After a lot of nagging from one of the 3D-artists I decided to make a concept of Darwins weapon, a crossbow. Darwin comes from a place a place that lies ahead in the development of machinery and therefor he has a technically more advanced weapon than the other main characters. The crossbow is equipped with a small magazine of bolts and a scope, mainly to make it look more interesting but also so that it makes sense that he doesn’t have to reload after every single shot.

Darwin is a skinny old man, who always carries his crossbow with him. He fled his hometown of Giza as it was enslaved and corrupted by people that gave false promises about a better future. Darwin has lived in Era for just as long as Zedwig and knows all of them very well. Though he is old fashioned and somewhat an outsider in the party, he is still a good friend and a skilled armsman.

The first thing I had to do today was to remove our producer Håkan from my workstation. I wasn’t surprised to see that he, once again, had changed the background on my desktop. His argument was that it was his screen, and therefore he had the right to do this. What can I say?

I finally got to sit down and start working on the quiver for the crossbow. I grabbed my pen, opened a new document and started sketching on some designs. Thirty seconds later Tobias called me over and showed me that he had finished the crossbow model which I made yesterday. Goddammit, I thought I could lean back at least for today but no. The model looked good and there was nothing I could say really so I knew what he was about to say:

“I need a concept of the quiver.”

A couple of hours later I finished the concept. I know it won’t keep him busy for long so now I have to figure out what to do next. I think I’ll finish the concept of another of our four main characters and give him a color palette for the texturing. That’ll show him.

Hi people of the web : )
Tekei (Tobias) here and I will tell you about the process of making a game model from someone else concept art. I just finished modeling a crossbow (approx 1 hour work) and I guess this would be a good opportunity to start off.

I guess the biggest difference from working on an idea of your own is that the concept art has to be a lot clearer and thought out, so working side by side with the concept artist (Nixi) as I do helps as well. If the concept art isn’t covering all the necessary angles and is clear enough on what parts that go inwards and which ones that go outwards it can be a real challenge to get things right. Usually, however, it can be solved with some improvisation and common knowledge without ruining the concept all together.

I know some people who prefer to keep turn-arounds of their model as background sheets in their 3d software and just follow them for their modeling. Personally I only do this for very complex models or if it’s extremely important that there are no differences between the concept art and the 3d model. Usually I just keep a picture open in another window or on my desk and model by eye.  From my experience this gives the models more a bit more life, if that makes sense.

The next step will be UV-unwrapping and texturing.