In the coming weeks I will continue working on my characters with modeling the clothing and making the hair. I also have an illustrator working on drawing up my characters. 

So the second semester has begun. Taking the critique that I received from the end of last semester I have fixed the proportions of my characters and begun to retopologize them with minimal geometry that will be under the clothing. 

This way I still get the look of real hair without taking up so much render time and it will give me the freedom to put these models into a game in the future.

So I am back home for the holidays and my wifi connection isn't the greatest so if I don't post for a while that is why. The first semester of thesis has come to a close and I have received plenty of feedback on my characters. First I will be covering what I accomplished this semester.

​My thesis will be a character study of 4 diverse individuals who are part of a task force that had been assembled to retrieve stolen technology. The purpose of the characters would be to have them as part of a multiplayer video game with customizability of each of the characters. The Guardians of the Galaxy trailer displayed below will be included in my final presentation as reference for my trailer. The characters will be displayed in a similar way with each of them getting information displayed about them and then they will be together in a team pose as the end ready for their mission.

I researched many artists to finally narrow down what I wanted the particular style of the characters to look like. Olivier Couson and Antone Magdy are just two of these artists whose style I used to influence my own. The style of the characters is based off games such as Deus Ex and Mass Effect and the customizability aspect of research that I did includes games such as Dragon’s Dogma and Soul Calibur. I will be doing further research into the Wrap 3 and other 3D scanning programs.

So far I have the character sheets for each character and I am having a professional illustrator do sketches for me. Those will be updated as I get them.

Retopologized models that will be fixed after receiving critique. The arm proportions will be fixed and the male model's proportions will also be improved. I will look into retopologizing the models without clothing and having the models be made up of the different parts and then combined into one mesh. For the next semester I will UV the models, texture them and add hair. I will then rig and pose the characters in the poses they will be in for the animation and throughout I will be doing test renders to see what I need to fix. The background will also be added and the slight animation will be done on the characters and they will all be put in the final video. I will be looking into Marvelous Designer, XGen and Mixamo to help with my project in the coming months. 

Over the past two weeks I have met with both of the professors teaching thesis and received their opinions on my thesis project. David Halbstein suggested that I look at Mashru Mishu as another reference for a 3D modeler who sculpts the clothes into his meshes. David then suggested that I do the same with my models to save on time. He also suggested I look at Danny Williams as another reference.

Shaun Foster gave me the input of looking at using the Wrap 3 which is a Russian 3D scanner that I could use to retopologize my models faster. He also suggested I take a look at working with marvelous designer when I got to designing my clothes as well as possibly collaborating with someone who has more knowledge of clothing. 

After receiving input from both of them I sculpted my models more to fill them out to where the clothes would be and then continued retopologizing them by hand as they each will be unique base models with the unique clothing I designed for them. ​

Hours worked: 28 hours
Over the past two weeks I have been block modeling my characters and then proceeding to sculpt them in ZBrush. This past week I have spent retopologizing my models as to get better detail in my sculpts. Next week I will continue to retopologize and sculpt fine details into my character models. 

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.

​Over the past two weeks I have further refined my thesis project with the help of my professors and friends. Huge shout out to professors David Halbstein and Shaun Foster for their input which helped me refine and flesh out not only my characters but their backstories and settings as well. The characters will not be a typical superhero team but rather a secret, undercover team which is comprised of a diverse group of individuals. The setting will be late 2090s to early 2100s and in this timeline the United States has made many new technological advances such as biomechanics and neuroenhancements that could be of great benefit to the military and eventually the public. My inspiration for this comes from the video game Deus Ex Mankind Divided as well as the movie and TV show Limitless.

I plan to have the characters on turntables in some sort of pose relevant to their personality and traits with information around them and then maybe another image of them in a different pose.
The characters themselves will be four diverse individuals, each with their own special skills. But instead of the typical cookie cutter strong confident male team leader, geeky but confident hacker, and tough, grizzled weapons expert this team will be mostly made up of females with one male team member. The team leader of the group will be loosely based off of the character of Amanda Waller from DC Comics who recently made an appearance in the Suicide Squad movie and was in the DC TV show Arrow. ​

The hacker/computer expert of the team will be a quiet, shy, and naive college girl from Texas and the weapons expert will be a former CIA operative who had her arm blown off in a mission and volunteered to be the first test subject for a biomechanical replacement. The one male team member will be an immortal man who hides his pain through sarcasm and jokes and tries to fit in the best he can by keeping up with the latest trends.

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