Staffordshire University

GVE Summer Showcase 2021

Portfolio and Contact Info:

Portfolio - https://www.artstation.com/mitchrussell

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchell-russell-38b673181

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mitch_russell_?s=09

Email - mitchgraphics@outlook.com

Merrick

A fan art piece I made of Merrick from the game Sea of Thieves. This was created for my final year project at University. The route I chose to take with this project was to create and resign said character.

For the redesign I wanted it to be something that could have easily fit within the game itself. After researching deeper into the character, I found that he was in the game initially and then removed for a period. After this period, he was bought back with a whole new purpose and look, as of this I saw an opportunity to create a new design. I tried to answer the question of what did he look like in his time out of the game?

Hobbes

A Fan Art piece of the Hobbes from the Fable series. I wanted to explore this weird character since its nature within the game is a weird and unpredictable one. I felt like there was an opportunity to create a fun narrative with this project as well as a chance to explore some techniques, like rigging and posing the faces/body.

I wanted to approach this project with the intention of trying include a narrative that ties together my final renders. From very early on I wanted to try and get across the personality of these creatures, the best way I felt was to set a theme and go from there.

The theme I went for was Rebellion/Resistance as this was something that I thought played into their personality quite well. The Hobbes as a whole have quite a juxtaposed personality. The personality traits of the Hobbes are very much bold yet timid, they are willing to charge into battle but get terrified by the slightest noise. Baring this in mind I wanted to try and convey this as much as possible throughout and hopefully capture the opposing traits of this character.

Batman Impostor

This character is a fan art piece inspired by the game Gotham City Impostors. The game themes its characters around 'knock-off' versions of superheroes, specifically focussing on Batman and The Joker. I opted for the Batman theme and started collating imagery from the game to formulate the design that I wanted. Trying to replicate the aesthetic as close as possible to achieve an authentic look. I couldn't find any particular footwear that I liked within the game, so I decided to do my own spin and give him Crocs with socks for that extra bit of style!

I wanted to have a go at getting a fairly low tri count for this character. After researching what tri budget the game used it was seeming under the 20,000 mark. This being the highest I could go, I had to try and optimise what I would bake down and what I wouldn't.

Trying to also push the smaller details like adding a broken nose, chipped teeth and a black eye was really fun to explore. Emphasising the theme and story further for this character.

Gibbon/Human Hybrid

Here is my rendition of this character from the Beyond Good and Evil 2 concept art, this was sourced from the BGaE2 website. The task here was to choose hybrid character that would push and challenge my modelling skills as well as trying to achieve a realistic and detailed artstyle.

The brief set gave us a limit of 100,000 triangles as well as 6 x 2048 Maps to allocate whichever character we chose. I found that splitting up my maps to 1 x 4096 Map, 1 x 2048 Map, 3 x 1024 Maps was the most optimal way to get the best resolution in places it was needed. I used the 4k map for the clothes as this was densest with the most islands. This made sure the resolution did not suffer because of this. As the clothes were a large portion of what is on show I felt that with was the most appropriate. Having the 2k Map for the body allowed me to give a good resolution to the face, arms, and hands. With this map being less tightly packed, I felt like this was the best option. The rest of the maps were set to 1024 as these were much smaller with simpler features like accessories, hair, and the weapon. The way that I chose to split up my maps came to the equivalent of 6 x 2048 maps so this was then okay to proceed.

For this model I was trying to match each piece as closely as possible to create a successful likeness to the concept art. In development I used Marvelous Designer to construct all of this character’s clothing whilst using Zbrush and 3DS Max to model the body, as well as the more hard surface elements such as the knife and boots. I feel like this really pushed these skills and I feel like I have been able to develop and improve because of it.