Week 4- Zbrushing face and building body.

This week, myself and Dan R tweaked our heads in Zbrush. Dan C showed us how to use the programme as neither of us had used it before.

The low poly head after it had been inported into Zbrush. Z brush was difficult to get used to at first. We lost all the work we did on the first day because we saved our work as a document, instead of as a tool. Although, it gave us practise with using the programme etc, it was extremely frustrating. But continue on we must.

On my second attempt I really struggled to get her face back to how I had it the previous day, which resulted in my creating a man! grrrrr.

After alot of work, I managed to get her looking more feminine looking, by giving her cheek bones and a more defined jaw, with rounder eyes and more pouting lips.

I looked through the default brushes Zbrush had and decided that I would make my own for her scar as the brushes that were avaliable weren't suitable as they were eith too thick or too simple etc. Dan R had found some really distince images online that we could use, so I searched through the images that he found.

The above was the first texture that I had selected.

I adjusted the image in Photoshop, but when I painted it onto Tala's face, it didn't look right. No matter how large or small I made the brush, it made her face look like it had been burnt with acid. Me and dan searched through the images again and Dan picked out the one below.

I realise that ist is of a pigs slaughtered body, but it looked like a good gash, and I didn't think that most people would look through these sorts of images to get a scar, so it would hopefully be fairly original.

Again more altering in Photoshop.

I then added eyebrows to finish off her face so that Dan C and Jake could take it away and create the blend shapes.

As time was running out me and Dan R decided to model the low poly body together, as we only needed one body which we could adjust and make individual in zbrush next week. I moddeled the upper torso, arm and hand.

Week 3- modelling the face.

This week, myself and Dan R bagan modelling our characters face. I was pretty nervous to begin with as I had never modled a human before, uaually creatures of the undead or very stylised characters, and it was kind of daunting. Dan C gave us a good tutorial that would help. Myself and Dan R wanted to create the head completly ourselves as we didn't want to rely on Dan c's technical ability. Before we began though, we had a tutorial with Jarred to talk about our work etc. It was all going well until he watched a little bit of the block out Dan C had animated using our rough model, saying that it was a little long which was going to be difficult for us to do in the time limit. Thing is we hadn't even got to any of the fight scenes etc! Ah well, if everything goes wrong... we'll just kill off Tala sooner than expected!!

The line drawings of Tala, front and side, that I used when creating her face in Maya. The plan was that me and Dan would create a low poly face in Maya, export it to Zbrush, and make a high poly head so that Dan C and Jake could bake a normal map from the high poly head onto the low poly head. Although mysef and Dan R hadn't heard of baking before, apart from the cooking version, Dan C explained to us about it, complete with illustrations lol :)

Instead of modelling straight from a cube etc, the tutorial directed us to model the face by extruding plains. This looked like a long method, and it was, but it was much more managable and accurate to model than previous methods I had tried.

From the front view, Talas face looked like the face in the mirror in Shrek which was a problem. Taken out of front perspective view, it looked even worse as her chin was so pointed that you could take someones eye out with it.

The above two images are Tala's head, after tweaking them. The crease in the middle is because I hadn't joined the mirrored verts yet. Although it was hard to judge whether or not she looked exaclty how I would imagine Tala to appear, seeing as she had no eyebrows, ears , eyelashes or hair etc, I felt as though this model was pretty close.

To create this had taken a week. We had left this much time in our production schedule so that was ok, but we had spoken beofore at the beginning of the week of hopefully finishing earlier. As this didn't happen, I felt a bit worried that for the rest of the term if everything took as long as we'd planned, we would have to work dead on schedule as there wouldn't be any time to fall back on if we made any mistakes. This sounds like bad planning, and maybe it is, but we set realisitc time limits on our schedule. Last term Jarred spoke to us about the lizards tale method:if your running out of time, axe the work that wont be missed as much- have a fallback plan. We have one, but it would be nice to get everything done that we had planned this time. We learnt alot from our last project about not wasting time modelling objects that would hardly be seen by the camera etc, so hopefully this time maybe we will have more time. We'll just have to see.

Week 2- Development

Again, we decided to have another group meeting to show each other our individual work and to hopefully advance. Dan R and Jake had both attempted a rough beginning version of a script to begin our boss level. We weren't sure how the level was going to progress, only that the main character would enter the village and then meet the zombie. Both scripts were good, and we decided that we would write a script together, using elements from the two beginnings Dan and Jake had made. We began, but it was difficult to imagine what would happen when we couldn't see the same village in our minds. To solve this problem, we made a rough model village in Maya so that we would know how everything would act out. Myself and Dans did this in our last project together and it was really helpful in getting a design we were all happy with, so we decided to use this same method. As expected it took a while to construct, not because of the rough modelling, but because we all had different visions of where everything should be placed. Finally though, we ended up with the images you can see below. We also created two cubic rectangles, to act as models for our two characters.

At the back you can maybe see what is meant to be a cave, with a rock that has been rolled out of the entrance. We developed more of our story here, deciding that this is where the zombie was isolated, until her rock was moved and she was allowed to escape into the village. For whatever reason shecouldn't leave the village and nor could the villagers apparently. There's another cave up in the cliff where their bodies were laid to rest as they perished one by one. Although our story is still really broken up, there is enough information for us here to be able to work with.

With this constructed, we went about writing our script. This again took a fair bit of time as everyone had to be happy with what was being put down, and again their was technical vz creative e.g myself and Dan Ryan thought it would be cool to maybe finish one of the levels with the zombie hitting the faces of the animals and spirits on the totem pole, and each time a face got knocked out of the pole, it would ovbiously become smaller. Dan C said it wouldn't work and that it probably wouldn't look good anyway. After a while we ended up with a script I think the whole group was happy with. We came up with two alternative endings, one where the heroine dies (incase we run out of time) and the other where she wins (if we stick to the plan). The way the script had been created meant that we didn't really have to worry about the rest of the story in the game, just that she had to get the red gem from the zombie. It also helped us define the girls personality a bit more, which would help me in designing her clothes etc.

The next thing we had to do was the storyboards, again as a group. We took it in turns to draw one page of really really rough illustrations. The only thing that was a struggle was correographing the fight scene between our heroine and the zombie. We decided to seach online for fight scenes we particually liked etc. Dan R came up with a really good scene from the Jackie Chan movie 'Drunken Master' which we adapted moves from. I am also really into watching parkour, and showed the others some clips, which they liked and some of those moves were also adapted to fit into our work.

I had researched some names for my character. I wanted a traditional Native American name so that she would keep to her roots and also because their names all had special meanings so I was hoping to find a name that would fit her. My favourites were the following which I presented to the others so that we could all pick a name.

• ANGENI: spirit


• DONOMA: Omaha name meaning "sight of the sun."


• KAI: Navajo name meaning "willow tree."


• KAYA: Hopi name meaning elder sister."


• MAGENA: moon


• MEDA: prophetess


• MIAKODA: power of the moon


• NUKPANA: Hopi name meaning "evil."


• ONAWA: wide awake


• TALA: wolf

We couldn't decide on a name straight away, but as we worked we started to call her Tala, and the name stuck. So the name of our good character is called Tala.



I showed the others some more of my main character design. The sketches were really rough and crude, but they were just there so that the others could get the point and help me decide on appropriate hair for her etc. We went through hair and eye colour tests. Although Dan C liked the design with the red hair band, he was out voted with the plain tied up hair. On eye colour, it was a decision between green or blue eyes. Dan R said that if I used green eyes, with the red feathers etc, it would look too festive, so I decided to go with blue.

The face that I was pleased with to be my main character.




Forehead test. Hahaha, soo bad!! She looks like an alien!

Scar test. I wanted Tala to have a scar on her face, as this is a trait steryotypically given to villains in movies etc. I wanted a main character that looked as though she had been travelling and fighting the undead etc and had marks to show for it, and although she may look a bit different, that it didn't make her less pretty, just more defined.

I liked this scar but I didn't want her to look like a bond villain. Still, I liked the way it looked like she had been clawed accross the face in some earlier battle.

Scar- wize, we thought it should be between the eye and the mouth scar. I preffered the eye one overall, as I felt it was more eye-catching (boom boom).


We didn't like this scar very much as it was too normal, in comparison to the eye which was more dramatic.




Too festive.

Trying too hard to look different.

The middle hair deisn was the one we chose.

The chosen design tidyed up a little bit.

