Some basic thumbnails for environments in the previsual development.  The plan for the game progression is NIMH labs > NIMH Labs duct work > Forest > Derelict Truck > Forest > Fitzgibbon Farm > Establish the Rose Bush Colony. 

These were a mix of Alchemy, Photoshop and traditional copic marker on graphics paper.

The lower left thumbnail actually shows the theoretical grating that the rats woudl exit out into the forest from.  This is the door that would have been impassible were it not for the help and survival of Mr. Ages and Johnathan.

The Derelict Toy Truck with the dead toymaker inside.  This is what provides the rats with their rat-sized tools and would be a beginning equipment pool and skills/learning level up station for the rats as they discovered some books here to read.

I need to study more farm houses and farm equipment.  Neither of these really takes into account barn structures.  But they do start considering the location of the rose bush on the front lawn of the property as well as showing off the tiller that later is important to Mrs. Frisby.

So I'll need to start converting these to color studies and tightening up the forms and lighting and propulation. 

The paintovers of the chosen silhouettes are through a second pass, meaning they're presentable for sharing here on the blog.  There's some tweaking, I think, that could still be done here or there with cast shadows.  Critiques are welcome,  in the interim before a 3rd pass, while I shift into environment thumbnails. 

All of these were painted in Photoshop over top of the Alchemy silhouettes.  The longest part was the base fur painting, which I then cloned across in each case in order to streamline and save production time.   Materials and colours were easily swapped out using the alt+click to constrain layers to the mask of the main layer.

Modus is moving along nicely.  My position as a consultant to the project development is winding down along with my final days of my degree here at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and 7th Level Studios.  Supposedly next quarter will be the last 11 weeks of development for the demo, so I'll have to keep in touch and  keep an  eye on the final stages and product.  In the meantime, here's some more of what I've been up to.

Lets start it off with the loose Demo - Experience Storyboards:

Much of the rest of the concept team wasn't comfortable with vehicles, so I took on the scrum tasks of the general Metropolitan Police cars and the Armed Response/Detective car that woudl be specialized to the main character, Peter Morris.  Silhouettes went through two phases, and then turn-arounds with colour.  The most exciting aspect was that Ben Mathis, a well known industry freelancer of this website, was visiting to give a presentation and stayed for the Studio Class afterwards.  He came over and gave some feedback and critique on the general vehicle, suggesting the incorporation of the foot-divot in the rear wheel hood/well and the defined running board. 

Using Alchemy & Photoshop

Using Alchemy & Photoshop

The magic of Photoshop

Utilizing Photoshop.  This one had the helpful critique by Ben Mathis.  He even recognized it as a retro-futuristic smart car inspired silhouette~

The Logo needs a little love still, but that's back burner to getting the content done.  This is a personal project for pre-pre-portfolio (only I've already had pre-port and am in portfolio now).  A prequel Visual Development Artbook to the 1982 animated film directed by Don Bluth, The Secret of NIMH, based on  Robert C. O'Brien's 1971 children's novel "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH".

The prequel will focus on the escape and founding of the society of rats in Rose Bush while introducing the political intrigue and growth of polarization of power between the leaders: Nicodemus, Jenner, Justin, Mr. Ages and Johnathan.

The plan is to format it something similar to what Scott Robertson guided his students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California,  Khang Le, Mike Yamada, and Felix Yoon to do in their "The Skillful Huntsman."  Granted, there were three students there and they had 14 weeks to produce really amazing work.  I'll have been just me, and essentially 8 weeks to have enough time to then try to throw it together to some sort of 'book'.  But goals are good and this is something I can work on and refine even past graduation.

Mr. Ages, one of the two surviving mice.

Jenner, the eventual villain of the movie.  He has to appear aggressive and more tending towards violence, but at this point he is still very much part of the brotherhood and group effort.

I started out with character silhouettes, utilizing Alchemy because it really forces straight up plowing forward-there's no undo.  There's not really any layers.  What will be evident, is that at first I was spending (wasting?) a lot of time redrawing the silhouette for each outfit design.  In some cases that would be very helpful, but the basic character shapes for this project are predetermined to the Bluth property/designs.  They have to be recognizable.  So one silhouette and a lot of outfit designs was really what I needed.   Then I discovered the 'Load Background Image' in Alchemy....and felt like a total noodle.  So later design sheets have standardized main silhouettes with focus on the outfit and breaking of the silhouette.  

