Creature Animation Review

The creatures will have six limbs, not including the tail. The two closest to its head will operate primarily like arms and be used for attacking while the hind four will be used to scurry around the station. It will be able to raise its head to approximately 8’, or keep it low to the ground. This variety should add tension as the creatures is able to raise its head to spot the player, or remain low and out of sight as it searches.  It was modeled in Modo with an emphasis on modelling for animation. Edge-flow allowed for proper deformation in all six extremities as well as the two torsos. Revisions had to be made to shorten the back section of the monster in order to work with the pathfinding programming. This ended up helping to reduce polycount which was another issue that arose during development.

For future work, creating character sets to allow for all animation to be brought into a single file will be considered from the start. I was unaware of this technique until the issue of having multiple animation files arose at the. There are other ways around it but they were not compatible with the programming structure in place.

Creature Modelling Progress

This is the progress towards the creature model so far, Some issues that have been encountered include the polycount with which I was a bit to liberal, and the potential need for the model to be encompassed within an upright capsule in order to function correctly within once of the navigation softwares. Oh, and it doesn't have a head yet, but that is the most straightforward of these issues. All things considered, I'm glad that this work was but in early to allow for these revisions and considerations.

And Then There Were Monsters...

here are some of the iterations that I came up with when brainstorming ideas for the monster. As they were drawn, conversations on anatomic believability, ease of movement or animation, and creepiness arose. The final orthographics will be posted soon and resemble the last picture the most.  The motivation came from a combination of the two monster concepts that were submitted with our five pager (in an earlier post). The slug/spider looking one captured the movement of slipping around that was favorable. While the other, more humanoid, one was going to fit within the environment better and be able to see the player more easily.

Cover of GDD

An initial design for the cover of out GDD, it will most likely be cropped to isolate the hand before being included in the document.

Creature Concepts

Some initial concept work for the Creature aboard the station. The humanoid one in the lower left is going to be developed further. The other one (with a front view at the bottom and a side view at the top) is sort of a cross between a spider and a slug. It was created with the idea of being able to move up the walls and onto the ceiling as well as being low to the ground and hard to spot. However programming the creature to behave as desired while moving from surface to surface is out of scope for the current project. The humanoid character is easier to program and will provide for more advanced animation.