https://hackmd.io/@MKLzYDLARp2xAVEqa7JVzw/rkpQqWlba

## Group Portfolio: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mi4NKDakjWgrGttErXMIeXvyUTjZ-ccnTlF6lKloE3c/edit?usp=sharing
# Co-labs Whimsical Worlds

## Final Reflection at end

## Week 1

The idea that we are currently going with is somewhat of an Avatar like theme with a fantasy alien planet rich in resources and humans coming to plunder it. A pretty simple world premise, that includes things that mainly we want to make for our portfolio.

Obviously in this case the humans are the evil ones, it was just a question of how much do I want to relate that to the design with my early sketches being taken from the Kerberos Saga Panzer Cops, a sci-fi police force that takes inspiration from WW2 german uniforms and weapons to create an menacing evil look. Or do I go with more of a modern future look so that is not too dissimilar to modern forces, this is something I'm still working out, but I'm mainly focusing on designing machine soldiers and vehicles that this force would use and hoping to create a nice art book of sorts, detailing this army and researching in detail how it might work.

## Week 2

To start this week, I sketched out a flame thrower soldier inspired by the flame thrower units of WW2 in the pacific, with a smaller more compact flame thrower more akin to the *US* WW2 design. However, it's a little small and I think I want something a bit more aggressive looking and longer, but still quite sleek. I also messed around with a gas mask face cover with a CBRN style clothing and hood to protect the wearer. Going for more of a Avon M50 look crossed with a PMK. Overall, I really like the overall design and want to develop it further to have a nice selection of different infantry as would be seen in modern infantry types with special forces units and typical rifle men and then weapons that make up that squad.
This was easily the most fun thing I have designed so far, even though it's still realistically military, I still wanted to lean into the sci-fi feel with mechs akin to Titanfall with their more western approach to design and a more utilitarian design, whereas Japanese mechanical design is more form over function with things like Gundam. However, the next one I plan to make is more of a smaller suit for exploration combat and construction and for that I plan to look into Maschinen Krieger, a japanese model kit line that makes strange yet grounded suit designs that should fit nicely into a mechanised infantry role. This mech in particular will be a flame thrower specialist with thermal canons on the fore arms for ranged firepower and wrist mounted nozzles for close quarters combat or foliage removal. The main fuel tanks being stored on the back of the mech for protection.

The head is comprised of 6 Lidar scanners to make for easier terrain navigation, projecting a digital map to the pilot. Mounted in the 2 side "cheeks" of the head are smoke discharger canisters for covering itself or allies. The main power generator is locked just behind the head with 3 battery cores visible on the side of the chest. The cockpit can be entered through the chin from underneath. The lower legs have reactive plating on them to stop high explosive rounds from crippling the mechs legs and can be individually replaced. This will be one of the largest mechs in the setting and thus won't be as plentiful as perhaps the smaller suits. They have been far more customised by their pilots, making the paint schemes varied and different between their squadrons. They will still use the term squadrons, since they are pilots deploying from a ship, which is essentially an space aircraft carrier.
Lastly, I wanted to concept up a transport helicopter, so I started with a side profile of a Black Hawk and started tweaking the shape. I first lengthened the nose to hold more sensory equipment and more streamlined than the original Black Hawk. I kept the side gunner relatively the same as I like the idea of the gunner still leaning out of the heli to get shots off. I changed the landing gear to be more integrated, though I might go with landing struts instead to match the Bell UH 1 Huey feel, as it's an iconic jungle helicopter. I changed the main transport bay doors to be more angular with some ridges, nothing too different. The main change is the 4 jet engines where the intakes and exhausts originally were.

I wanted to set the design apart with the way the heli works. Underneath the door guns are a small set of stabiliser wings and at the back of the tail there will be another set of stabilisers, as when in flight the heli will fold back its rotors, like a Super Stallion helicopter does when in storage and fly just off the jet engines. Then when a lower speed is required for landing, the heli will do a circle around the landing site, putting its rotors out and turning off the jets. Is this practical in any way? No, but it makes for quite a cool sci-fi design and a more memorable helicopter than most. It's still a concept and this was just really a Black Hawk mixed with a Eurocopter tail, but I just wanted a quick design so I just photobashed the 2 aircraft together then drew around them to get a clear idea.

