Head Sculpting

Attempting to sculpt the female character's head. Its not turning out too great. I've always struggled with faces in both 2D and 3D. I should practice sculpting them more, looking at more reference material.

The facial proportions are definitely all wrong when I compare my sculpt to the image above. 

Team Hierarchy

This is the example of the hierarchy of traits and roles of the team my characters fall under. They fall under the sub-culture on the left hand side, though the roles are not adapted for my characters specifically. This is an example of the vast scale of the group, which spans many different environments. You can see the levels of influences that are tied with the characters though different levels of abstraction. 

Pitch Feedback :

For pitch, I presented my recapped the objective for my project as well as showed the new variations of the character designs from the thumbnail and more detailed sketches I had done at the end of last semester. I also went into detail about the journals I have been looking at, looking at group mechanics in Second Life. Feedback stated that it was very informative, however, I didn't explore the visual element of this very well. I would have to return to explore the role of things like Silhouette, Colour, texture and form if I was to apply this to my own characters.

I had also talked about hierarchy in the group in both a rank, and visual style with sub-categories splitting up the group into more specific segments, down to a level of "Role". I then went and talked about the levels of abstraction a player has within how he relates to the group. This however didn't link back to my own character designs very well. When I went on to talk about the designs of my characters from last semester, there was no evidence that there was any form of hierarchy within the characters. Though I was attempting to show varying levels of group participation with The Hermit character, it was unclear how this linked with the project and to why I made these design changes. 

Feedback also stated that characters seemed quite generic which was quite disheartening. It was suggested that I add more of an unusual twist to them to make them more visually interesting. I would also need to take a step back to explore multiple areas, rather than focus on just one theme. 

I was also to be careful not to make the character sculpts, specifically on the male, too flat. The front and sides didn't seem to flow well. 

Main changes to make...

-Clearly show group hierarchy

-Add more of a twist to the characters

-Experiment with other areas. 

Characters and Symbolic codes.

“studying clothing provides a powerful framework for understanding how people interpret various forms of culture and social systems, as well as how they perceive their positions within those systems. From this perspective, fashion provides a window into individual and group identities”

  Crane, D. (2000). Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender, and identity in clothing.

 I found a useful paper about Group Identity and Avatar Design in Second life. The paper explores how individual players form social groups and how they customize their avatar to fit into these groups. The 2 useful sections I got out of this looked into symbolism and themes as well as levels of participation and how this reflected on their avatars visually. The paper describes how players identify their communities through visual cues to show their relation to the group. These codes can consist of anything, from a specific aesthetic or colour, to individual items their character is wearing. However, the important part about this is that these codes must be readable by other players within the group. The experiment conducted within the paper demanded that users turned up to an event attempting to keep to a theme.It was seen that players managed to manipulate these symbolic codes to show or disguise their group affiliation.

I wanted to see how an artist would use symbollic references in their work to distinguish teams. ..

Keith Thompson, an artist and illistrator for the Leviathan story books manages to seperate 2 factions within

the steam-punk ww1 theme. 

The Darwinists use Organic colours and materials, as well as genetically modified creatures 

The Clankers use Dark, metal colours and use a lot of mechanical aesthetics. 

These teams are easily identifiable whilst keeping to the ww1 steampunk theme. 

http://www.keiththompsonart.com/

"Scholars of fashion note that coordinating with one‘s social group and with society at large requires adopting dress and appearance that correspond to prevailing social norms"

So what are the key symbolic codes will my team adopt on their dress and appearance to identify identify themselves?

Old Soviet Gear

Mechanics

Ceremonial use of Red

Do they match with the social norms for my group?

Poor

Adaptive

Resourceful

Undisciplined

CHARACTERS

"The Hermit"

I wanted to change the character to demonstrate lower levels of group participation. This character would be more of a recluse, acting on his own rather than in a team. I adapted the previous design of the low level infantry soldier to make him more individual, which also made him appear to be more important.žThe new design would have the character wearing the uniform that differed from the group norms without straying from the theme. This also allows the character to show his own personality more as there is less group pressure.

žCurrently painting on the design to the sculpt. 

Laid back and casual when it came to wearing clothing

Not well maintained

Unshaven

Mechanical leg and arm falling apart

Incredibly skinny

"The Aviator"

Players using taller avatars tend to act more confident. - 

Yee, N. & Bailenson, J.N. (2007). The Proteus effect: The effect of transformed self representation on behaviour. Human Communication Research, 33, 271-290.

This is one of my favorite designs as this seemed to transfer well into it, as the character is meant to be cold and calculating.
His tall physique makes him look powerful and confident. The mask and mechanical elements as well as the bird like influences are successful in making the character feel inhuman, even though he has a human shape. 

Character 3.

I'm still uncertain in which direction I want to take the 3rd character. 

I am wanting to block out the designs in more detail in 3D and begin high poly modelling soon once I finalize the designs. 

Sculpting the Skinny Body

I was sculpting the skinny body for the reclusive character. Because one of the arms were mechanical, I couldn't remove it from the torso in Mudbox as it didn't allow you to delete sections of the mesh. Instead, I took the sculpted mesh into Maya and manually deleted the sections I didn't need. I then imported it back into Mudbox to sculpt the head and texture.

Looking back, I should have imported the lower resolution mesh and transferred the details once I brought it back. It would have been a lot more efficient and I would have managed to keep my sculpt layers. Better remember to do that next time...