Week 1

Since it was the start of term, we did not achieve very much this week. I met with my project group to discuss a day each week when we could work on the game together, as well as determine which software we needed and whether we could access it yet. We began our first day of development on Friday.

The first character I worked on was a generic enemy in the game; following concept art and guides, I was to model, rig and pose him whilst adding extra detail in Zbrush. By the end of the week, the ant model looked like this: (22/1/10)

I also spent some time at the weekend experimenting with various methods of cartoon
shading in 3DS Max; the results are shown below. (23/1/10)

Ant with toon shading

Ant with outline shading

Soldier bee with toon shadingSoldier bee with outline shading

Whilst the cell shading is quite nice, volume and detail are better retained on the textured versions. After presenting these experiments to Abi, the art director, it was decided that we would use the outline shading for our renders rather than the cartoon material. (24/1/10)