Continuation of Pressure Redesign & Start on cinematography and animation

The direction I wanted to go with my project has definitely been set as of term 4, but during term 3 I was still lost. I still only really worked modelling the character from Pressure, however this is where I really wanted to get into story telling and writing.

Term 3

While I did encounter burnout from working on the hand and arm, my motivation was renewed at TAFE where I would work on the project during breaks or after I’d finished my work. Ironically I made more progress in a few weeks at TAFE than I did during the whole of term 2.

Working on the arm was a lot of fun. The elbow was a big challenge though as I had to make it realistic but not look weak or unnatural. The original design was just a simple hinge and made the arm look too empty. To fix this I added an elbow bar, cowls to the end of each arm and plates to the sides of the elbow. I am extremely happy with the result as it looks technical and most importantly, it looks cool.

The hand was the first to be finished. I thought of a different design for the fingers which lead to me completely redoing all of the fingers. I am very happy with the result as it still has some borrowed design elements from the arm, but it is done in a way that looks unique and breaks up the design nicely.

Once the arm was done I started working on the torso. Before I could create the torso however I had to figure out how the shoulder was going to work. The different degrees of rotation made it difficult to figure out a realistic design for the shoulder. I eventually managed to make something work which was then refined to the current shoulder design.

The torso was annoying more than anything to figure out. I originally planned for there to be more space in between the internal elements of the chest but once I started putting it all together it quickly became cramped. I like this design though, it looks very mechanical and the density gives off a cool aesthetic that fits the overall design, especially the head.

After the torso was completed, my next course of action was figuring out what to do for the head, as that would help shape the rest of the design. In the end I am very proud of the design, it takes a lot of inspiration from the original endo-skeleton while also having it’s own unique design. The eyes were a particular feature that I really wanted to work on as I had the idea for the eyes to be made of a type of plastic that would allow light through for a fun challenge, and in the end I think they turned out great.

Overall I am very excited for what comes next in the process. I already have quite a few ideas for what to do with the hips and legs, however they are proving quite annoying to sort out. Due to me designing the endo-skelton first, this has also lead to lots of issues relating to what the final design will look like with the suit. So far though I am having lots of fun just modelling for the sake of modelling, and the animations of the arms and fingers has given me a lot of inspiration to keep going.