As I promised in my previous post, I'm going to write about the cartoonized soldier character.
So I once came up with the idea of a cartoonized shooter game, but I didn't quite know further details. The only thing I saw in front of my eyes were small soldiers, sorta like Cannon Fodder, but not as a strategy game, but rather as a third-person or an arena shooter game.
As time went on the project got itself a not-yet-final name, and theme. As a working title, the name Maggots sounded fair enough (I didn't want to copy anything from Team Fortress 2, so don't think this title is straight from the Soldier). As a theme to play in I started designing a WW2 atmosphere. At this time, the soldier as character was meant to be a non-player character, who supports the players, which are small tanks.
These tanks were a cartoonized versions of the Sherman tank. It has two versions, the first one is before I started working at a 3D outsourcing studio, and the second one was after this job came to an end.
Time passed by, but I soon started being not so much satisfied with the concept of a WW2 game, since in the industry there are so many WW2 based games (both serious and goofy) that I started thinking it would loose interest if I don't come up with a less shown theme. That's when I jumped back in time several years, and choose WW1. The concept was not unfamiliar with me, since several years earlier I was working for a Half-Life One Modification, called The Trenches. It was a WW1 first person shooter, but that project died because of the lack of spare time of the developers.
So, I started designing a new concept for a WW1 tense game.
You probably noticed these models only used diffuse and specular maps, and they lack of any normal or bumpmap. That's because at the time I haven't played with baking normalmaps and such, and I always remembered it as something to be a real pain in the ass. But like as I didn't suspected, I ruined something really bad. Notice the characters have too much space between their legs. Because of this I couldn't rig the models up perfectly, not mentioning my problem with biped animation not being exported properly in DirectX format I needed. So the project was resting for almost a year.
Some time ago I had a lot of spare time because of illness, and I started being interested in UDK (Unreal Development Kit). I noticed how great goals you can achieve with it, and being free never the less.
So I dust off "Maggots" and let's see what I can do - said me. But I wasn't satisfied with my old concept and old characters, because now I though their legs are also way too small. So I made a new - and by time final - concept.
The green overlines show how the same character layout can be used for both german and british (in this case scottish) characters. I also wanted to experiment with Zbrush, and use normalmaps like in old times. You already saw the work in progress in my previous post. By now I finished it, and also managed to make a german bolt-action rifle for him.
I'm quite satisfied to tell the truth, and I'm so much looking forward to actually making it coming alive.
As last words, I would mention that yes, this whole process took several years, and actually making some models for absolutely nothing, but I learned, that I shouldn't be bothered about that. I made lots of models, but I also learned lots of new techniques, and got new experiences for future models. So that's exactly what I'm advising you. If you have made something for no particular reason or wanted to use it for something which didn't turn out to be anything, then always look on the bright side, and look at the things you probably learned or experienced!
Also look forward for more stuff on this blog coming your way!
Cheers!
