation.com/venusbambisa

My second character is much more stylised, though the style is very specific and "pointy" which will be interesting to replicate. The trousers may be a challenge since it may be difficult rig, so I plan to challenge my rigging skills here.

Soft Blue - By Bergamotik https://www.artstation.com/barmaglotik

My third character is something that is very personally appealing for me, I really like the many details of the design and the soft style. I am most excited for this project, though I have not done anything of this scale or quite like this before so I think it'll definitely push all of my skills.

Moving on from this, I started my plan. As I experienced last term planning was super important and I wanted to try to realistically plan the next 17 weeks ahead of me including 1 for planning (this week) and 1 at the end of the project in case of any problems or last minute things I wanted to add in.

I planned this out in excel and will also be planning in more detail my work every week. The excel document sets out when I hope to finish each segment of the projects, I've decided to work on the projects in unison so I can hopefully get everything done in good timing and not end up with some projects being more worked on than others.