Sogbad’s Design Mentoring Thread of DOOM.

[Sogbad]

This thread is for my design mentoring group and is primarily for the following unlucky people who have expressed an interest;

Armando
GriNGoLoCo
jojo1975
qabas12
SugaCrcl

You should all post your work in this thread, where I can take a look and give you my advice and where the other’s in the group can also take a look and learn from each other. You can post your work as you go along or if you have any specific questions, and of course try to hit the main Deadlines, one of the most important workplace skills is being reliable .

Here we go with the first concept design project. I’m going to keep it as close to the real process used in the game industry, but with the some of the pooh bits taken out .

We are going to do all the projects in the following 3 steps;

Concept, research and idea creation.
Design, idea iteration and concept presentation.
Presentation, illustrating and presenting the final concept.


Project 1 Sci-Fi Weapon.

Step 1, Concept.

Brief.
This weapon if for a science fiction First Person Shooter game, an FPS, it is a player weapon and as such is a very important design piece. A couple of things to keep in mind is the primary view of the weapon will be rear ¾ perspective from the gun holders perspective, and the weapon should have an interesting reload animation if possible.

Setting.
The overall setting, theme and style is similar to the Aliens franchise, specifically the 4th one Alien Resurrection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_%28film_series%29

Weapon.
Half way through the game the player has to go to a penal colony, this penal colony is set on a harsh desert island surrounded by acid seas, the only structure’s on the island are for the colony administration and off limits to the inmates. As the player explores the level he will come across the Riot Gun used by the guards to control the inmates. The Riot Gun is intentionally designed to look as intimidating as possible, the nastier the better. The Riot Gun has 2 modes of firing, the primary mode shoots a wide short range blast designed to kill and incapacitate many targets, the secondary mode of firing is a non lethal electric blast used to render people unconscious within a 5m arc. The Riot Gun also has a probe that sticks out the front of the gun and is a ‘cattle’ prod for inmate management.

Deliverable.
Time, 7 days to delivery, you should post your work by 17th November, you should indicate which of your concepts you think are the strongest and which one you want to move forward with. You can deliver your concepts in whatever format you desire as long as it illustrates the concepts sufficiently.






What to do and where to begin???.

So how do you begin a task like this? First step is to do some research especially if you haven’t been given any to start with which is an unfortunately common experience. After re-reading the brief and keeping the requirements in mind start gathering references, start with the easy stuff with the most relevance in this case it would be looking for shogun’s, assault guns and riot guns, but also expand the search into other areas because this can bring new ideas and fresh thinking into your designs, for example the brief calls for a very intimidating look you might want to look at other things that have intimidating looks, power tools, medieval torture implements, insects, just keep an open mind.

Below is an example of what I would expect to be delivered, this example took under a day, and should have included many more sketch’s but as it was for a personal project I could afford to come up with fewer ideas…

My brief was to design the standard military rifle for a game set in the future, the game as a unique neo Victorian aesthetic, so I started out gathering my references in 3 category’s, real world rifles, sci-fi rifles and because of the neo Victorian influence I looked at old muskets and rifles.








With my reference search complete I combine and condense my images into the core reference sheets which I refer back to if I run out of ideas or struggling to detail out design. So having already narrowed my scope before getting to paper I start sketching ideas out, at this stage it’s not important to nail a good design it’s about getting as many ideas down as possible, worry about if there any good later.



After sketching the ideas down and with the time up or inspiration depleted it’s time to look at what you came up with, take a look at the designs see if any jump out at you, see if certain elements feel good and might work better with elements from other sketches, with this example I circled all the elements I liked in pink and then started to flesh these out a little more, now I have 3 distinct concepts that I’m happy with and I can present them as my Concepts ready for review.



And now I'm ready for stage 2.

[jojo1975]

ok research started... I don' like guns but oh well I hope it's oly for virtual shooting
so since it will be a hard week for ma at work I've decided to make everything during this weekend before gettig to work again. I'm sorry for the quality of the scans during next week I hope I will have a scanner. I've used just pencil and paper. I'm quite satisfied with the quality of the detail and I had fun starting overdetailing everything (and I also had to stop myself). I've found pleny of references and I tryed to do a alienish modern stile. There's the drawing and I hope to have a scanner soon
Giorgio

[SugaCrcl]

Sharpie pen and paper. I did research on smaller sub machine guns and assault rifles. I figure if the gun were used for riot control, then the shooter would need something light and powerful. I also looked at paintball guns, mountain bike frames and super soakers because they both appeal to me in shape and design. I also like the single-shaped futuristic rifles that I guess are coming out soon. Here's what I got so far....im still on it.







