Senior Thesis I: Modeling

A lot of progress this week, in particular with Treville's modeling.

 The blocking process has quickly been overtaken by more concrete modeling. I'm still experimenting with more efficient was of displaying detail. The giant feather on his head, created as a polygonal object, is somewhat affective, though is very high poly. I am most likely going to be using normal mapping in its place to keep the poly count as small as possible  The image on the right is a feather texture I'm working on. The masks for his face is from another human model, and are more for placeholding purposes currently. Each mask will have a different face, in reference to classic theater masks.

 Some basic modeling of D'artagnan's clothing has done. I'm also researching jeans and shirt textures to eliminate some of the need for modeling. On Sean Foster's advice, I've also begun sketching more of his facial expressions and will be working on body poses. Sean's suggestion of drawing on top of existing character sheets was very helpful in blocking out general facial structure, and I've found many examples of concept art from Persona 4 and anime sources, shown at the bottom to help with the process. Through the facial sketching and texture map mapping I am learning to use Autodesk Sketchbook, which is a program similar to Photoshop.

Senior Thesis I: D'artagnan & Treville

I have chosen the 2 character I will be modeling: D'artagnan, the comedian and his Persona, Treville. I have begun modeling D'artz, focusing on the basic placement of clothing and some facial features, including the eyes and ears. I also gathered reference images of other famous comics, such as Dane Cook and George Carlin, to mirror their expressive features.

 I have also started the basic blocking process on Treville, the captain of the musketeers from Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers. I've gathered resources including historical and fantastic versions of the musketeers. I'm also referencing classic theater masks in his design, as he can switch between three.

Senior Thesis I: Working Timeline

Here's a screen grab of my working timeline. I'm still trying to account for multiple characters AND Senior Thesis II. It is similar to Production Pipeline's timeline, though with the Photoshop compositing stage eliminated for time's sake, and some stages extended.

Senior Thesis I: Project Black Arcana

Continuing on from my experiences and storyline from Production Pipeline, my Persona project expands in Senior Thesis! New characters, new Personae, hopefully better quality.

Here are the preliminary sketches of some of the new characters that I will be designing. More to come: