All fuelled up

So this week was the start of a new project, one which is thankfully, an independent one. Not that I don't recognise the importance of working in a group, it's just that after how the previous project went, I'm glad that now I can rely on myself for my overall grade, and noone else.

The week started out pretty well. Since we'd been introduced to the project in week 5, I'd decided to work out my overall concept for the gun, and start work on a moodboard for it on the weekend, so that I could hit the ground running. This meant that by Tuesday I already had my initial designs made, and could get feedback on them in Visual Design.

I knew straight away that I wanted to make a science themed sentry gun, and what better place to draw inspiration from, than a scientific principal that I'd already done extensive research on in the past; the microbial fuel cell.

Here is the report I wrote up on it in A level in case anyones interested:

https://atomicartist42.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/microbial-fuel-cell-power-source-of-the-future.pdf

In case anyone isn't, I'll briefly explain the principal here so that my gun and it's design makes more sense.

Micro-organisms can metabolize food, converting it from organic matter to a flow of electrons (electricity).

Fuel cells work like batteries in that they require an anode, a cathode and an electrolyte to run. However, unlike batteries they require a constant input of fuel to continue running. In this case, organic matter.

A Microbial Fuel Cell is a bio-electrochemical transducer that can convert organic matter (fuel) directly into electricity, via the metabolism of constituent bacteria.

What this means is that bacteria 'eat' the fuel and in doing so an electric charge is harnessed which can be used to power things. Water and Carbon Dioxide are generated by this process. However the Carbon Dioxide doesn't contribute to the Carbon Dioxide already in the atmosphere, because the carbon dioxide produced is carbon dioxide that was initially taken in by the renewable biomass.

Anyway I'm not writing another report on this so I'll leave it at that, especially since I'll be stretching these principals considerably for my project. I mean right now a Microbial Fuel cell can just about power a watch, so it powering a gun enough that it can shoot fireballs is ridiculous.

Whilst working on this design I initially had 3 rough ideas that I kept in mind. One was going for a more retro/thrown together look, one was focusing more on an alien tech approach to this concept, and one was a mix of both, but with the retro looking a bit more modern.

My mood-board as a result, contained a mix of all three ideas, and other sources of inspiration, as well as practical reference for both drawing and modelling. Over the course of this project my mood-board has kept growing and growing as I developed and refined my design. I'll admit however that I've been a bit scatterbrained for the past three weeks and so I haven't managed to stick to my previous convictions of taking progress shots as I go. Therefore I haven't got an original mood-board for this week to show, so instead I'll show my current one( (yes this is being added in, in week 9-spoilers).

I sectioned it up into relevant categories. These were; Defence, Microbial Fuel Cells, Guns, Giger, Turrets/Bases, Design/Colour, Battery/Components and Lab equipment.

My first step with concepting then, was to take shapes and silhouettes from my mood-board that I liked, or felt was relevant to the design (such as lab beakers) and create a 2D kitbash from them.

I then started putting shapes together, drawing in a few distinguishing details (I find it easier to work this way than with just pure silhouettes-especially as my gun is grounded in a real principal) and trying out the different Ideas for the turret I mentioned above.

I then developed them further following feedback. I've labelled my developments briefly on each concept. The main feedback I received for my designs was to make sure the bases of my turrets weren't too weak, as some of the designs were strong at the top but became weaker at the bottom, or sometimes vice versa. The beakers proved very popular so I was advised to keep them in the design, especially as they added an interesting game-play element to the gun. Since the glass is so fragile and the gun looks so unstable, it would be interesting to have them protected at the front of the gun by a shield, so that in order to destroy the gun the player would have to get around the shield and destroy the gun from the side by shooting the beakers. I really liked this idea, and so have developed some of my concepts with a shield of some kind at the front of them.

Hopefully my developed concepts reflect this feedback.

Here are the initial and developed concepts I made using the 2D kitbash method:

Concepting was something I was nervous for with this project. It's a part of the course I've always struggled with, even more so than my 3D. I find it difficult to a) create within a time constraint to a good enough quality, b) iterate in more than one way, especially when I need to think carefully about perspective, which is even more important when designing hardsurface concepts such as guns. (Perspective is easier to get away with not nailing when it's something organic and less structured).

However 3D concepting is something I've been entertaining the idea of for a while now. I just haven't felt confident enough in my 3D skills to do it until now. I decided that this project would be the perfect time to try it out, and since I felt like I was on task with my project schedule I decided to give it a go. Luckily it was something that was introduced to us in game production, so I got to learn lots of modelling tricks to make your modelling faster. I also spent some time watching modelling tutorial on you-tube to pick up extra tricks in max, and I also just spent half a day playing around in max whilst concepting to see what it could do that I didn't know yet. As a result I've learnt lots of new tricks in max that made concepting for this project much, much faster and easier. Hallelujah.

I'll admit I'm a little obsessed with learning how to make something in the most efficient, quickest and accurate way possible. No verts out of line, no objects placed incorrectly. Nada.

So anyway, the first thing I did was pick my two/three favourite developed designs and break them down into parts. I then modelled these parts and any extra things I could think of in max to create a 3D kitbash.

Reflecting back on it now, I realise I spent a bit too much time doing this, partly because I was experimenting with different techniques to make things, which is fine, but also because I let myself get a bit bogged down with the finer details, which are things I could have just painted over in Photoshop. After all they were meant to be white-box block outs. However it didn't set me back too much, thankfully.

Halfway though the process of putting my kitbash together for the gun, I realised that I'd stopped thinking about my underlying concept for it and so my design was getting a bit lost. This is when I went back to the scientific principal of a microbial fuel cell and drew up this diagram:

To explain how the gun works.

Here are the 3D concepts:

Drawing this up helped me to figure out what my gun NEEDED, and what was there for silhouette and well, the cool factor. It helped me work out what needed to be connected and why. It didn't matter how it was connected or where things were positioned, but it did help me work out what parts needed to be where in relation to each other. I also started to realise as I concepted that I was focusing on concepting from one side too much, and so my front silhouette was lacking a bit. I also started to think more and more about flow lines as I progressed, (something that was mentioned in Visual Design earlier on in the week). These considerations are why I chose design number 5 as my finalish design.

Another very good reason for concepting my gun in 3D is it allowed me to check it's functionality against the brief by putting it into engine very early on as a whiteboxed version. The brief for this gun sets out very specific restraints for the model, in that it needs a base, a yaw (where it rotates horizontally), a gun pitch (where it'll move up and down vertically) and a barrel (from where the projectile is emitted). Luckily when I put my whiteboxed gun into engine it worked perfectly fine with the blueprints, so now I know I can progress with this design, and just work on fleshing it out by adding detail, colour and value to it.

Unfortunetely I missed the critical studies lecture and seminar this week due to a personal tragedy.

So my action plan for next week is:

Do a Paintover of my whitebox to get a more finalised design (with surface details on it to be baked)
Develop the whitebox before moving on to creating a final Low Poly
Have my Low poly and High poly modelled
Have my Low poly unwrapped and packed
Start cleaning up my concepts in preparation for hand in (yes I'm going to start doing this early now)
Try not to cry-cry a lot.