Konclave is a beastly tribal faction in Project Realm. They are students of transmutation; the bending and blending of nature. Also referred to as Deonodians and Rhyomorths, the Konclave tribe lives in the damp swampy forests of the South-Lands. Deep in the giant forest along a flowing rivers ravine these tribal creatures perfect their craft of altering their own biology. They've also formed a magical connection with their environment.
Konclave design forms follow organic signs of nature: curved conical cylinders, acute triangular shapes and the rhythm of the sinuous S. I first defined their high level art direction then started aesthetic design for specific characters. I had an image in my mind for a Shaman so I grabbed my reference and made the notes and ideation sketch shown below. I debated on posting this image because it's only an initial sketch. It is however the only one I made for this character before going to an orthographic model sheet.
Project Realm is an exercise in small team rapid development of new-IP. Every piece seen here is of my creation and hands on work, however I've also utilized offsite contractors as needed to assist in specific stages of art asset production. This blog post documents the development process that works for this project. The goal is to get ideas down and conveyed very quickly and inexpensively, move into 3d asap and get it in game. The focus is on fast creative execution, not mind blowing visuals. I think showing some early, rough "in-the-making" imagery is fair here. Sometimes a napkin sketch is all it takes to move an idea or concept to the next phase. Three style-guide pages and the two following images were all that was needed to achieve desired results in 3d where finalized conceptual design often happens for me.
This Shaman was only one asset among many being created at once and I needed to get it into animation asap. This means it had to be ideated, designed, completely modeled, rigged and tested with separate component pieces before animation could begin. I worked with a remote local artist to help create an ortho-graphic model sheet. We drew/painted over each others work for a couple days to tighten down the design. I then sent an image similar to the one below to outsourcing for a first pass model.
After a day or so of tweaking verts, proportions and leg mechanics on the outsourced 3d model I finalized the mesh and uv's. Several weeks later I had it textured and rigged looking like this. It was ready to begin keyframing and be sent out for animation.
I had considered transitioning this character from a two leg stance into a four legged locomotion style but due to time constraints and other potential issues I didn't pursue it. I spent one or two days creating an animation tree and keyframe images for about six to eight animations: walk, get hit, death, three or four melee attacks and a couple spell casts. Whether we use animation blending or not we need each animation to start and end with specific keyframes. Below is the first pass anim tree before adding all final keyframe imagery. This animation work was outsourced to non english speaking animators I've never met, directly spoken with or had any direct email correspondence with. In order to get acceptable results with this process I must convey exactly what I need and effectively define a style I want them to follow, otherwise I'll get all kinds of random, inappropriate and unusable work.
One of the first Shaman spells is the Entangle, a ranged targeted spell to decrease enemy movement. The Shaman targets his enemy at a distance and conjures tree roots up from the ground which entangle and temporarily trap his enemies. Visually the Shaman rears back in a wide squatted stance with outreached arms, focuses on the ground then swoops his arms forward and up. Here are the keyframe reference images I sent for the Entangle and death animation.
I only sent key frame reference imagery to China so the animator could interpret it him or herself. They ended up asking for my maya keyframe files that I used to make the images. Fine by me. Stay tuned for animation results...
