Banisher

This week i concentrated on Banisher the spiritual equivalent to DC's Batman and Marvel's Punisher. His back story bears a striking resemblance to Batman's origin except for the fact that Banisher has been pushed too far and doesn't mind getting his hands dirty, and by dirty i mean bloody which is how we incorporated some of the Punisher's identity into the character.
Right off the bat i knew that i wanted to have a character that had a tactical look to him yet he still wore armor fit to fight super heroes, however we didn't want it to look like Major Marvelou's hard surface armor. I decided to give him a vest made out of kevlar plating along the line of Batman's armor in the Dark Knight series but i made it less apparent by giving him a trench coat to go over it this would replace the cape and hide some of his armor so he can catch his enemies off guard.
I looked at a lot of the bat family for references but I didn't just stop with Batman. I looked at the new generation of Robin, Night Wing, and Punisher iterations as well as other video game characters such as Chris Redfield whom has a very tactical look to him. I also referenced real life tactical vests, shoulder pads and trench coats to figure out how they would fit together.

After all of the research i felt like i was ready to start the iteration process. I took the tactical look of the vest and made an iteration depicting a character that was more of vigilante soldier than a super hero. The next iteration was on the opposite spectrum, it looked more like a super hero but the color choice made him look more metallic than kevlar and a lot of people got a Robocop meets Batman feel out of it, for the first two characters i made a version with a trench coat and one without. I eventually tried to find a middle ground between the two for the third concept.

Finally we decided that the gauntlets were not working with the tactical look and there was something off about the boots. For the next iteration I unified the kevlar vest, gave him full pants with knee pads and gave him padded gloves instead of metal gauntlets, i also added some detail on the trench coat to make it more interesting.

A Titan Approaches

Lots to report this week. Th Hulk character (Titan) hopefully is coming along quite well. The concepts were received very favorably leaning towards the middle red titan and the far right titan. From there i took all of the criticism and elements that people liked and put them together. the result was this:

From here we decided that we liked the one on the right the most and that maybe the spikes could be toned down if there were going to be any on the shoulders for aesthetic as well as technical reasons. The over all favorite was the right one because people liked the black tattoos better- gotta give people what they want.
One thing that came up during our discussions was to try out some different color choices, maybe going with a less saturated color palette or playing around with the tattoo.
I did some iterations with different colors, and i also changed the spikes from the shoulders to the back which we thought would work better.

 I think that all of the color choices turned out really well i specially liked the light blue one and the green but over all i really want to stick with a warmer color palette. And since this character is supposed to be our "Hulk character" i want to keep him red to keep the satire that we have with our other characters going.
Lastly i did play around with the tattoo i decided to darken the red of the body and make the tattoo with a slight glow. I believe this is the most successful iteration by far and we will see how well it is received by the class.

With Green Light comes a new Character

Last week we had our green light presentation and im glad to announce that we passed with flying colors. Everything from the technical side and effects to the art style and characters is coming along and the game looks insanely better than it did last semester, we are all very excited with how everything is shaping up. Now for updates in the concept department.

Light-Speed Lass:
After a couple of weeks of iteration her concepts are finally done. After much back and forth with Tristan we finally worked out the details about her visor as well as the details that should show in the design of the helmet. We also worked out the back of her armor which will feature similar lights as her belt design as well as the helmet. We are thinking that it would be really interesting to see the lights leave a trail when she uses her super speed power, as well as an animation of her helmet visor coming down and protecting her face for the high speed attack. Among other ideas we are thinking that for her Pow move she would slow down time for a bit with the idea that she would be moving super fast.

Next up is our new character which is the representation of the HULK style character. I am a huge fan of the Hulk so i am really excited to start the concept process for him. First off one of the things that makes the hulk such a great character is the amount of sheer rage and power that he represents, this is something i wanted to portray in my design as well. One thing i know for sure is that the character can't be green as that would be a very blatant copy since hulk is essentially a very angry green man with huge muscles, another thing i also know is that we want to keep the essence of the Hulk so that means minimal clothing and a lot of muscle definition. For this i looked at references from Hulk, Red Hulk, Doomsday, A-Bomb, Skaar, Wolverage and Hulked out Thor to work out clothing details and body details.

First off since I am trying to keep clothing to a minimum i thought that replacing it with hair could be a good idea. I translated that into the first concept which is essentially a very hairy huge guy, the purple colors would contrast his hair and make him more menacing while his pants are ripped which would represent a violent transformation into this hairy wild beast.
For the second concept i decided to make him more closely related to the Hulk i chose an orange/red color because red is the opposite of green and i thought it would be a nice satire. I kept the idea of minimal clothing, i wanted to make him look like a battle worn gladiator so i also added minimal armor which is more for looks than protection since this character wouldn't really need it. Like i said even the armor is very minimal to keep the muscle definition.
The Iteration i decided to go a different route and make him look like a monster more that a human hence the spikes coming out of his body, i also wanted to use darker cooler colors to make him look harder more like stone. The clothing he has on is tighter and ragged and represents his super hero costume which was torn apart by his transformation and knee spikes. One cool thing that could be done if we went with this kind of spiky character is to make his spikes protrude more when his super powered charge is activated, this would help his charge be more menacing and let the player know that the attack is coming.

Light Speed and a City

This week i finalized Light-Speed Lass' concept, she needed a helmet which i was a little stumped about. I didn't know what direction i wanted to take the helmet or the visor so i looked up motorcycle helmets, one thing i did know its that it needed to be aerodynamic. I knew i wanted to make the helmet with a visor resembling some of the earlier concepts as well. Also at Tristan's request i drew up a profile view of her to define some forms and details of the armor.   

With the second super hero concept finished up we still had the matter of the environments to deal with. After taking the concepts i had made to QA we decided that the most successful iteration by far was the Samurai Jack style.
From that iteration i mixed up the color of the windows after researching cities at night. My favorite one by far was Hong Kong because of its scale and different colors seen from the skyline.

  From that research i iterated more on the city and different aspects of it which could give the frames a sense of atmosphere and immerse the player into the environment.

 I made the foreground buildings with a slight outer glow to separate them from the background this also fakes the glow of the lights of the building and the smog of the city.
The frames looked awesome when we implemented the environment into the frames, the parallax gives it a nice sense of depth and it doesn't take away from the focus of the characters.
So this is it we have done our homework we re defined the art style and I am confident about the presentation on Tuesday we will be keeping our fingers crossed to be able to pass green light and start full blown production.