### Conclusion
This week I managed to get my ideas solidly down. I know what I'm going to be making and just keeping it simple with a nice art book of designs. Next week hopefully I can design a tank. I have done a lot of research in that regard and sci-fi tanks can often be a bit over the top.

## week 3

This week I looked into designing some more smaller exo suites for jungle exploration and other tasks. Taking inspiration from Maschinen Krieger and Titanfall. The hard part was figuring out where the pilot's limbs would go as they can't really go round major joints, so I might experiment with more interesting proportions and sizes.

I also looked at nose art to go on the machinery, to make them look more impressive and have more detail and personality. I had a go at quickly sketching out one of the pieces of nose art drawn on the F14 Tomcat military plane with the exaggerated comic style, it's certainly something I want to look into more.

### Conclusion
Next week is presentations, so I aim to try and get everything ready for then so that I'm good to go and hopefully get some more colours on the mechs.

## Week 4
So, this week I presented the groups work which was great to show what we had done and get feedback. I had also made these camo schemes to show off some different looks of the mech. Looking at German Flectarn and Swedish splinter camo. The main bit of feedback was what kind of product would this art be for and I think most likely a film and or a game. I also made this layout which is how I will go about presenting my work for this project from now on. I developed a few different ideas for where I want to take this project. I next want to make some cut away drawing of either an aircraft of my own design or a tank to really get into that mechanical design.

I also started to add colour to my final mech design with a more interesting splinter camo used on the Saab Viggen when it was used to hide from surveillance satellites. It's also worth noting that the camouflage is not mean't to directly hide the vehicle, but also to break up its overall shape so it's harder to tell what parts of it are which. This is a problem I'm starting to face with drawing it as it might make it harder for people to understand, so I'm relying on shadows and highlights. I think once more weathering is applied, it will turn out better.

### Conclusion
This week was great to show off our idea and also to give me a better idea of what I'm going to do. The next step now is to work on the mech, get that all coloured in and then finalise the smaller exo suit designs and settle on a design for the standard infantry and then I can work on doing a cut away as I think that would be a really unique piece of work.

## Week 5
Unfortunately, I had some problems with Photoshop not working, due to a bug in the new update which I have since rectified and gotten working, but this did mean that I couldn't do as much on the mech as I had wanted to, but hopefully I can make more next week.


To make up for not as much progress on the main mech, I sketched it another exploratory suit, a lot smaller than the previous design. This was reflected in the main hatch being a door on the front with a large protective hatch coming over the top which contains the primary camera system and central eye. It's also armed with a modified HK G11. A real gun that never entered service, but looks so sci-fi, I had to include it somewhere. I really like this sketch and will probably go with it as the primary mass produced mech suit design.

### Conclusion
Not as much stuff this week due to technical difficulties, but I plan to have the mech much closer to completion soon.

## Week 6
This week since the Colabs session was changed, we went down to the Imperial War Museum to look at different weapons and vehicles for inspiration. With a lot of the weapons being old, they were not as useful, but the T55 tank outside was more relevant as it has more of a cold war aesthetic and the rust was great to take as a reference. They also had various gas masks including the S10 which was also good to see for reference.

### Conclusion
In terms of work this week, I've made more progress on the mech, but just applying some more shading. I've been focusing heavily on the main project at the moment as that's getting quite busy, so I'm picking up this project when I can.

## week 7

## week 8


After a long time I finally managed to get some time to finish the Titan. This being my final piece, I wanted to give it a proper amount of time to finish it to the standard I had in mind. I really had to focus on shadows to emphasise the heavy look and size with the shadows cast and to try and add differentiation, despite the camouflage, which I still think looks impressive and certainly adds to that military feel. I'm really happy with how this thing came out, hopefully it shows off my idea for this huge robot in a jungle environment. It's certainly a design that I will take forward in the future.

