TT Games Art Test

I totally forgot about this one, it”s about a month or so old. This was an approved art test for TT Games. 

So this was tricky. Coming up with a completely original Lego character, but I thought it was an incredibly cool process, from concept to completion. I learnt so much about normals and fixing certain issues that really would have set me back if I attempted this a year or so ago.

This was the initial sketch. The idea behind my Lego character design was primarily to portray a story, as this is my own design there is no game or predefined  storyline that I could use to influence my choices; so I created a short premise in which my character could exist. I initially chose something a little bit abstract before the final deliverable; a Russian inventor. Though, with the idea of this I quickly became attached to  a new, more refined and final concept of him being a father figure who is struggling to find that one golden idea that would revolutionise everything, a character that you would interact within a Lego game, or in essence an alternative character that you could swap to. 

Through his struggle and with the help of his son (the main character you would play as) you are able to create the ingenious Water Jetpack, allowing you to travel to new heights (literally). But, because of the materials used; various pipes and boxes and a little bit of ingenuity, that the character would have to refuel the jetpack by plugging it into a pipe leading to a water source. This would be one of many inventions you are able to use. 

It was this premise that influenced my design. I wanted to portray the weariness of the character through the texture.

This was the initial hp model in Maya.So  I originally had the arm modelled as the Minifig is portrayed; with its arm down to the side, creating geometry that would hopefully properly deform to a t-pose. 

Then I realised in the Lego games, when the arms are extended  they are perfectly cylindrical indicating a tpose instead and because there is no real documentation on this and on the topology I had to make the decision based on what I thought would be beneficial for animators and riggers which you can see in the model itself. Turns out it’s a mixture of the two. 

So the next thing was normals. Did they use them or not? If they didn’t then they would rely on smoothing groups. So I made sure that without the normals the model looks just as good as with normals. Turns out they try not to use normals whenever they can. 

It was great modelling and texturing (Illustrator) this and I learnt a lot. Can’t complain. If anyone is wondering their studio is very cool and the people there are friendly as to be expected!