Week 1 - More ideas, concepts and research

I searched for images of Native Americans so that I could have good reference material to base a character on. Although we were still not completely clear on our storyline, it was decided that our heroine should definitely be modern. Without knowing her back story, I was struggling to imagine her in my mind. I decided to make her half Native American, half English as in my research I found out that today 6 out of 10 Native Americans are mixed blood. This would be helpful as we wouldn't have to make any bad American accent impressions in the sound booth. I also had to remember that because she wasn't full Native, her features wouldn't be so angular, which would contrast nicely with Dans character.

When comparing the men to the women, I found that the men had very angular features. There was considerably less images of the woman to compare to however, but from what I could tell, their features were more rounded.

As Pocahontas was a big success for Disney, I thought that this is what many people would associate Native Americans to look like, When looking at her design, we can see that it is very simple and that her eyes are rather oriental. Her jaw line is angled distinctly but not harshly. I really like her hair, but I have to think about Dan and Jake and the end outcome in general. I asked Dan if long lose hair was alright to design and he said yes. Even though Dan is really good at animating, I don't think he's at the level to make her hair move the way I can see it in my head. After playing 'Heavenly Sword', if the hair didn't move as well, then I know I'd be disappointed. Also, I know that if I did design long hair, Dan would probably spend ages learning to make it move as realistically as we would like, which we don't have time for and he has enough work to be worrying about as it is. So I knew already my character would have to have her hair tied back or short.

I also looked at other characters that I liked for inspiration.

Obviously, we have Lara Croft. The problem will be when designing my character, to not basically re-design Lara but with black hair. One thing I wont be having from her design is the shoes with the socks. I don't like them and Dan R hates them, so they are gone. I also probably wont have my character in hot pants as this is something very much associated with Lara Croft, and although I want my character attractive, I don't want there to be obvious links to Lara.

Rogue is my favourite ever female character. She's got everything that the other females I've mentioned have, fiest, looks (I couldn't find an individual picture of her in better clothes though), vulnerability, but her character personality has been deepened so much that you feel like you know her, and want to hear more about her story. That's what I want to my character to be like, someone you want to know more about, not easily forgettable. I only really like the classic Rogue design of the 1990s as later on I feel her appearance becomes too typical and doesn't stand out as much. It's hard to explain, what I'm looking for in my design is a certain x-factor. I also really like her eyes, nice and big but not animie style which I don't like as most of those characters look like they have serious drug issues.

Kristin Kreuk who plays Lana Lang on the TV show 'Smallville'.

Nariko from the game 'Heavenly Sword'. I really like her nose, just a little bit smaller. And the hurt expression in particular is very effective.

With all this in mind I tried to make some sketches of what my character would look like. At first I just couldn't get any good images to come out at all. My designs were terrible and flat as you can well see. And for some reason a few of them looked like Madonna! Urch. Getting angry and fed up I tried to create a design on 'Photoshop'. This was easier, as although I still struggled to find the exact look I was looking for, due to having layers etc, I could keep what I liked etc until a face began to build up. I wasn't really worried about stylisation, as we had discussed as a group what we were looking for- realistic but not ultra-realistic, and from our verbal descriptions, I knew what we all wanted in our characters.

The bald headed woman!! Ok, so I finally got a design I really liked. I realise she doesn't have hair or eyes, or proper lips, but this was the first image that was starting to look like it could form into something I was happy with.. When showing my little 9 year old brother my design he asked me why didn't I just go on 'The Sims' to try and make a face I liked. Hmmmmm. I took his advice and tried it out. I didn't want to spend much time doing this, just to get a general idea of what my finished character may look like. The images below show the face I created. It wasn't very much how I imagined my character to look like, the sim was kind of ordinary, but it did give me the opportunity to have a look at a variety of possible hairstyles and to practise different combinations of makeup, which I showed to the group so that we could pick out our favourites etc which I aimed to apply to a drawing in week two to show them.

Different hairstyles. We liked the bun in the last image best. Instead of neat, we thought my character could have a much more messier bun.

Although we didn't really like the tattoo on her face, it did leave ideas open for maybe a scar. This would show that she had been in battle before, maybe she got it in an earlier level? It would also take her more away from the Lara Croft image, of being so perfect even in battle. It would show that she could have mental scars as well, and although 'good', isn't perfect like most lead characters seem to be portrayed.

Looking at lipstick. Our joint favourite was the furthest right as it was subtle but striking.