Now I'm going to see which component(s) of these guns will fit into the concept requirements and come up with something better.

[Sogbad]

Thanks very much for posting, good to see your both up and running and I hope your enjoying it so far.

One thing that I always do that helps me be quicker and produce more usable or functional designs is to make sure I’m keeping everything to a good scale, the easiest way to do this is by working over a template, either a drawing that is to scale or if your pushed for time and haven’t got that far use a photograph of a similar subject. Here’s a gif of the rifle I used to draw over to make sure I was keeping things in scale. You can see on this one how I kept the trigger and other parts that interact with the hand close to the reference as I know that it will all work once it's picked up.



Silhouette’s are also very important and can be a nice design tool as they help you concentrate on the overall form and proportion without getting stuck on small surface details, they can also help if you get stuck with line art, just get a big fat implement and work out the silhouette, thankfully they are easier to do than spell



Another easy way to help line work ‘read’ better is to use thick and thin lines as they help to give depth and focus. The thickest line is used for the outline or shadow lines, a medium line is used for any line that, if an imaginary ant walked over it would disappear, and the thin line is used for surface detail which, if said imaginary ant again walked over it would continue to be visible.

[qabas12]

Well It looks like I'm the last to post...... Anyway, I kinda went a bit simple on these concepts, because a combination of ISP problems and portfolio preparation work, i had the least amount of time... though i doubt I would have gotten any more detailed (I dont think in details ) Well enough of my excuses, on to the concepts.


This one is a sort of warm-up to get me acquainted with rifles, that i decided to include because I kinda liked the handle piece.


This weapon was intended for dual-wielding, and melee combat, hence the electric wire around the front. I pretty much decided to make a gun that a guard would whack the crap out of someone a sweeping motion.


After a while i decided to toy around with the idea of battery cores and came up with the next 2

the first a shotgun w/ pumping action

and the second is more of a rifle, with overcharge action



I'm happy with these, what say you, Sogbad?

[jojo1975]

hello Sogbad, thanks for the reply and very informative tricks
I will try to dins a scanner and tweak a bit the concepts still now made

[armando]

The main purpose of this post is just to show that I am working on the assignment. I also have one question: Do you want us to show our references?

I spent yesterday getting my ref. I looked at:
*Guns: from the Alien franchise; riot guns; shotguns; rocket launchers
*tasers and prods
*torcher devices
*bug's pedipalps
*power tools; belt drives; engines
*axes
*wiring; early twentieth century electrical equipment

I also familiarized myself with the parts of guns, and did a few studies which I won't show, to take stock of design elements that I could then modify. I'm still in the brainstorming phase, and wasn't planning on showing anyone these drawings, hence they're terrible.
I'm trying to think of ways to get parts of the gun to move: a twisting prod/drill, an exposed belt drive or engine generator thing. Two of the most intimidating/scary tools I can think of are dental drills and chainsaws, it's mostly because of their moving parts and the sound they make. Exposed wires, needles and barbs, all tend to look dangerous.

[armando]

Well It looks like I'm the last to post......

You realize there are 5 of us?

[Sogbad]

Good evening, glad to see things are progressing

quabas12, ah the age old battle of portfolio goodness . I won’t give a full critique until after the presentation but so far I think number 2 and 3 are the ones that have the most potential, but don’t forget to check the proportions of the designs, these weapons are going to be held by a human so you need to make sure that the hand, arm and trigger dimensions are going to work. There’s nothing worse than finding out your lovingly crafted design has to be scrapped or butchered because it won’t work.

As for thinking in details as long as you work from big to small it usually takes care of itself, get happy with the overall form, proportions and function then start working out the details.

armando, no you don’t have to show the references, and it’s good to see your thoughts so far, sometimes people forget how useful rationalizing can be, if you just design visually you can end up with unconvincing designs especially with Industrial type concepts.

Also thanks for posting the rough sketches, you can work out a lot of things with drawings that you wouldn’t want people to see, when I’m working on personal projects where I don’t have to show people what I’m doing I have the most appalling thumbnails, but of course you have to know your audience, if I’m showing ideas to others I’ll spend more time on the illustration, and if I’m presenting to management then I’ll probably spend more time making it look polished than designing .


