I have yet to confirm how the game title is properly capitalized. . .
I've joined a new production studio! CaRPG is an RPG. . . with a car! A couple friends were looking for a complete art overhaul of their game and since I'm a glutton for punishment, I jumped right on the opportunity. Their game is a mixture of realistic environments and enemies with the player character as a ridiculous looking cartoon car. It's silly and fun and provides me the opportunity to get some environmental story telling and character assets into my portfolio, and I just really like what these guys are about.
This project doesn't come without challenges, but they're obstacles I think I'm ready to tackle; the glaringly obvious one being character modeling. Although I've tried a couple times, I actually haven't done organic character modeling since my second year during my intro to modeling class. I chose to focus on props and environments since then, but I knew I had to eventually come back to it, and why not in a game where you play as a car smashing through a fantasy dungeon?
I also want to try my hand at marvelous designer, and the wizards I have to design are basically floating cloaks, so it will be an easy introduction! (I hope. . .) I've messed around with the program a few times and I have the very basics down, so I don't think it will be too stressful to stitch some squares together on a base human model. I'll probably give my goblins a basic loincloth as well, or else they'll be nakey.
Here are some of the concepts I put together:
This is just a short storyboard to give a feel for the theme I'm going for. I plan to have warring factions of goblins and wizards that are interrupted by this car from a different dimension that's wrecking havoc all throughout the dungeon.
Some environment art concepts. I pulled some fungus sketches I did for Janus Project into the scene, and I hope I can use fungus as a 'food source' for the goblins as well as add some interesting shapes and colors into a procedural looking dungeon.
Goblin boi
Here's the start of his model. Spooky character modeling! I think I did a banger job with the shoulders, but I need other people to look at my topology before I can continue adding detail. Once I make a base model, I'm going to bring him into zbrush and substance and learn how to properly bake maps and apply them to a lower poly mesh. I like to think I have a grasp of it already, but I'm still dreading the day I have to face it.
Pretty standard wizard, nothing special here.
This is the final boss that's definitely not a beholder. I'm looking forward to making him, because I'll be using the tail animator asset I have for unity on all of his tentacles to give him a really creepy squid look (and avoid having to rig and animate eight tentacles.) The one problem I see myself facing with this one is the eyelids. . . so basically the whole thing? I want to use blend shapes to really give that folded skin look, but I don't know the first thing about blend shapes, so this project is going to be full of learning new things!
We decided to have statues that break apart into two mini bosses and the final boss, so here are the plans for those guys. I want to make it look like a zelda style dungeon where the camera fixes on the boss and shakes as it gives a battle cry! That would be cool.
I genuinely feel excited for this game, even though I'm treading way out of my comfort zone for a lot of this work. Maybe it's because it's only week 3 and in a few blog posts I'll be ranting about how much I hate texture maps and cloth physics, but an artist can dream!
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