Project 2 - Enter the Character's Den~

Fresh start of the week, will you enter my trap?

Project one is coming to a close this week, I'll be posting some updates on that later on. But I'm going to post a quick one regarding Project two. It's all about Character Design.

Looking over my first thoughts

My general idea is around an evil theme. The silent hunter, maybe slightly murderous. Likes to keep to themselves. I'm undecided on a gender, it will either be Female or Genderless. Genderless might give me a bit more to work from because female's can sometimes be rather stereotyped.



Something similar to the Character Evelyn from League of Legends (c) Riot Games. Shown to the right here. She's what people would call 'fan serviced' and that's anyone's default idea for a female character. Which is not a trend I particularly want to follow.

Again, you'll notice a large League of Legends trend in my ideas. The game is so huge and varied character wise that there's so much for me to take inspiration from. It is.. Basically endless! <3

Give us your idea so far!

Alright, my thoughts immediately went towards Mewtwo from the pokemon series. In the first ever movie in this franchise Mewtwo was created from the DNA of another Pokemon. I liked this idea and I wanted to use this for my own character. This was before we were split into any groups.

When Justin put us into our table groups, it was the first thing I put across to my teammates. We all loved it. That's the path we're going to follow!

Nathan - Will have a Leader character. He will be the one who conducted the experiments on these creatures. They went wrong and hence we were created.

Sylvian - Doesn't have a solid idea so far on her characters role.

Andrea - Will be the first experiment that failed. Her character was a normal cat that was struggling to survive, when Nathan's character committed an experiment onto her and mutilated her but saved her life.

Myself - My character will fit the murderous quiet characteristics I first had set in mind. I will be a bug mutilation with a deformed humanoid structure. A silent assassin type of character.

Jaime - Is rather quiet about the personality of her character but she stays with the bug mutilation, like myself. We like to think that we're secretly related and her character will back mine up. She's fitting into a male gender, with a spider based mutilation.

Jay - Is going for a big build, dopey character. 

Any Inspiration?

Well, at this point I can only offer references that I'll share in this post. It's early days of this project, but the likes of Pokemon's Mewtwo and Scyther. the Grand Council Woman from Lilo and Stitch, and League's Kha'zix's are the sort of characters I have in mind as I progress through this second Project.

That's the sum up for Project two so far. I am really excited about how this is going to turn out.

Watch this Space~! <3

  My DeviantART  |  My Pinterest  |  My Twitter  |  My Tumblr  

Project 1 - Cutlery - Final Design

Here, Ace in the Hole..~

Here you go, the final sum up! I'll include the model, as it is so far at the end.

The Fae's Buffet/Twisted Treeline

Everything must come to an end, including this project! I decided to head back to League of Legends champions for my final design and to start with I wasn't entirely sure of the one I should pick. Jinx? Caitlyn? Nami? Ahri? I'm afraid it's none of them! I went for a mash up including one of the maps within the game itself: Twisted Treeline. Which matches Lulu's personality very well, with that in mind.

I took my sketches from my original Lulu idea and added a little 'Twisted Root' idea into the curved handle structure. This was going to be my final idea however, I couldn't wrap my head around how to model it in 3DS max. Even after creating some curls in my hair and snapping some references. I couldn't pick up the right concept. Google wasn't a lot of help either. All the same, I really enjoyed the idea. Let's show it off!

Here's 'The Fae's Buffet' idea:

Now, after struggling to model The Fae's Buffet I had to come up with an alternative. Time was running out and I felt a serious amount of pressure. Looking back, I think I was in over my depth but I'm stupidly excited to model this idea properly. I really want to make it work, it will be a massive personal achievement for me. This design keeps a lot from The Fae's Buffet idea, but a few factors changed that I feel now I can actually achieve when modeling the cutlery.

My final idea, The Twisted Treeline is based on Lulu and her magical background. The 'Inner Roots' contain a type of magical pixie dust, allowing a faint glow and mystical energy to the design.