Deliverable. Again the deadline for this first concept stage is the 17th, you can of course finish before if you want to. For the deadline you should present your strongest concepts with a brief description of function/form or anything else that you think is important to get across about the design.

One very important thing, we were taught this in school, I found it to be true in the professional environment, and I still sometimes forget, but don’t, DON’T, EVER present concepts that you don’t like or don’t think are good enough, even if you think you need to pad out the numbers of designs to present, because without fail the client/management/audience will pick that ONE!

And you’ll cry

[qabas12]

lol that's a good... I hope i dont start crying....... anyway how do you get to the fine detail on the weapon?

[qabas12]

You realize there are 5 of us?

ooooooo thats 3 more than I thought.....lmao I need more sleep

[Sogbad]

qabas12 “anyway how do you get to the fine detail on the weapon?”

Well we shall be doing that in the next step the design phase so I’ll go more into it then, there’s 2 main approaches, aesthetically or functionally. Aesthetically just start adding lines and forms, colors and patterns and see what compliments the overall design. Functionally, just look at your real world reference or really start to think of the function of the subject, below is a really quick example of using reference to quickly ‘steal’ functional elements that you use to add relevant detail.



But we’ll be getting into this more with the next step, the design stage.

And just to give you all a better idea of a real world equivalent you would probably churn out anywhere from 80-200 of the type of designs we’ve done so far in a day.

[SugaCrcl]

And just to give you all a better idea of a real world equivalent you would probably churn out anywhere from 80-200 of the type of designs we’ve done so far in a day.

--Sogbad

You mean individually it takes that amount of concept sketches to create a gun for a game? I think that makes sense considering you have to count for feedback from your fellow concept artists, the art director, and other folks in charge of the project.

I tried out the silhouette techinque on four guns that I liked the most. I'm keeping it simple for this project. I'm sticking to the smaller sub-machine gun design. I saw a picture of an 1800-era steam locomotive, and came up with another gun design to resemble that. I also added some vents to three of the guns. I figure the bulky guns would need some vents for cooling.

[qabas12]

Hey Sugacrcl where's the detail? did you get past the shilloette yet?

[SugaCrcl]

No, not yet, qabas12. The silhouette helped me out in creating those guns. I was concerned about details early on. After reading Sogbad's post about silhouettes, I figured worrying about details before I had a shape of a gun would take up too much time; do the shape first. I reckon I will be on the detailing tonight after work. Detailing is going to be hard for me though, I'll have to get more reference materials.

[qabas12]

yeah, detailing was a problem for my too (and still is), but I stuck with it for a couple hours and used some of sogbad' reference sheet . also what probably helped me was the use of themes, like battery-operated, pump-action required, or charge- action availible, alien-based, human-based... it might prove useful when we get to the animating stage.

[Sogbad]

SugaCrcl "You mean individually it takes that amount of concept sketches to create a gun for a game?"

For a First Person Shooter game the gun is going to be on screen nearly all the time and is pretty much all that the player sees of his character. This makes the gun design as important as a main character design in a Third Person Game. As for the 80-200 quick concept sketch’s that’s just the start, the more ideas you have the more likely it is to ‘find’ a good design. Of course I only did 12 on my personal project so perhaps I should shut up about that


As for details, when you are doing the initial concept designs you only need enough details to give a loose flavor as there’s no point spending time on an idea that may well end up on the cutting room floor. The next stage is where the hard work comes in, once the basic concept has been chosen you have to refine the design, add details, make sure the design works, and of course make sure it still looks cool. Of course one person’s cool is another persons poop

[SugaCrcl]

As for the 80-200 quick concept sketch’s that’s just the start, the more ideas you have the more likely it is to ‘find’ a good design.--Sogbad

If I were doing concept art full-time, I think I would hit the 200 mark for gun designs. I did some detailing on two guns designs I liked the most. The detailing part was difficult, but I had enough reference to get me by. I broke down the detailing to three parts: the handle, the reloading mechanism, and the gun nozzle. After that, detailing got a little easier. I have to keep in mind how the game character will reload these things. Would that part involve storyboarding?

The vents on the top of the below. I imagined it to be a vacuum, where it would suck up particles for energy. I'm still working on that concept.




Here is my second gun concept. I thought of using duracell-like batteries for ammo.

[SugaCrcl]

Ok here are the guns that I have designed and liked the most. The guns are all lightweight and easy to move around with in extreme situations. Personally, I would not want to carry a gun that looks heavy. I tried to keep it simple and appealing. Can't wait to hear some CC.

