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How Marvellous

atomicartist42
Feb 7, 2016
5 min read

Marvellous designer you are my saviour.

In Game production we went over making clothes in Z-brush however I felt like Marvellous designer would be a much faster method of making my characters clothes, especially as a kimono is quite complex, and I couldn't find any good reference for how the cloth would fold for a kimono in my characters pose. So I took to Marvellous designer and whilst it was tricky to get my head around, it worked out in the end.

I watched a lot of tutorials for the programme to do specific things such as add belts and use pressure points. This site allowed me to load in pressure points onto my model :

http://ditko.azurewebsites.net/?page_id=2621

In terms of actual use Marvellous designer is relatively simple to use, the hard part comes from having an understanding of how a garment is constructed. That was the hardest part for me when it came to making the kimono. Especially as Kimono's are tricky patterns to get to grips with. But after much studying and hair pulling I worked out how a Kimono is constructed and it turned out much better than I expected it too.

The trickiest part of the clothes came from something I didn't anticipate (isn't that always the way?) which was making the skirt fall in the right shape and not interact strangely with the kimono. (Garments can almost stick together in Marvellous which can be very frustrating).

In the end I saved the Kimono as a garment. Then made a cage for the skirt shape in Max, re-imported that as my mesh into Marvellous, simulated the skirt fabric over the top. Then imported the Kimono on top of that. It worked out in the end so alls well that ends well right?

Here is my finished clothing in Marvellous designer:

(I used a hastily re-meshed model for the programme so that it wouldn't slow it up by being too high-poly).

Something I did realise at the end of this week that was a major face palm for me was that I modelled my character in the wrong pose and that realistically I shouldn't have made my character robed at all. By this I mean for modelling long sleeves a character is best posed in a full T-pose. It worked out ok in the end as at least the pose I did model her in is more natural, so even though I doubt I'll be able to rig her, at least she won't be in such an awkward pose for the final render.

And in regards to rigging I probably shouldn't have made a character with such long and shapeless clothes as this will be a pain to rig (if I even manage to get that done).

It's the reason why not a lot of game characters have lots of loose clothing, because it's more awkward to rig. This could be done if I have waay more tri's and could use cloth physics for my character, but sadly, for the brief I cannot do this. However I will suggest it as a work around for my characters design, as I planned for her to be a relatively static NPC anyway. Plus something I realised whilst working on this project is that I've accidentally made Himiko from Tombraiders game- and she has a similar clothing design so perhaps what I could do is look at how they rigged her. She has a similar role to my character too, so she would be a good reference for when I try and sell my characters design later on in the dragons den pitch.

I also managed to make the head-dress this week. It was tricky trying to keep it in budget. I worked out early on that I wanted to give about 3000-3500 tri's to the face, 2000 to the hands, 10,000 to the clothes and 5000 to the headdress, roughly. However modelling flowers took up far more tri's than I'd anticipated. Especially the roses, as they simply didn't look good using only planes, but even just modelling them with a 3D base and planes coming out of it took up too many tri's. Plus having tulips on the headdress too just ate up tri's. Therefore I made the decision to simplify the head-dress design considerably to make completing the 3D easier.

Here is the final head-dress:

I concepted a bit in 3D too as I didn't have the side Orthographic for the head-dress that complete when I went in with the design. This is because I struggle to think in 3D so I decided to problem solve in 3D as I went along, and it worked out quite nicely as I think I ended up with an interesting side and front silhouette, despite the cutbacks I made to the concept.

I received some feedback on the face and body in Visual Design, which were mostly minor fixes that didn't take too long to do, but certainly made her face and body better overall.

Whilst I didn't manage to get to the same point with my Hades concepts as I'm at with my Persephone ones, I did manage to make a start on them, which is something.

I have a good idea of his design now, this is what I have so far:

I really liked the side and back cloaks on my designs, so I decided to combine the two, I also preferred the more traditional samurai armour, paired with the jagged leg and arm gauntlets. Therefore I combined my favourite parts of each of the first 5 designs, into the more finalised design on the bottom right.

I did however manage to get my colour concepts for Persephone done, so all in all, I'm not too far behind schedule. It'll be a struggle to get all my concepting for Hades done by hand in, but I think I can do it. I'm already planning on coming back to this project over summer and polishing it off for my portfolio anyway.

I based Persephone's colour scheme off of traditional Japanese art and Geisha colour combinations. They tend to use harmonious colour schemes and so I used one for Persephone too. I also opted for the lighter more spring like colours as that suits her character more. The pink, purple, blue and gold are all from a harmonious colour scheme, but they're also colours that make me think of spring. The flowers, the sky and the sun.

One thing I do find frustrating with creating colour concepts is the annoyance when you find a good value combination and good colours, but when you try and combine them you end up with a very different colour scheme. In the end I decided to combine the two processes and do my value iteration with my colour concepts, I.e. adjusting the values to match the colours as I went along.

So here are the colour concepts along with the chosen final colour scheme:

(I've included Hades colour concepts here, even though I did these much later on, to keep my work together).

In Critical studies we went over developing our brand and looking at shape and colour to do so. This was certainly interesting, and I am considering on doing a stylised self-portrait for my blog to bring across some character traits I'd like employers to be aware of. I'm not quite sure yet what kind of image I want to put across in regards to the kind of art I create however, as I love such a variety of art styles, from cute to dark, that I don't really fall into one category yet, unless that in itself is my art? Diverse and ecletic perhaps? Something to consider for the future at least.

So onto the much anticipated Action Plan,

It's going to be a tight deadline that I already know: