Project Ideas

Project Ideas

With the specialism project being so broad, I could have gone for multiple things. Despite this, I decided to go for my strengths within game design - concept art and 3D modelling.

Along with this, I will be primarily looking at character design and creation. Character creation is highly important in games as otherwise, most games would be unplayable. This only concerns the games that actually have characters of course. When looking at their designs, you can easily see that they follow the same aesthetic of the game itself. For example, you wouldn't see a soldier going to war in a WW2 game wearing casual clothes as it would seem completely out of place. Having a good design usually allows them to help tell the story as well.

Continuing with the idea of characters following the game's aesthetics, you can find in a lot of games (typically in MMORPGs) that have outfits that you can add costumes and cosmetics on top of your armour. These are typically paid for or unlocked. An example are the Dragon and Wyvern House Uniforms on the MMORPG, ArcheAge. These are literal school uniforms in a fantasy-driven world and they don't match the overall theme of the game.

Wyvern House Uniform Costume - ArcheAge Legacy and Unchained

In regards to the theme of my designs, I have a large amount of options. However I once again want to focus on my strong points. Throughout the time that I have been playing games, I tend to focus on more medieval and fantasy games. I myself am also a huge lover of history so this will be a big opportunity for me to work on. I have decided to focus on doing a medieval themed character/s. Despite this already being a difficult theme to focus on as medieval styles are vastly diverse, I wish to add a uniqueness to them. Therefore I wish to mix in a futuristic feel to them. To accomplish this, the first thing that I thought of was to do robots or mechanical characters, therefore I plan to mix both medieval and futuristic styles together with robots in medieval attire.

To be more specific with the medieval side, I will be basing my characters off of the legend of King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table.

Although I have more knowledge about the medieval era than I have for the Arthurian Legend, it will give me the opportunity to add onto what I already know.

I want to make a mechanical knight as my "center piece". When going by the Arthurian Legend, this character would most likely be King Arthur himself. If I am able to create more characters, I would wish to add Guinevere, Merlin and possibly an animal sidekick.

Within the legend, there is a dragon, however I feel that if I'm already working on so many other characters then I wouldn't have the time to create a more technical model like that. Even if I cannot design and make a dragon, I would still like to look at dragon models within my research.

The animal that I am hoping to do however is a horse for "Arthur" to sit on. For the horse, I will also be making it to look mechanical to match the knight.

Jousting knights

A huge sport that was typically held during the medieval times was jousting. This was when knights would compete one on one to knock each other off their horses with a type of spear called a lance. Lances were specially designed for mounted knights or cavalry. As I wish to have the knight on a horse, I feel like a lance would be very suited for the character. There is a possibility that I could have a sheathed sword on his belt as well as a secondary weapon. Other weapons that may be possible are - mace, spear, bow, crossbow, daggers and sword and shield as primary.

With the Guinevere character, she won't be as mechanical looking as the Arthur one. With her character, I could make her as a robot, or I could make her as an actual human. This will be something that I will decide upon when creating my rough sketches. If I were to make her as a robot, I would make her much less rigid and more rounded shapes. A good example of this shape would be the appearance of the robot in the film I, Robot. Having her as a more rounded figure will help emphasis that she is a lady of the court and contrast her against the armoured Arthur.
For Merlin, I picture him being like the image to the right. He would, like in the legend, be an elderly looking character. This could mean that he can hunched over. If I make him into a robot like the example image, I can use wires as a beard to give him an aged appearance.
As Merlin is the wizard in the legend, he is normally depicted with a staff, long hair and beard. This could all be done using numerous mechanical components.

Other possible characters within the Arthurian legend are - Morgana, Uther, Nimue (Lady of the Lake), Lancelot, The Fisher King and Agravaine. These are less likely to be completed however due to time.