Objective
Design, concept, and develop a "nomad" character who can navigate floating islands in the abyss, to be implemented in a game project. Inspired by Project Nomads and Aloft.
Results
A functional game llama! Complete with fur cards, blendshape expressions, a mechanical jetpack rig, and over 50 animations that are used in-game.
A trailer for the prototype version of Abyss.
With over 50 animations, I heavily utilized animation blending to make gameplay around the Renegade feel smooth and reactive.
Demonstration of expressions, which utilize a mix of blendshapes (for facial + goggle deformation) and skeletal (for ear + goggle placement) animation. Various stimuli during gameplay cause the Renegade to emote.
Still of the Renegade inside Godot Engine.
Wireframe of Renegade in Blender. Since the character is intended for games, I minimized topology, and instead leaned heavily into textures. Fur cards were chosen due to their simplicity with geometry nodes.
Concepts
I already had a basic idea of the character based on previous explorations, then chose to redesign them with a stricter, more angular theme to match the hostile environment.
Extreme poses to determine the character's range of motion.
Initial concepts. I make heavy use of shape theory when designing characters to further emphasize their personality and purpose. I ended up 'plussing' the concept in a variety of places while modeling.