 

Johnathan Frisby, the other of the two mice that survived.  He's supposed to look inquisitive and friendly.  Throughout the book "The Rats Of NIMH", the mice prove themselves the most generous and heroic of characters compared to the somewhat isolationist and (some might argue) facist practices of the Rats.  Additionally, Johnathan dies later in the story, so it is important that he be instantly readable and relatable- able to be enjoyed and understood by a player.

Justin, eventual captain of the guard.  Some military elements need to show through, as do his sense of honor and his youth this early on.

Nicodemus, the leader of the Rats.

During the pre-production and scripting phases of the Secret of NIMH, Don Bluth and his fellows encountered the problem inherent with the Shapeshifter as a Mentor of the Hero’s Journey – they know everything.

A  character who has all the answers destroys the tension in a plot or the sense of uncertainty.
The solution they found the solution to this in their voice actor, Derek Jacobi.  He focused his readings on Nicodemus’ time in the labs.  It drew the focus of the character’s on screen time to the mystery of who he was rather than all the answers he could provide – therefore providing a mirror and possible foil or foreshadowing to Brisby’s own trials of self discovery and growth of courage.

(Don Bluth’s The Art of Animation, p.34 May 2005)

For my own purposes this approach to the character is important to know as the prequel will start with the escape from NIMH itself.   While still a leader, Nicodemus is no longer a ‘mentor’ character, but is at the beginning of his own journey.  This will need to be reflected in the concepts – he’s in his prime, he’s intellect and wisdom without worldly experience, and therefore he is fallible.  

A combination look at some of the pre-production designs from when we were ramping down on DGPX and stull trying to hammer out the story and theme elements of Modus, as well as the beginning of style examples, then character and NPC designs. 

I delved into Alchemy this week, having watched a classmate's lightning presentation on how it works last quarter.  Its a fun little program.  I absolutely see how this could be useful for really quickly just throwing down some silhouettes, rough ideas, or sketches digitally.  It felt like a digital version of monotone marker studies.

About 3 minutes in Alchemy, using the shape tool.  I need to work on steadying my hand for straight lines.  Still, a lot of fun to work within the program.  This is something like a command station or communications center, centralized computing stations and monitors surrounded by an open radial walkway for clear foot traffic from station to station.  The upper 'lights' are meant to be more like sci-fi interface projectors.  Lights in that quantity that were lights would blind some poor technician if they were trying sitting staring at a screen as it was.

I was elected the new Concept Team Lead for the newlast quarter.  As an added bonus, the new project had begun, leaving DGPX behind and moving on to a retro-near-future murder mystery piece.   Being the outset quarter of the 4 that it will remain in development for a while even beyond the time where I will be enrolled or consulting on it.   

My team had a fair number of people, with 4 working under me.  They'd all had a lot of character work in their portfolios, so Id assigned them mostly prop design sheets to cover the requirements they'll need for graduation.  I picked up the extra jobs, such as logo design, secondary and tertiary character design, and modular environment planning and conceptual paint ups. 

So work for this project will be ongoing, and cover quite a few updates to the blog, I don't doubt.

Environment III has two of the environment paints I took on to start establishing the feel of Raven Row itself.
 

A whole slew of figure drawing, various media and length of sittings and studies that I'll try to label appropriately.  I have to say, halftone paper with charcoal and two-tone conte has to be my favorite.  Being able to differentiate light as warm or cool, or direct and rim lighting, thanks to the white and sanguine was fantastic.

About 8 hours interior concept for an English Pub in a fictional section of London called Raven Row.  The pub is to be called the Lock, Stock & Barrel.  While looking at references it seems there should be some in wall shelves somewhere with books that no one ever touches, and I hear some pubs have different wallpaper on every faced wall. I should go back and fix the perpective on the bar itself, it looks to gain volume/inappropriate angle on the flip board for where the Boniface would exit and enter on the left side.  I want to add one a foot rail around the bottom of the bar as well.

About 16 hours exterior concept for a fictional section of London called Raven Row.  I added a default photoshop filter to accentuate the black interior and exterior contour lines to simulate the 'Borderlands' like shading effect that concept team was shooting for with the demo.
This was also put together to exemplar modular assets for a brick building set and how to combine them to make unique but family similar buildings.   

 

Photoshop, trying to establish a really rough visual of a desert civilization that was built around the ruins of a caryatid gate to the realm of dead gods. I wanted to emphasize the organic curves of the statuary built by the gods, which seem to defy human ideas of weight, mass and size compared to the 'majesty' of human architecture that is dwarfed beside it.