How did you get that idea?

Well, I spoke about the Champion Lulu in my previous posts. Basically her design allowed me a lot of freedom to create a concept based on her character. There's a lot of little aspects about Lulu that make her recognizable. Also, her magical background means I can get a little more of a fantasy aspect into this one.

Introducing 3DS Max

So, for my early hand in I had to have an in progress model of the final design. I do want to redo the model from scratch at my own pace without a lot of deadline pressure, but I like how it looks currently. Without further a-do, here's my model so far~

Coming up next!

A final model in a few weeks time but that's it for my first project! I wanna thank Justin for the support he offered us, and all my classmates for helping me pick out my better ideas to carry forward.

Project two is character design, within a little 5 person group. Should be fun, I'm excited for this one and because I completed Project 1 without too much difficulty I think I'm a lot more confident going into project 2!

Watch this Space~! <3

  My Twitter  |  My DeviantART  |  My Tumblr  |  My Pinterest  

Project 1 - Cutlery - Concepts #2

Keep friends close.. And enemy's guessing! ~

Just following up from my previous post. A little more detail, a little more shape coming into these designs and what exactly inspired the idea in the first place! Again, not all my ideas are here. Just the ones I thought worked rather well.

Nami the Tidecaller

Yet another League of Legends Champion, Nami!
I love the entire design of this champion and my head exploded with ideas for cutlery. I couldn't let this idea bypass me, so here we are! After going through a few ideas I had finally pushed it down to a few that I thought worked really well. One of them I started to model in 3DS Max before thinking that maybe it wasn't as challenging as I wanted it to be.

Nami's an interesting concept that I was excited to try and bring into a reality (There's a Jinx Fork in there for a bit of colour change!!):

Lulu, the Fae Sorceress

League of Legends is quite a big thing for me, so 75% of my inspirations came from this absolutely massive game. But when you look at the champions is it any wonder? Lulu is another of these design heavy champions that I felt drawn to with this project. Her appearance and background seemed like a fantastic place to base my cutlery idea.

Her staff can texture an entire set itself, so there's endless possibilities here! And! I want to try and include her magical aspects to make the idea little more.. Abnormal.

I think I pulled it off, it's a little simple but I think it works:

Gates of Oblivion

Oblivion in the Elder Scrolls series has a good amount of ideas that I could try and squish together to create a single set of cutlery. I think that if you made several different ideas then they would all refer to each other in some way which wouldn't make the idea as effective, in my opinion. The game is based around these demon gates to another realm full of death and demons. The horrific aspect means the colour scheme for the set would have to be dark, maybe glowing like the Oblivion Gates themselves.

So, here you go!

Lulu, Caitlyn and Demonic OverPowers.

I spoke about Lulu just a few sections ago, and Caitlyn in the previous post, and the demonic structure in the previous, previous post. So this section is just a little bit more detail on their behalf. These 3 were designs I really liked working on so I went to progress them and render them out properly. With that in mind, the final rendered concepts can be seen below!

Nami poppin' Jinx~

Before I close off, I did an alternative Nami design and a more complex Jinx design just to showcase all aspects of her character in the design. These were done for complete fun!

Caught up with all my sketches and concepts, so the last thing on the list is the final closing idea! Isn't it exciting. :3

Watch this Space~! <3

  My Twitter  |  My DeviantART  |  My Tumblr  |  My Pinterest  

Project 1 - Cutlery - Concepts #1

Come closer, I won't bite~

Continuing on from my previous post, I developed out the sketches a little further so this blog and my next blog will be some showcases with a bit more detail compared to the last one!

Not all my concepts are here, just the ones I think worked rather well over all. Let's walk through the concepts..

Ahri, the Nine Tailed Fox

Ahri is an interesting character from League of Legends, with quite a magical background and her animal characteristics made her an interesting design to try and create a cutlery set out of.
I wanted to take the texture of her skills, her outfit and her cute but deadly personality to base the concept of this design.

