How I designed, modeled, and textured the characters featured in a semester-long capstone project.
Duration: 2020 – 2021
Team Size: Four
Engine: Unreal engine
Roles: Concept Artist, 3D Modeler, 3D Texture Artist
Skills Used/Obtained: Autodesk 3DS Max, Clip Studio Paint, PAINT.NET
Art: Self-taught basics of concept art and 3d texture creation and their application to creating characters for a collaborative multiplayer experience.
Medieval Mayhem wasn’t just one of the biggest projects I have ever contributed to, but also the first project I became a part of after I fully realized my passion for character design. It was during this project that I got to put that passion to work – my task was to design, model, and texture three player characters plus one generic enemy character for a medieval-themed multiplayer beat-em-up.
While the generic enemy was simple enough to design, I encountered an issue when conceptualizing the player characters – if I made each one a specific or a certain skin tone, it would be hard for the player to imagine themselves as their avatar if their appearance/traits don’t match, lessening the immersion the game provides. Eventually, I came up with a solution – I designed each character so that their faces were totally hidden, be it under a helmet or in the shade of a hood. I also made the body designs as ambiguous as possible so that there was barely any pre-set visualization of the character outside of their uniform, allowing the player to imprint their own visage onto their avatar.
Outside of the models which, while initially mistaken for marketplace assets, were universally praised by my professors, I also helped model the weapons in-game, including the knight’s axe and the archer’s bow – though I was not the one who designed them. I also lent a helping hand and a fresh pair of eyes to our resident game coder and helped code each of the characters’ animations.