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Aero Krystrike

Process Book

Written development

When initially developing a character I will take a writer's approach and write a Character Profile. A character profile is a tool for organizing your thoughts about the character your looking to create. By keeping track of your character's idiosyncrasies and relationships you can utilize this information to inform your design. It can help flesh out a cardboard character and even make you think about facets of his or her personality that you had not considered before. 

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The character profile worksheet is a tool to help you keep track of vital information about your character. Not only does it help you to define your character, but it will also be a valuable tool to refer back to when developing the story. Listed below are some of the things I try to discover about my character in the development process.

Basic Statistics

Character Name, Age, Nationality, Hometown, Occupation, Income/Salary

Physical Characteristics

Height, Weight, Race, Eye Color, Hair Color, Skin Color, Shape of Face, Distinguishing Features,Mannerisms, Habits, Health, Hobbies, Greatest Physical Flaw, Best Physical Quality

Emotional Characteristics

Strengths, Weaknesses, Introvert or Extrovert, How does the character deal with anger?, With sadness?, With conflict?, With change,

With loss, What motivates this character, What frightens this character, What makes this character happy

Intellectual/Mental/Personality Attributes and Attitudes

Educational Background, Intelligence Level, Learning Experiences, Life Goals, How does character see himself/herself, How does character believe he/she is perceived by others, How self-confident is the character, Does the character seem ruled by emotion, or logic, What would most embarrass this character.

Behaviors and Mannerisms

Group Behaviors, Individual Behaviors, Catch Phrases

Skills/ abilities

inherent, will learn

Spiritual Characteristics

Does the character believe in a God? Many gods? None at all?, What are the character's spiritual beliefs?, Is religion or spirituality a part of this character's life?,If so, what role does it play?

How the Character is Involved in the Story

Character's Role (Main character? Hero? Heroine? Romantic interest? Sidekick?, etc.), where does the  character first appear, What is the characters relationships with other characters

Basic Statistics

Name:

Age:

Nationality:

Hometown:

Occupation:

Income/Salary:

Birth Order:

Aero Krystrike

17

Univellian

Yoke town, Gernia

Mechanical Engineer

Middle class income

Only child

Physical Characteristics

Height:

Weight:

Race:

Eye Color:

Hair Color:

Skin Color:

Distinguishing Features:

Mannerisms:

Habits:

Hobbies:

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Greatest Physical Flaw:

Best Physical Quality:

5’6”

140lbs

Univellian

Brown

Dark brown

Olive

Skinny and scrappy build and spiky hair

Active and excitable, sometimes even manic.

Tugs his ears when nervous or thinking deeply.

Tinkering with and upgrading gadgets and devices.

Physical strength and endurance

Quick and small able to get into and out of tight situations.

Emotional Characteristics

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Introvert or Extrovert?:

Deals with anger?:

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With sadness?:

With conflict?:

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With change?:

With loss?:

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Motivates Him / Her?:

Frightens Him / Her?:

Makes Him / Her Happy?:

Very caring and emotionally open

Tends to be overly cautious and hesitant.

Extrovert

His frustrations boil close to the surface and can result in some manic behavior.

Shares his sadness openly

somewhat aggressively and can at times get heated

He loves to explore the unknown

Not much experience with loss. So it will take a heavy toll on him.

The pursuit of knowledge

Any Physical Injury

Tinkering with mechanical devices.

Personality

Aero is a boy genius,  he completed college before most of his peers completed high school. Although his extreme intelligence can be a source of power he tends to let his intellectual thought get in the way of taking action, or at least without some significant forethought. He’s very young and doesn't have much life experience. He  much to learn about the world that's not in a book.

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Right now Areo is working for the Gernian crown as a Mechanical Engineer. Some time soon he hopes to gain the queen's favor for his technological achievements.  This super brain know it all hopes to one day become world renowned for his technical contributions to humankind.

Story Role

The team of travelers meets Aero in battle at the Geranian Colosseum. He has designed a mechanized suit of armor that he battles to test his enginuity. Once our hero defeats Aero in battle there is an opportunity to convince Aero to leave his current situation and join your quest.

