18 // More Concept Art

17 // Concepting the Generator

As I said in one of my earlier posts: I wanted to spend a lot more time producing concept art for this project, something that my last animation lacked and suffered from. So right now I'm getting stuck into producing as many concepts as I can think of for this story.

I've still not 100% completed the narrative or storyboard for the animation, but I have enough notes and ideas that I have a good idea so far of what I'm going to need to get started designing. Some of the concepts I shared in my last post show the towers rising from the chaotic, post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi environment; these towers are like energy conduits, spires of flesh and metal erected by the demonic AI for human-farming. I imagine that the focus of the story is for the heroes to be on a mission to destroy the largest of these spires - a command tower kind of thing - which houses a huge high-tech generator that powers the whole operation in that sector of the city.

So this was to be my first piece of concept art: the massive generator.

I'd been looking at an issue of Vertex magazine which showed Riot's concept designer, Darren Bartley's workflow for coming up with high-detail, quick Sci-Fi concepts. He begins with some quick digital sketches in Photoshop (or similar software) before selecting a successful or interesting design and moving onto SketchUp to begin some rough 3D modelling and experimentation. This was something I'd tried before, so wasn't entirely new to me, and was pretty easy to get readjusted to.

I limited myself to 4 sketches in the first phase, playing around with form and shape. My thought process involved things like imagining what location in the tower the generator might reside (peak, base, central etc) and how it might be supported by other tech (power cables, horizontal/vertical struts etc). After an hour or so of sketching these out - trying to think in both silhouette and 3-dimensional forms simultaneously - I was quite happy with the second design (which I saw as being located in the upper section of the tower, hanging like a chandelier, supported by hundreds of cables). 

Opening up SketchUp (free software from Google) I had my 2D sketch open to reference from as I set about blocking in the general shape and scale of the 3D model. The figure in the 1st image doesn't give an accurate representation of the scale of the generator - I actually shrunk the figure quite a lot later on, to make the generator more massive in comparison.

Once I had the rough shape of the generator built, I went on and started to add cables, panels and exhaust ports of varying design to bulk it up a bit and get plenty of variation in the shapes. My initial sketch had just been a vague idea of how I wanted the final design to look, I knew there was a lot more experimentation to come within SketchUp, which is part of the software's charm - it allows for quick and easy shape manipulation and testing, without having to worry about correct 3D modelling procedures or limitations.

I spent a day or so adding shapes like this, using radial arrays of differing quantities to keep the variety. I was constantly checking that the silhouette looked suitably threatening and high-tech for the purposes of the generator as I worked on it. Finally I added the pipes that would serve as the central support foundations, connecting the generator to the inside of the tower, elevating it high within the structure. 

In my original sketch I have a lot of hanging cables in the design which were omitted from this model, purely because they were a pain in the ass to model and position in SketchUp... they can easily be drawn in later on if I decide I still want to go with that aspect.

The next few grabs show the corrected scale adjustment of the generator vs. the human figure, giving some idea of the detail level that was required of something this large.

Now that this model is complete - I'm relatively happy with it so far, but if I decide later that something needs changed, it's a pretty easy process to do so - I can move on and start work on some of the other elements within the tower super-structure, such as the human-farm pods.

Here are a few more examples of the generator, presented in a more graphic style:

16 // Early Concept Art

I've spent quite a bit of a time over the past week coming up with some visual ideas to help kick-start my creative process for the visuals of this project. I got a couple of sketchbooks out and grabbed the tech pens and brush-pen to get some inked ideas down quickly.

As usual when I go through this process, I begin by looking at all the things that have previously inspired me - games, movies, books, music etc - and use them as aids to generate some reference sketches that help to get me straight into the mood for drawing. I began with looking at shapes and designs from existing Sci-Fi related subjects and artwork, replicating a couple of the things I've seen there, before embarking on my own ventures and ideas.

The majority of these sketches are designs of my own, I omitted most of the early studies that were made (they soon became irrelevant) other than a few from the Alien franchise, which are shown alongside my own sketchy ideas on that same page.

The studies are useful as they get me into the mood for drawing quickly and also allow me to see some shapes and ideas that I might not have been aware of before. Sometimes I include certain forms or details in my own work, sometimes I don't. It often depends on my interest at that point, or where I intend my own work to head.

So in these cases I was feeling like going a bit darker with the Sci-Fi genre, wanting to present a chaotic, post-apocalyptic world of some sort, featuring creatures that are like technological demons (a bit like the AI-gone-wild of Terminator, but more evil and demonic). I'm still gradually figuring out the narrative for my animation as I go, so this phase was a stepping stone whereby I hoped the visual research would help me to come up with some alternative ideas.

I'm pretty happy with some of these results, the exercise has definitely been beneficial in getting some of my preliminary ideas out of my head, and has helped me to develop some more ideas for the story, fleshing out the world as I go and coming up with lots of new ideas. Looking ahead, I think I could be on the right track with this one.

After spending a bit of time working on the early environment ideas, I thought about the type of demonic creature I wanted to portray, so I set to some character design. I'm all about the idea of an AI that has gone crazy and started to develop it's own methods of making itself into terrifying-looking monsters, so I went with the flesh/metal combo for this guy's look (I'm thinking this type of character might be more like the main villain/overseer, hence his enormity).

Starting with sketching out 8 different character types, I narrowed it down and selected the pose I felt was most dynamic before playing around with that one a little and refining it into the slightly more detailed version on the last page. This isn't a finished design by any means; there are still a lot of problems to figure out, but that'll come with time.