[Sogbad]

17th November DELIVERY DAY

Today’s the first deliverable, please post up your final concepts for Step 1, the Concept phase. Once these are posted I’ll take a look and give you feedback on Sunday and post the next step, Step 2 Design, with all the guidelines and information needed to complete it by the 25th November.

To complete Step 1 you should post your final concepts, just your strongest, in a fresh post and cleaned up as much as possible with a small written description explaining the design, how it functions, why it looks that way, and thing that you need to help sell the concept.



I look forward to seeing your final posts and getting the feedback to you, then on to Step 2

SugaCrcl "I have to keep in mind how the game character will reload these things. Would that part involve storyboarding?"

Explaining how the weapon is reloaded could be done with storyboards or with a diagram.

[SugaCrcl]

Here are my guns with descriptions of their components.

[armando]

I thought the folding handle would provide an interesting reload animation.
I tried to keep the looks similar to designs from the Alien franchise, and so used two of the guns as templates for these, as you demonstrated in the earlier post.

Both designs have a belt drive which is there primarily for it's movement, I also think the prod would be vibrating while it's on, this would lead to a gritty intimidating sound while it was active.




This design is derived a little more from a chainsaw. I thought the wires around the prod and the little needles contributed to it's uglyness.

[GriNGo]

Heya, sorry for not posting before... kinda had a hard job week. Here's my stuff.. I'm posting my initial concepts and then my finals. An explanation on my initial designs... i kinda based the designs on abstracts shapes in photoshop, and worked from there. Since I first read the brief I decided that I would try to deviate myself from the traditional weapon designs people are used to seeing. I wanted them to feel alien, abstract, but without loosing the functionality. Form follows function is a design motto that has been taught to me over the years of studying graphic design. I'm also an avid gamer, and kinda used to seeing lots of weapons, so from my gaming experience I got and added the details I felt necessary to the blobs to make them feel more as the weapon brief described. I also tried to relate my designs to organic creatures, as you can note by some of the concepts names. In the end I stook with the 3 finals there attached.

[qabas12]

aaaaaaawesome, dude. yo gringoloco you've officially inspired me. At first I didn't think we could use alien concepts, but noww....

But, back on topic, I need help cleaning up my sketch lines in PS CS3. Anyone have any advice?

[jojo1975]

gringo loco is a real pro.. very inspiring.. can you please share some tips from you techniques which brush did you use it's photoshop or traditional techniques.. ?
BTW there's my update








One is a eal rifle and the other one are more heavy gun (similar to the one that used Ripley in Alien)

[SugaCrcl]

gringoloco - i like the rhino and squid designs. it would be fun to stab villians with the prod device you have designed. way to go at pushing the envelope here. i cant see how i could hold the fusion slither though.

qabas - cleanup? i just trace over my rough on paper using a good pen to get a fine line. then i scan mine in photoshop. experiment is what im always told by folks.

[armando]

Gringo: Gotta be honest: I don't get them, they look more like vehicles to me.

[qabas12]

gringoloco - i like the rhino and squid designs. it would be fun to stab villians with the prod device you have designed. way to go at pushing the envelope here. i cant see how i could hold the fusion slither though.

qabas - cleanup? i just trace over my rough on paper using a good pen to get a fine line. then i scan mine in photoshop. experiment is what im always told by folks.

thanks dude I was getting desperate...

O and JoJo, I dont see how you'd use the "spear" point on your first gun concept, Its a bit short.

[Sogbad]

Hello everyone, good to see the postings, looks like some great work, I'm rushing to get something finished, but I will be posting tonight

[GriNGo]

qabas12 - thanks man!
jojo1975 - it's all digital sketching, using Photoshop. I just made a custom brush and started doodling and stuff, trying to come up with interesting shapes.
SugaCrcl - thanks! about the weapons, well the fusion slither and the squid were designed to be a part of your arm, sort of like a robotic attachment to your body. Think of them more as a hand than a standard weapon. The Rhino is supposed to be a hightech/alien/futuristic shotgun of some sorts.
armando now that I see them, maybe you are right! but don't most sci-fi hitech futuristic weapons look like space ships of some sorts? But I think you have a point. Maybe I need to make the standard cliche weapon features/parts more noticeable and/or recognizable
Sogbad Can't wait to see what you have to say about all of our designs.