Ubisoft Character Design Project

For this project we were set the task of creating a female character from either India, Africa, China or Japan. We were to create our character to realistic proportions so that meant no over stylisation of the shape or silhouette, however we were reminded of how different females bodies could be.

I decided to go for a rather average weight but petite African foot Soldier. I couldn't think of anything more inspiring that a modern day female soldier and although her costume may not be super challenging I thought that the facial features would be interesting to model as I had never attempted an african woman before. I also had pre existing reference of a petite woman from my self portrait project in the second year.I felt this would save me time and embarrassment in the long run.

 I know from my short experience of military life that uniforms can be very different depending on not only the country of origin but also the regiment, job role and standing of the officer.

After doing a lot of research into patterns and colour I did some different designs trying different headdresses, webbing (a type of harness with various pouches for storage), equipment and costume design .I looked into which countries used which patterns and on what uniform just to give it a little credibility. I decided pretty early on that I didn’t want to do any ceremonial dress as interesting as that can be. I wanted something realistic and relatable. I wanted her to look like she was right there on patrol just doing her job, with no fuss. Perhaps with a little mud on her knees and elbows wrinkled in her uniform and beret.

After experimenting with various outfits, I tried to go with the one with the most interesting shapes and colours. The chosen design had some features I hadn’t originally thought of which pleased me as it shows how important the design process is and although it's tempting to skip it to save time it will actually improve the overall look and quality of the work. 

 

After I had settled on a design I used my reference from the last character project as a basis for my orthographics . I didn’t bother with super detailed orthographics as the brief had stated that the silhouette was more important, not to mention the fact I had already gathered lots of reference and painted the designs before hand. 

Once I was in 3ds Max I found that progress was painfully slow, but the mesh was much better than the previous ones I had built. I found I was much happier with the topology and the general flow of the model. However there were a few times that I had to remind myself not to go too overboard on the detail, 15,000 sounds like an infinate amount of poly’s but you would be suprised how quickly they can disappear. I was also concious to remember that I was using symmetry on the body so to remember to double the tri count and leave enough for the heads and hands which I wanted to do good enough to rig.