 

Aero is a valuable asset to the team. His skill set will give the player the opportunity to mechanically enhance there gear as well as there travel arrangements. Of course these enhancements will require the right resources.

Game Stats

  • Health

  • Vitality

  • Strength

  • ​Endurance

  • Will

  • Rage

  • Defence

  • Magic

  • Dexterity

  • Agility

  • Accuracy

  • Evasion

  • Cunning

  • Critical

Character Summary

Character Profile

Gathering Reference

  • Find images that inspire ideas

    • Pose & Personality

      • Find images with poses that you feel represent your characters personality.

    • Aesthetics & Design

      • Choose some images that might represent the style you are looking to achieve.

    • Find images that represent physical aspects of your character.

      • Age

      • Gender

      • Race

      • Face Shape

      • Hair Style

    • Costume Design is an important aspect of defining your character

      • Accessories

      • Clothing Style

Initial Design

  • Start Sketching

    • Keep it loose

    • explore shapes and proportions.

    • Make choices about your character that convey reason

    • Why is the character wearing specific clothing

  • Pose

    • Draw multiple poses

    • Character turnaround

      • Front

      • Back

      • Side

    • Make sure silhouette is recognizable

  • Illustration

    • Choose sketch that best represents your character and refine for your final illustration

Character Sculpt

  • ​Find the character in 3D space before moving into technical modeling aspects.

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  • Shape and silhouette

    • Use zbrush for blocking out your character

      • Find the general shape and proportion of your character

      • ​Work quickly and loose

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  • Recreate character pose

    • Push your general shapes into the chosen character pose from your illustration.

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  • Block in clothing and accessories​

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  • ​The character sculpt is an opportunity to quickly flesh out your character free from the technical restraints of modeling and rigging.

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  • Further refining the Shape and silhouette of your character including costume and accessories.

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  • Finalize the shape and proportion of your character

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  • Fully visualize your character for Art Director approval

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  • This save time and money by avoiding costly revisions when the character has a locked topology and functioning character rig.

Model Development

  • This character is being developed as a game asset so it's necessary to create a conservative polygonal model

  • The level of detail the model has will be determined by the intended platform.

  • This is where the terms topology, edge flow and polycount come into play.

    • Topology refers to the geometric layout of a model, how the vertices and edges are arranged to create the mesh surface.

    • Edge flow refers to the modeling practice of ensuring that edges follow the curvature and features of the model.

      • real-time rendering, bad topology can also create rendering problems​

      • Clean edge flow is essential for good deformation in both real-time and rendered.

    • Polycount refers to the total number of polygons used to create a three-dimensional model

      • A modest poly-count is essential for fast frame-rates in real-time engines

  • With These philosophies in mind I tried to organize the topology so each polygon face consists of four edges.

  • I also attempted to find an edge flow with the least amount of edge loops that works for both the character shape and silhouette as well as intended deformations.

Edgeloop Theroy

Red Loops:

Edge loops that define critical topology that affect animation deformations

Orange Loops:

Edge loops that define large anatomy features and aid animation deformations

Green Loops:

Edge loops that define extra anatomy features and are disposable for poly count budgets

Black Loops:

Edge loops divide model in half and define UV seams

UV Layout

  • An efficient UV layout is crucial to getting the most out of your texture maps

  • Depending on the format you are designing for you may have different UV layout styles

    • Game assets are more restricted when it comes to UV space.

      • When laying out UV’s for a game asset you must use a single UV Tile per Material.

    • Assets developed for animation can use Multiple UV tiles to maximize texture resolution.

      • UV tiles are often referred to as UDIM's

  • UV Shells should be optimized to reduce texture stretching

  • UV edges should be cut in inconspicuous areas to avoid visible texture seams

Game UV Layout

Rigging

  • ​Rigging is the process of creating a control system or a three dimensional model

  • Joint layout

    • placing joints and/or pivot points that will be used for deforming the model

  • Control Layout

    • Placing objects in a intuitive manner so an animator can pose the character.

  • Skinning

    • Painting the influence of particular joints and the strength of their influence over the model

  • Articulation Demonstration

    • When skinning your character one must pose the character in order to view the behavior of the deformations.

    • Ideally a rigger will have a series of calibration poses to verify the deformations of the body.

Accessory design

  • It’s important to develop the weapons and or accessories your character has or obtains in the same way you have the character.

    • Find images that inspire ideas develop a reference page

    • For intricate objects one should develop a accessory/weapons design sheet.

    • A digital sculpt of the accessory/weapon can help one find the 3 dimensional form of the objects

    • In model development proper edge placement can help hold edges of solid forms

    • UV’s should be laid out optimizing texture space to get optimal pixel density

    • A prop rig will be required for your character to interact with the object.

    • Texture maps should painted for material development

    • Multiple materials can be developed to refine the look you object takes.

Taloring

  • Using the digital tailoring software marvelous designer I layed out a cloth and seam pattern.

  • Similar to how clothes are worn I started with the undergarments of the character and worked my way out.

  • The geometry that is exported by Marvelous designer is ideal for simulations but not for animation or games.

  • This requires a remeshing process

  • I utilized zbrush zremesher algorithm to generate a better edge flow for the garments I designed.

Texturing

  • I used substance painter to paint the textures for this character

  • It’s important to paint multiple maps for desired rendering effects for both real time engines as well as rendered images.

  • Some key map I use are:

    • The Albedo Map - is the base color input, commonly known as a diffuse map. An albedo map defines the color of diffused light. A Key difference between an albedo map and a traditional diffuse map is the lack of directional light or ambient occlusion

    • The Reflectivity Map - is used to differentiate surface reflection. Black represents no reflection and white total reflection. Gradients of grey will determine the amount of that reflectivity.

    • The Gloss Map - defines the roughness of a surface. A low gloss value means that the surface is rough while a high value means the surface is smooth and shiny.

    • The Normal Map - is an image that stores a direction at each pixel. The red, green, and blue channels of the image are used to control the direction of each pixel's normal. A normal map is commonly used to fake high-resolution details on a low-resolution model.

Materials

  • ​​A key aspect of defining the look of a three dimensional object is the material

  • Materials are an enhancement of texture mapping that allows for objects in 3D modelling packages and video games to simulate different types of real life surfaces.

  • This character requires the development and a variety of materials

  • The skin of the character require a subsurface efect to be defined by the skin shader.

  • In juxtaposition the wrench is a hard dense object that absorbs little light

  • There are fabrics and and leathers the each require a specific approach to get a natural look and “feel”

Look Dev

  • In CG productions, there is always a need to explore potential looks for a scene or object.

  • This allows a director to find the best look for the final product in both story and aesthetics.

  • Look development and lighting have direct relation to each other helping to deliver mood and emotions to the audience

  • Look dev will include experimenting with assets shading tweaking different materials for different parts of an objects get constructed and evaluated under varying lighting conditions.

  • materials can get finaled by the more focused departments such as the Shading or lighting team

Presentation

  • ​Depending on the platform your character  is being designed for the presentation of that character may vary.

  • If the character is being developed for a pre rendered animation or a still image one may want to comp the character using multiple render layers.

    • Separating aspects of a character render into  layers allows an artist to individually control each aspect of the characters final look separately in a compositing software.

      • Albedo

      • Specular

      • Reflection

      • Shadow

      • Ambient occlusion

      • Depth

  • If the character is being developed for real time engine performance the character should be presented in a real-time format for review.

  • This can be achieved in a few ways.

    • Review can be done in a real-time engine such as:

      • Unreal

      • Unity

    • Alternately One can use a real-time web viewer created in :

      • Marmoset tool bag

      • Sketchfab

  • Developing strictly for portfolio purposes has considerations to make as well.

    • For portfolio presentation one may want to consider utilizing both of the aforementioned methods to accommodate for more opportunities.

    • A Keep alive Looping Animation can add that extra wow to the real-time web reviewer or turntable presentation

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