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:
No comments:
Post a Comment