Week 1: References, concepting and research

I started searching for ideas and references for my FYP project before week 1 had began, so that during week 1 I could work on research for my FYP as well as draw concept art for the characters that I wished to create for this module, along with writing the project proposal first draft.

For this project, I'm wanting to make a piece based off the Sonic The Hedgehog series as it's the game franchise I have the most attatchment to. My idea is to make redesigns for Sonic characters, along with a small diorama based on Green Hill Zone from the original Sonic The Hedgehog.

I collected every reference image that I wanted to use in one single pure ref page. I got enough images for each character, but also went and got more supprting images for Eggman who I wanted to depict with slightly more realism than his official counterpart.

For Sonic, I made sure to grab references from various interpretations of the modern varient of the character (the main series, Sonic Boom and the recent Sonic movie). For Green Hill Zone, I collected references that consist of both official artwork from Sonic media along with other fan interpretations of the location.

As Eggman is a human character and was going to have the most radical design of the entire cast, I decided it was best to have plenty of reference for a character with his body mass and age. I also included reference of his real life design inspiriration , Teddy Roosevelt.

Whilst my priority for this project is Sonic and Dr.Eggman, I also grabbed reference for Sonic's sidekick Tails. I wanted to have something that looks a bit like Lucky from Super Lucky's Tale, as Lucky is heavily inspired by Tails and would have a good variety between each of the character designs.

I've made character concept art based on a mix of different designs from my pure ref, though I will still be using my pure ref images in conjunction with this concept art.

Sonic's design was heavily inspired by the movie varient, albeit I did opt to have beige coloured arms and shoes similar to that of the modern Sonic design seen in the games. I may tweak the proportions a little bit, but overall I'm happy with how this looks so far.

Eggman's design has multiple elements referenced from various interpretations of the character. His head is bit closer to the classic Sonic era version of the character, with the realistic references of Jim Carrey and Teddy Roosevelt. His jacket is mostly inspired by Sonic Boom, with the zipper and buttons from his modern Sonic design, along with the yellow tusk shapes from the classic era. Feedback that I recieved from this design asked that his nose be made a little bit bigger and rounder, which I feel helped make him still feel like Eggman.

I sketched out what I had in mind for my diorama. I wanted to keep it very small scale as the focus is on the character(s) standing in the centre, though I do want to place down various elements of Green Hill Zone to make the scene more lively. Objects include a palmtree, item monitor, sun flower and possibly some grass foliage and tiny rocks if it doesn't distract too much. The mountains in the background could either be part of a skybox, or modeled on one side with a low poly count to give the illusions of mountains being there.

I didn't do a full colour version of Tails' design, but as mentioned earlier I did want to go for a Lucky's Tale style design by having a bit smaller and more cutesy. I also gave him a bigger snout to make him look slightly more like a fox. Should I have enough time to also design Tails, I will go into more detail with this concept.

Ideally for this FYP, I'd like to have at least one of these characters if not both be rigged so I can pose them easily and demonstrate my understanding of rigging characters. For this, I followed a 3 video tutorial guide on how to rig characters in Maya by YouTube user 3dEx.

Part 1 available here: https://youtu.be/cOokoFED7QE

The process was easy to understand and follow along, and I have a much easier understanding of rigging. I could have chosen a better character model to test it with though, as I went with a character model that was a bit too complex and had issues when it came to skinning. I will make it a priority in the sculpting/retopology stage for my characters to be easy to rig/skin without difficulties.

As practice for sculpting ahead of production and for practicing real time hair for characters, I created a basic bust of Dr. Eggman that I will use to test methods of real time hair. I can either use hair cards with fibermesh in Zbrush, or I can use the new groom plugins in Unreal Engine 4.26 that allows for hair grooms done in Maya to be optimised games. I will begin research this at the start of next week.

Here is the official UE4 documentation on real time fur in 4.26: https://youtu.be/__BScFPJy3E

Game ready hair with fibermesh in ZBrush: https://youtu.be/j0Hv_smGaWg

For this practice head sculpt, I wanted to define what sort of style I would be going for with the full body sculpt. I want to have Eggman with realistic proportions, but with stylised hard edges and soft surfaces seen on stylised characters. This is so I can have Eggman with Sonic without them being too out of place next to each other.

The retopology isn't 100% perfect. It's mostly to have in Unreal Engine when it comes to doing tests for the hair method I'll be using.