Game Art - Project 1: Character Design and World Creation

25.09.2024 - 27.11.2024 / Week 01 - Week 10
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Game Art / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Project 01 - Character Design and World Creation

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INSTRUCTIONS

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PRACTICAL

For Project 1, we had to come up with our proposal for what we planned to do for Game Art, along with worldbuilding for the character we choose to make. I started off by coming up with a mood board for what I could do for this module.

My two main ideas for what I wanted to do was to either bring the character Testament from the video game Guilty Gear Strive into Fortnite, or to take the Marvel comics character Darkhawk and bring him into Marvel Rivals. I presented both ideas to my lecturer and he said that either would be alright for me to do. I ended up deciding to do Darkhawk for Marvel Rivals since I was obsessed with the game at the time. For most of the semester however, I had no access to the game due to it being in the open beta which had just ended so I had to rely on videos, online articles and personal memory to do this.

After studying and researching the character, I compiled all of my research into my proposal slide and presented it do my lecturer. Because the game had three classes (DPS, Tank, Support), I decided I would focus on Darkhawk since I had more ideas for him but I would try and come up with stuff for Death's Head (Tank) and Brother Voodoo (Support), though those ideas didn't come to fruition as I dedicated my time to Darkhawk.

Figure 1.1: First Sketch

After deciding to do Darkhawk, I started off by creating my first sketch of his front and back view. I decided to use Spiderman's character model as a reference for my outline as he has the closest bodily proportions to my character so I could use him as my framework since the anatomy of Marvel Rivals is quite varied for each character. At first I gave him his finger clawed gloves, knee pads and more muscular exosuit as well as some sharper points on his boots.

I also decided to go for his triangular chest piece rather than just the shoulder pads as I wanted to give him more armor which a lot of Marvel Rival designs have done, such as with Captain America.

Figure 1.2: Revised Design

After getting some feedback, I updated his gauntlets so they would be more practical and removed the fingered claws as they looked terrible.

Figure 1.3: Claws and Helmet Designs

I started experimenting on how his helmet and claws could look like. I decided to just stick with the wolverine style claws as he uses them more often in the comics. As for the helmets, I based the top one off of his 2021 comic appearance and the bottom one is my own attempt at coming up with a design based off of his 2017 design.

Figure 1.4: Colored Design

With the main parts done, I finally started to colour him in using his original colour palette which consisted of dark blues, silver and pink.

Figure 1.5: Wing Design

With the back also designed and coloured in, I decided to draw his wings. I had a choice of two options when it came to his wings, I could either go the classic route and draw his bladed wings or I could do the modern route and use his energy wings. I decided to go for his classic look as that's what fans of this character would have wanted, the energy wings could be present in an alternate skin since Marvel Rivals isn't afraid of altering the character's designs heavily for alternate skins.

Figure 1.7: Updated Original Design

I decided to go back and slightly tweak the base design to remove elements that I didn't like, such as his knee pads which the character has never had.

Figure 1.8: Alternate Skin

Because we needed to have alternate skins for the character, I decided to create a skin that looked a lot closer to his original comic design, with the connected belt and triangular shoulder pads. I also changed the helmet to look more like the original.

Figure 1.9: Second Alternate Skin

This was the hardest part of this process, which was coming up with another alternate skin as Darkhawk seldom appears in comics and the solo comics that he's had have only lasted a few issues before ending. His other designs weren't that different from one another so I had to dig deep to find a new design. In the end I managed to find another skin that I could give him, which was to recreate the armor worn by Shir Ydrn Talonis, a character who appeared for less than five issues before dying. Because of how little he appeared, I had to design his outfit on my own going off of comic panels that I had full body shots of him which were few in number. His overall design is a lot more sleek with more arrow motifs and an aquatic look.

Figure 1.10: Alternate Colour Palettes.

With all three designs done, I started experimenting with alternate colour palettes that are based off of the three suits that I chose to draw. The 2021 colours sported a black, silver and red palette while the Shir Ydrn Talonis (A.K.A Talon) palette featured primarily blue and silver.

Figure 1.11: Alternate Skins

With the nine variations done, I compiled the three important ones and put them together just to showcase the different armors. 

Figure 2.1: Splash Art Outline

One artwork that I started for this module but never finished due to my inexperience with proper colouring and rendering was a splash art of my character based off of one of his comic covers. I took the original cover and redrew it using my Rivals design.

Figure 2.2: Coloured Splash Art

This was the furthest I got with this artwork before I never finished it. I wanted to but considering that Marvel Rivals doesn't have much splash art besides the MVP screens, I scrapped the idea entirely which is sad because it would have looked cool had I completed it.

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REFLECTION

I really enjoyed this project, I'm quite glad we're able to choose any game we wanted so long as it was 3D which was great as I felt very limited when it came to Character Design which forced us to only do Genshin Impact. This class felt like an extended version of that class which was interesting. I found the overall process very fun and interesting to do as getting to design a character that most people wouldn't even know existed was a new experience for me as it provided me with a separate feeling than if it were an entirely original character that I came up with. Having pre-existing data of the character made this overall process a lot more bearable as I had a lot of sources that I could draw inspiration from.