As we now get closer towards the deadline, this mech was the main thing I wanted to finish, with the rest being supplementary pieces, just there to show off some world building, but I may experiment with just adding some colour to existing pieces, just to add some interest, maybe using photos of some of my own camouflage garments and adding them in Photoshop to add some iterations.

### Conclusion
On the whole I'm just really happy to have this piece done. I underestimated just how difficult a scheme it would be to pull off, but I'm happy I managed to get it finished, now it's just some final touches.

## week 9


I have been really focusing on just getting my last few bits together for this project with some camouflage variants taken from the different camouflage patterns that I personally own myself; this has been a fast and easy way to make quick variants for my character whilst also delving into interesting camouflage patterns.


I also did some photogrammetry work to get a pretty interesting 3d model using my SPH4 helicopter helmet and M10m gas mask. It really creates a Fallout or Metro vibe and certainly fits into the world I have been working on, with some interesting wiring and pipes. It creates an interesting feeling and the drab colour palette of the 2 match nicely to make for quite an effective piece. There are some flaws in the mesh and it wouldn't be something I would put into a game engine, but as an interesting object and a way of presenting a piece of work, I'm quite happy with it and it just adds a nice extra asset to the project.

### Conclusion
Overall, a productive week with a few nice assets being made, more or less just to convey the sense of the project and what I imagine the characters of this world might look like.

## Week 10

This is the final week and I've finished off a few last sketches to flesh out the world.



I focused on colouring in the final version of the exploratory mech and then also drawing up some variants of pilots. Some more close to a real life pilot design and others closer to a Titanfall design, with more equipment for when they are outside of the mech and operating on their own. For this design I took inspiration from old pilot night vision designs with the SPH 4 helicopter helmet and PVS 5 night vision as it makes the wearer look more like a robot with the 2 lenses coming out of the the main housing and still looks surprisingly modern eventhough its from the 1970s. The other version is closer to a normal pilot with night vision goggles that can be folded down and is the next evolution of the PVS5's, as pilots found it difficult to fly with the reduced field of view.

The mech itself is a much more manageable size when compared to the previous mech. It is used for more standard exploration operations, construction jobs or combat roles. Its a versatile platform which is reflected in its paint scheme. This is a more multi role variant and is not painted specifically in camouflage. The cockpit is a 3 part conopy with the lower section folding out for the pilot to climb onto and the top having 2 hatches. One that links with the lower and then an upper shield that comes over the top with a head camera on the front and a sensor block on top. The hands allow the pilot to have fine motor control and so he can pick up enlarged weapons or lift heavy parts for construction.

### Conclusion

I have written up my final reflection for this project and on the whole I'm happy with how it turned out as it makes for a nice collection of concept art that could be used for a game or film.

## Week 11


As the last part of the project me and Juno colaberated on texturing his bug. With his input, I went about texturing so it was ready to go into the scene which was a fun experience to be able to work with a fleshy character instead of hard surface stuff that I typically work on. It came out looking great with the various different colours. The greens and purples really compliment each other and give a much more natural look. For the shell, I used a glossy scratched plastic, then added a red fade to make it look more interesting and to exaggerate the points and add more depth to the raised points with the splashes of red.

## reflective report
Alex Leeming - 21359999

Colabs reflective report

Overall, this project went well. The group worked together well, though the timescale has been a problem with us focusing a lot on the main project. The last few weeks have been the key time when we worked on things together, mainly just simplifying the tasks and sorting who wants to work on environment, creatures, characters and props, just to help flesh out the world as our main goal originally was to make an art book. We didn’t focus primarily on making 2d art as we tried various other methods that other members of the group were more comfortable with, like using 3d which worked well as everyone could get on with whatever they wanted to do. We kept the world fairly open, as it’s a fantasy world after all, so anything could be designed. I mainly focused on the human side of it, which was to be more realistic and grounded in their appearance, looking at games like Titanfall and Halo and other media like Maschinen Krieger and Jin-Roh for reference and then obviously real world influences from various militaries and through various time periods. These gave me a nice clear image of what I wanted to research and the style I wanted to convey.