It seemed like an easy thing to do at first but she has so much details that characterize her it's hard to target it down to something simple.
I gave it a shot though and this was the outcome:

The Great Minecraft!

Minecraft as a game has incredible creation potential. It's a virtual Lego loved by all people of any age range. I wanted to get across the same enjoyment and wide ranged audience with this particular cutlery design. By creating your own 'tower' of blocks on the handle you can customise the cutlery to your own unique preference.

You're not paying for a set design, you're paying for the base to make it your own!

My design puts across this concept really well, in my opinion. So, here's the sketch with a few of the more popular brick designs!

Jinx the Loose Canon + Caitlyn the Sheriff of Piltover

Two more of my favourite range champions in League of Legends! Let's start with Jinx, the Loose Canon.

Jinx's personality is very rogue. She hates being bored and loves causing chaos. She has a wide range of weapons and a laid back, crazy attitude.

I wanted to take her mix and match outfit material, and the designs of her weapons and mash them up to design a cutlery range for Piltover's Loose Canon.

So, here's the sketches with inspiration taken from my absolute Number 1 favourite champion!

Moving onto Caitlyn, the Sheriff of Piltover. She has a tough attitude and a strangely 'revealing' and some what elegant outfit. Mechanical aspects of her appearance are what I want to create a different style of cutlery. I wanted o focus on the typical design but this was my chance to go a little differently and show I can think outside the box. Again, I used her outfit for the design but the mechanical aspects of her weapons to concept the entire idea.

Here's my outside the box idea~

Mood Ring Inspirations

As a kid, I loved wearing a ring on my finger that changed colours. I had no idea why it changed, I thought it was magical. So, this idea is based on my younger self and an old love for the Mood Ring concept.

I wanted a way to try and make the colour change depending on the flavour of food, Spicy, Sweet, Bitter and so on. Or maybe even the temperature of the food on the end.

Obviously, it would be difficult to do as I have no idea about the actual creation of the whole Mood Ring thing.

I thought the concept was awesome so here's my sketches:

Celtic + Mabinogi's Goddesses

Celtic Knot's don't really need an explanation. The knot idea engraved into the handle of any cutlery design would be a success in my opinion. I wanted to draw them out for myself to see how the concept would come to life, and below you can see my outcome.

Back to another game now, you'll see my influences from Mabinogi. The game is based on Celtic Mythology so it's right up my street. I took the 3 major Goddesses (Morrighan, Macha and Neamhain) and created a set for each one of these beautiful characters.

Neamhain, is the Goddess of Light in this game. She doesn't have a lot of screen time compared to her sister Morrighan. She starts to turn against the world her sister created, after realizing that they took her son away from her as punishment. She owns her own continent governed by the Elves and Giants. Like the others, staying true to my original thoughts on this project, I used her outfit to design the set.

Here's my idea from the Goddess of Light. <3

Macha was recently introduced into the game, she is the Goddess of Destruction. She has a darker personality compared to her two sisters. Having cursed some of the humans on earth, even after they give endless sacrifice to her. She was bound in the void by her sisters to stop her destroying the world Morrighan created. There has been attemptive summons on several occasions, the most recent one succeeding and allowing the Goddess of Destruction to gain revenge on the Milletains.

Here's my concept for the firey personality of the Goddess Macha. <3

Finally, we have the Goddess of War and Vengeance Morrighan. Morrighan is known for her split personality. One side of her is calm and collected, understanding - the complete opposite of her traits! As the story progresses her sinister nature shows through as her plan to use the characters in the game to destroy their world and create their own land of paradise. Morrighan is the Goddess we see progress through the entire Mabinogi storyline, and we get a good feel for her personality. Though, because she's so split it's hard to focus on one thing. I tried my best with this concept but looking back on it now I wish I could have done the Goddess more justice.

