Firstly, I sculpted the hair by using the hair brush to create a symmetrical look for saving time.

Next, the sculpting of her body parts began. For the tights, I used the “skinning” technique to create a form-fitting garment. Next came the armour, which was slowly formed from a sphere into the shape of an armour, and the skirt, which was made from two rectangular facets. I also improved on the original design, as I found the connection between the tights and the skirt unrealistic, so I added an extra hard surface belt to the figure, with the logo unique to the Watchtower heroes.

The legs are still in their original design, being armoured surface boots with the distinctive high heels of the Watchtower women. In looking at the whole body, I felt that the hair sculpt was not very good, so I re-sculpted it again

The project is a collaboration with YiLin Wang(character designer), Tianao Chen(scene designer),DianQian Li(Programmer),HongTao Jiang(Programmer) and FeiPeng(Programmer).

week 1

In the first week, we discuss the style of the game and the details of the levels are worked out.The theme we want to make is laboratory, so the character we choose is the experimental monster that escaped from the laboratory. I am responsible for the character design part. Firstly, I made a mood board about monsters, and secondly, I designed two characters based on two attributes: water and fire.

Week 2

For this week, we make 6 different kind of scene. And finally, we choose the last one, which is steampunk.

Week 3

At this week, I draw 6 more different characters for the game.

For this character, I changed the details of the original to make it look more sci-fi mechanical and drew a three-dimensional view of it.

With regard to weapons, there are two options set up, the first being a sword and staff combined into one weapon, with the sword being drawn from the top of the staff. The second is a separate staff-combined pistol. In the end, I opted for the latter, which is a separate staff combined with a gun for both weapons.

In terms of the colour scheme, as she has adopted the characteristics of a peacock, I tested three colours, green combined with blue on the peacock, and white and gold mainly. In the end, I chose blue.

For this week, I researched the specific character’s concept and arts firstly and understand the keys and important elements for character design.

Next, I created 3 more characters for my project and form them.

The franchise I adopted is Overwatch. The character that I want to make is a mechanical girl with prosthetic limbs, so first I searched a large number of images and integrated into the mood board. The first mood board is mainly a white series of mechanical armor, which uses a large number of elements, and with mechanical wings.

The second mood board is based on Chinese elements style, contains two categories, one is the Chinese black and red colors composed of fully armored girl, while the other part is the use of traditional Chinese clothing – cheongsam and the future mechanical elements of the combination of character design.

This is the character design draft I found on the Watchtower, mostly based on Chinese elements, including weapon settings are also very characteristic of the style, is my main reference style of painting.

My first character design idea is a female general who traveled from ancient China to modern times, she learned how to use modern technology weapons and modern technology also helped her to install the left leg lost during the previous war. But she still likes to wear the clothes of the past. This costume is a combination of the armor of the Shang Dynasty as well as the cheongsam of the Republican period. The pictures on the right are some painting references.

My second character design idea is a canary who had cultivated for a thousand years to become human. She was raised in a cage, for which she was distressed and depressed every day, and gradually, these feelings transformed into anger. A chance, she broke through the cage and with the pain of that year cultivated for a thousand years, transformed into a human, and became a warrior

The third character design idea is a peacock orc.

I imported the model into unreal enigine 5 and added a third person view to the front page in order to walk around the scene I created, and the two images below are the blueprints for all the actions.

The whole animation is made up of two parts, the first part is the walking part of the third view and the other is the camera recorded image of the scene.

The curtains covering the containers and the cube are coloured in fluorescent bright colours and I added a water ripple-like texture to the material of the cube. For the bottles on the shelves containing the experimental chemicals, I made them a little more porcelain-like and added a ring of bright material to the lids to give them a more sci-fi look. For the water pipes, instead of using a normal pipe material (like steel), I made them to feel like they had a rubber sheath. This was because I had too much metal texture throughout the scene, so I made other materials to balance the texture. Because the security door is a hidden door in the lab, I made it the same material as the wall and added neon lights to the rotary switch to make it more recognisable. The entire body of the container is coloured with neon stripes, except for the purple steel. The walls are made of metal and I have added a yellow cordon around the edges to add to the laboratory atmosphere

Texture sphere

This is the result of my final substance painter. The top and bottom rows of material balls are the main colours of the scene. The light sources throughout the scene are neon strips from the individual objects and the overall atmosphere is darker to accentuate this.

When drawing the scene structure diagram, I found some pictures on the internet as reference and drew the black and white structure atmosphere diagram. The scenes were set indoors and accompanied by neon light strips. In the early stage, I was torn between choosing indoor or outdoor scenes, but after considering various factors, I chose indoor scenes. 

Because at this stage of my study, I wanted to focus on the detailed indoor objects and items rather than the outdoor scenes that create a sense of atmosphere. In the end, I used the sketch on the bottom left as my final main 2D drawing to build the 3D effect, because the scene has more space and is more conducive for me to build more things and details.

For the laboratory decorations – Rubik’s Cube, I think its existence can somewhat increase the science fiction and cyberpunk elements, I drew three of these decorations according to my mind Rubik’s Cube look, and then find two Rubik’s Cube on the Internet as my reference.

For the fabrication of the laboratory mechanical door, I first collected some pictures of the laboratory door in the animation scene. Then, I used the vertical symmetry tool to draw 8 mechanical doors in different shades of blue to serve as the lab doors in my scene.