Throughout my work, I mainly went week by week working on the project on Fridays and chipping away at it. That way, I mainly worked in the earlier weeks, so I was ahead. Then I slowed it down as the main project took priority, then picked it up again in the weeks leading up to submission. This worked well for me as I have still managed to create a decent portfolio of work showing my side of the project. With the main project being a fantasy brief, I really wanted to make something different, and this was my way of doing that and making something quite separate from the main project. I took it as a bit of a plate cleanser enjoying being able to draw mechs and design different sci-fi characters, as that’s the setting I normally work with the most.

Having a go at photogrammetry again was interesting as I’d only done this once previously and on a much smaller scale. Trying to scan a full helmet was quite different for me, but once I finally got everything set up, it wasn’t too hard. I could have gone back in to make the mesh better with taking more photos from different angles to get a better data set, but it works fine and was intended to be looked in a render, rather than a game engine. It was never going to be that kind of asset. The mechs were the thing I enjoyed designing the most as they have the most intricacy, with making them look like they would work correctly and look believable, some being giant hulking mechs and others being smaller Exo suits for exploring the planet and fighting off small to medium creatures. I enjoyed thinking about how these things would work from their deployment systems like ODST’s in Halo, dropping in to provide support or being constructed on the ground and sent out that way.

One of the things that I’d been thinking about but did not get the chance to really delve into, would be the transport vehicles and ships. I’d really wanted to design some cut aways of the more standard fighters, like in some of the aircraft books I was using for reference, but looking into larger ships would have been interesting. I had thought a lot about it with the ships having a larger underbelly to house mechs and transport aircraft that could be released through the air locks underneath and then dropped down to the planets below.
When thinking about the world itself. the story line initially would be something like Avatar, with humans arriving to exploit resources and whilst that persisted, we slowly developed it more to them arriving on this planet to do that, but then start facing resistance from the more fantasy creatures coming out of the portal, almost like a Pacific Rim theme and thus heavier munitions are brought in like the super heavy mech to remove the larger creatures from the area and the reconnaissance teams to hunt down the sources of the creatures and neutralise the portals.

I found researching and working on the camouflage to be particularly interesting, as they are something I have quite the interest in already, so being able to bring that in was great and use some of that finally in a project and show off some in interesting camouflage patterns.

I think all in all we worked well as a team, well those who contributed at least, but we would often talk about what needed doing and what we were working on, so we all knew where we were up to. On the whole, I think it all worked out. I think we just wished we’d had longer, as it’s been hard to work on both projects. Colabs has had to be sidelined some weeks, which is a shame, as I’ve enjoyed this brief much more than Colabs in the past.

## Bibliography

Wright, L (2021) *What is mashinen kriger*?[Online][10-Dec-2023]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtWdVW0DS6I]

Aircraft Military Aircraft

F117A Nighthawk

Donald, D, Gunston, B, Mondey, D, Peacock, L (1981-1989) ‘Stealth Aircraft’ Airplane, (Part 1) p. 20 to 24.

F16 Fighting Falcon

Cook, J, Gunston, B (1981 -1989) “F16 Fighting Falcon’ Airplane, (Part 13) p. 428 to 440.

Tanks

Willey, D. (2017) The Tank Book, The Definitive Visual History of Armoured Vehicles. London: Dorling Kindersley.

Halo

Patenaude, J (2011) Halo – The Essential Visual Guide. London: Dorling Kindersley.

Microsoft Cooperation (2013) Halo 4 – The Essential Visual Guide. London: Dorling Kindersley.

Titanfall

Respawn Entertainment LLC (2016) The Art of Titanfall 2. London: Titan Books