Here's my idea for Morrighan, the Goddess of War and Vengeance. <3

Next on the List~..

Some more Concepts, because I think this post is long enough! Watch out for it!

For those who are looking for more detailed pictures of my sketches, you can browse them on my Pinterest. I'll create a new board for my work on this project.

Watch this Space~! <3

  My Twitter  |  My DeviantART  |  My Tumblr  |  My Pinterest  

Project 1 - Cutlery - Ideas

Duck! Hehe, just kidding..

Alright, this honestly slipped my mind so I'm playing a bit of catch up. Sorry bloggers!

If you've been watching my blog, you'll see that I had to design my own cutlery as part of a Uni project. Since then it's been finished up, for the most part. I'll be posting up my sketches, inspirations and the final idea over the next few posts so I don't mix it up with Project 2!

The Inspiration

To start, I struggled to get an idea for my cutlery. I started to panic and I was rather confused but I decided to stick to my most favourite things. I kept with the idea of games. The main games I focused on for this project were League of Legends (Riot Games) Mabinogi (Nexon & Devcat) Oblivion and Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks, Elder Scrolls Series), with a few add ins from my fascination into Celtic Mythology, and Demonic artwork.

League of Legends has a wide variety of champion characters to choose from, so I decided to texture the cutlery around their appearance and skills. This seemed to be my most focused on idea because of how much variety was provided to me from the game.

Mabinogi has a few characters that have the details to inspire a range like cutlery. I chose the Gods because of their outfits and general personalities. The idea of making winged handles made me buzz with excitement. Which then leads onto the Celtic designs, based on the idea of the knot artwork.

Oblivion and Skyrim speak for themselves, if you know the games at all. If not, then WHY NOT? These games have so many unique qualities that just scream at you to create something deadly and beautiful. How could I not answer a cry like that? <3

The smaller targets are based on my love for Supernatural things, strange and wonderful. So, with all this out of the way let's go into a bit more detail of how they made their own designs.

The Output: Dragon and Lady Gaga~

Keeping with things strange and wonderful, how can you not include Miss Lady Gaga? That woman is the very definition of weird. I wanted to use her outfits and video concepts to create her own bizarre range of cutlery.

I do like the sketches I came up with, however I don't feel, personally, that the designs fit my overall idea for a final product. So, they stayed as sketches.

Dragons, dragons, dragons. I love these scaled lizards with wings and fire breathing abilities. Sadly, I don't think a fork breathing fire onto your steak is exactly a great Healthy and Safety piece. However, wrapping the scaley beast around a handle in a comfortable fashion would have worked rather well. I tried to draw out the idea but I struggled to make it look right, even after looking up some already created designs.

Looking forward, the Dragon design could be hard to model in 3DS Max so it's maybe a good idea that the idea stays at the sketching stays and doesn't progress much further. I'd be heartbroken if I developed it out fully then struggled to get even started modeling something so complex and highly detailed.

Demonic Knock-up

I ain't afraid of no Ghost!

I just had to add that in somewhere.

As I mentioned, I have a soft spot for weird demonic species. All different types like in the TV Series Supernatural, the book series Demonata by Darren Shan, All horror films, and the game series Elder Scrolls.

I wanted to try and put the skeletal textures into my designs, look at creating the cutlery out of bones instead of plastic and metallic materials. The rough skin texture behind demonic creatures, the horror factor and gory aspect is something I wanted to highlight in these designs. I think I did alright!

What happens next?

I'll take these rough concepts and develop them a little further, and continue to create new ideas with a little more of a solid concept in mind as I continue through this first project. We've got the rough ideas and inspirations, so let's push the boat out a little further shall we?

More Champions and detail next time around, as I build up towards my ultimate weap-- Cutlery Design!

Watch this Space~! <3

  My Twitter  |  My DeviantART  |  My Tumblr  |  My Pinterest