Hours worked: 20 hours
Over the past week I have been working on researching more about the specific style that I want to emulate as I model and sculpt my characters as well as looking more into video games which have the best character customization that I am looking for. Dragon's Dogma was the video game I looked at the most not only for it's extensive character customization but also for the fact that you can customize your "pawns", which are the characters who spawn with you that are your followers and will help you out. This is something that I want the players to have in my game, the ability to customize not only yourself but your team as well. In the game you not only get to define physical characteristics but also the posture and stance of your character so you get to in a way define who your character is in terms of confidence and the way they come across.

Also having the ability to change the overall build of your character as well as their voice are other choices this game has which are something I would like to have in my hypothetical game as well.

In terms of further nailing down my specific style of my characters I have found other artists whose style is exactly what I am trying to emulate. 

Olivier Couston, Antone Magdy, and Arthur Duque are 3D artists whose style is what I will try to capture in my models with the stylized sculpting that focuses on certain features and exaggerates them. Corey Smith is a character artist who has the same style and as I continue to work on my thesis I plan on sketching more as well and developing my own style while basing it off of his.

I have further designed my characters with the attire that I will be modeling them in. They are displayed here in the outfits of the last sketch I made as well as a front view and side view of the characters. I will continue block modeling them in the coming weeks and upload the progress as well as listing the information about each of the characters.

For next week I will have block models of characters and will push to have some sculpting done on the faces. I will also have information about each of the characters such as height, age, and any futuristic augmentations they may have.

Vimeo Link: ​https://vimeo.com/186525194 

Hours worked: 20 hours
For the past two weeks I have been working on perfecting my thesis pitch video and pinpointing the style of my characters. There were a couple of digital 3D artists who inspired me and whose styles were what I was trying to emulate in my own characters as I was trying to go for a realistic but stylized approach. Victor Hugo Queiroz is one such artist that I found that takes real life characters such as Tony Stark portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. and gives him a stylized feel while still clearly portraying the character along with the emotions.

Other artists that I was inspired by were Jonathan Romeo and Carson Yuen who take characters from anime and translate them into 3D models that are realistic but still retain their Japanese influence.

After looking through these artists' works as well as others such as Antone Magdy and Olivier Couston I utilized this style of realistic and stylized and created my own characters here. I wanted to show them in the lineup style of Guardians of the Galaxy and show each of them with their own unique personalities.

Next week I will upload additional sketches of the characters individually with information about them such as name, height, weight and any special abilities in illuminated text. I also plan to begin block modeling the characters and the progress will be uploaded. My pitch video will be uploaded shortly as well.