Final Decisions..

The first assessment for this project is to answer some basic questions about your project which is meant to help formalise the idea within your mind, and help describe it clearly to others.


The questions and my answers are below, so if you wanna learn all the nitty gritty details, read on...


Name: Christian Hood

Project title: Equipped for Battle

The Concrete outcome: The outcome of my project will be a highly detailed 3D model in the form of a digital statue created in the digital sculpting program Zbrush. It will include high quality textures, a lighting setup that best portrays it and multiple angle renders. If time allows I will include multiple alternate character designs. I would also love to be able to print my final design as a physical object, although more research needs to be done before I can decide whether this is a realistic outcome.

Theme or content of the project: The content of my project is futuristic, sci-fi style character using hard surface sculpting techniques to create a photo realistic armour design that could be used in films or games.

Creative aims: The creative goals of my project are to create a visually enticing design. I intend to do this through a combination of exciting dynamic effects, photo realistic textures and renders and an exciting, imaginative, yet believable armour design. The sculpt will be a single static moment, but I want it to tell an instantly recognisable story, a single moment of action, explaining the function of this armoured suit and the situation it is in.

Technical aims: There are many technical skills that I aim to practice, develop and use within this project. Firstly I intend to design the character that I will be sculpting, this will include armour and potentially weapon design, two areas of character design which I feel are important and I am not as confident doing. The design phase will also require me to create concept art from multiple angles to aid in the transition between 2D concept and 3D model, this is a skill which I am fairly confident with but have not had much practice with. The sculpt it’s self if the main technical hurdle, as hard surface sculpting is a new area to me and a difficult art form to get precise as each surface must be perfectly smoothed as if it had been crafted by a machine. One of my ideas with this design is to attempt to include dynamic effects such as water and smoke, these are areas that I have never worked in before and as such could present me with a number of technical difficulties, however I have faith that I will be able to create these effects in the way I need them and that they will increase the aesthetic quality considerably. The final phase of the sculpt will be to texture, light and render the model to best display my original idea and the sculpt itself. I have plenty of practice within this area working within Maya, however if time allows I will attempt to do most of this within Zbrush, to minimise program switching. This will also allow me to try my hand at Polypainting, a method of texturing I have not used previously.

Who will be the target market/audience: The target audience of my project is for other  3D artist to enjoy and learn from. It will also serve as a basis to show of my ability to complete concept work and high end modeling. As such it the sort of sculpt that would be aimed at artistic directors on film and game productions.

How will target market/audience benefit from your work: My project is designed to entertain other artist who look at it, and to inspire them to create their own works. For use within film and game production as a demonstration of concepts and designs my project aims to inform the artistic director and enable them to make decisions about my design. This could lead to the design being accepted and the film or game asset produced, at which stage my design and model would be used to inform and educate the asset creation team further down the pipeline.

Your research areas: There are a few main areas that I need to develop research in order to complete my project most effectively. The largest are of this is in technical research. As there are many technical hurdles within my project each one of these must be addressed, research and a solution found. These areas include the technical difficulties and process of creating hard surface sculpts that will work for the model I design. How to Polypaint and how this technique will work with my final design to make it look the best that it can. Finding a program or plug-in that will allow me to create smoke and water effects in a way that suits the style and vision of my project that can also be rendered convincingly and easily within the time frame.


The design itself will also require a fair bit of research. Ultimately I want the design to appear real and rendered to a photorealistic quality, as such the initial concepts need to be designed with this in mind. I will need to design the individual armour panels/plates in such a way that they look like they can convincingly move over one another and still allow the wearer to move freely. This will require looking at real life examples of armoured suits and understanding the construction methods, as well as researching fictional examples and developing a style that will enable these realistic pieces to also be aesthetically exciting. 


Ultimately I would be thrilled if my final model could be printed using a 3D printer, and if possible coloured too. I will therefore need to do some research into companies who provide such a service and if this is a practical aim.

Success measure: The main success measure for this project will be completing all of the individual elements satisfactorily  and in line with the original design intention. However as a further incentive to make this a particularly amazing piece of work, I would like this sculpt to take the main place in my portfolio which will hopefully lead to me gaining a job creating sculptures and models in the film or games industry. I will also submit some of my final images or work in progress shots to Zbrush Central, the website and forum of Zbrush makers and artists in an atempt to gain a place on the prestigious ‘Top Row’, a banner of the best works from the site that takes pride of place at the top of every page on the website.