The first step was to start putting sketches on paper and refine the look of each character.
From an initial batch of sketches I chose the one I felt best fit each character's persona. From left to right: the 'Boss' character, the 'Secretary', the 'I.T.' guy, and the 'Sales' character.
Each design got some feedback and refinement. The Sales character, a brawny dullard restrained by office culture, became more boxlike and chesty.
The Secretary character, jaded and overqualified for her position, maintained an hourglass shape with more powerful legs.
The I.T. character became a kind of pear shape, with a more stylized face to accentuate his robotic, awkward nature.
The second round of drawings saw the Boss character become weaker and spindlier.
This was the second round lineup of the characters, much more exaggerated than before.
Further refinements on the Secretary, introducing a case of lordosis.
The Boss character evolved into an Accounting character, still with a self-important and egomaniacal persona.
Further refinement of the Accountant.
After finalizing the sketches, a value illustration further fleshed out the characters.
Coloring over the lineup for possible texturing ideas. Orange for a bad tan = vanity, blue to resemble something cold and robotic, green with envy or to be sick (and tired), red to suggest pent up frustration/energy.
A more monochromatic variation on the themes.
I also did a value illustration of the office environment after tossing around some ideas.
A couple illustrations of 90s-era props to be added to the scene.
After finishing the concepts, it was time to begin the 3D modeling process.
I started by blocking out each character with primitive objects to build their silhouette. This is the Sales character.
The Secretary blockout with primitives.
The I.T. blockout with primitives.
The Accountant blockout with primitives.
After the blockout stage, I carefully modeled and sculpted each character. I did the Sales character within my first semester as a proof-of-concept.
Side and back views of the Sales character.
I then moved on to the other three characters. Here is the Secretary.
Secretary pt. 2
The I.T. character model.
The I.T. character model pt. 2
The Accountant character.
The Accountant character pt. 2
After modeling, the Sales character was textured.
Sales character textures pt. 2
Secretary textures.
I.T. character textures.
Accountant textures.
Laying out the skeleton of the Sales character.
Post-texturing, I made a custom rig for the Sales character. (This was in the first semester. In the second I decided to use the proxy rig to save time)
The skeleton layouts of the other 3 characters.
I used a proxy model with an FK rig for the Secretary, I.T. and Accounting characters in order to save time and send the rig away to be animated.
After the characters were completed, I moved on to the creation of the environment and props.
This was the original layout for the Office based on the value illustration concept.
The left side of the room.
The hallway with the elevator.
The cubicle.
I took the time to create a rig for the office chairs in the scene to accommodate for the difference in size between the characters.
Here are the proxy rigs with their animations imported into the scene.
Now comes the tricky part- tying everything together in Unreal Engine.
I demonstrated the use of skeleton retargeting using the unreal rig to test the weights and dynamics of the character in-engine.
This was the animation blueprint for the Sales character retargeted to the Unreal Rig.
This was the event graph for the pawn used to switch between each character view in the final executable.
I made a simple fake UI in Illustrator and added it as an overlay in UE4's widget designer.
The popups for the UI that show the bio and stats of each character.
Some props getting added in.
This was the lighting setup for the scene.
This is video of me fooling around with the Sales character to test his skin weights and dynamics on his tie.
Here are some of the final stills I snapped in case the video didn't work!
The Accountant and Secretary waiting out the clock.
The Secretary character.
The I.T. guy slapping away at his keyboard.
The Sales character pecking out single characters carefully.
Still of the I.T. and Sales characters together.
The entire cast in position!
This was the final result captured on video.
This project was used for my Thesis at Rochester Institute of Technology and was a great learning experience in the creation of characters for real-time engines, in this case Unreal Engine 4. I had two semesters to plan, design, create and implement these 4 characters along with their environment which was not an easy task! The images here display the process from concepts to final product- a faux "character select" screen that I navigated as an executable file during my final presentation. Be sure to check out the captions for additional information!
The animations in this project were done by Robert Brewster, whose 2D animation you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/user/BrewsterToons