Advanced Assignment – 3D-I Week 3; Pre-production

Alright, so as an effect of having previous knowledge in 3d, me and a few others got a more challenging assignment. For this, we were given the choice to make one out of four vastly different vehicles.

A starship

A viking longboat

A Mech

A steam powered car

Now, all of these are very interesting and all have their own virtues. However, The Bull is the one that got my attention the most; it’s got an interesting style, it’s got mechanical parts (like the mech), but still somehow primitive (like the longboat).

Analysis and references

The first thing that struck me when looking at this concept was the resemblance it bares with antique, De Dion Bouton Cars:

It’s got the general cubic shape as well as the black, red and gold color theme. Looking at it further there are also a clear mix of train in it; it’s got the typical rod based drive, cylindrical headlights, and also magnetic plates in the front (the ones that connect the different carts).

Next step was to figure out a game in which this concept, and in turn the model we’re to make, would fit. My initial thought when I looked at it was Dishonored:

However, looking at the vehicles and machinery in this game, you quickly realize that it’s not really the same style. It’s a lot more metallic and sharp and even though there is a lot of steam powering in the game and city, these are propelled, not only on tracks, but by electricity.

Exploring other options, looking at existing steampunk games, I thought of the city of Hamelin in the Ghibli’s “Ni no Kuni”:

And also on the new “The Order: 1886″. In this, a lot of the equipment are prototypes from Nikola Tesla, and although there are no vehicles in the game, I figured this could have been one of those prototypes:

The problem with this concept however, is that it has a sort of cartoony touch too it, but is still not completely so. As such, unless I change it to fit, none of these are a really good fit, at least not in that respect. So, as per recommendation from the teacher, I chose to go with Fable 3, or more specifically the town of Bowerstone in it:

Putting this together, I made a reference board to look at while I’m modeling etc, especially since the concept does not show every side, leaving a lot up to interpretation.

We were recommended to take the concept, prior to starting the model, and draw the topology on top, to get a sense of what kind of pieces would be needed and what parts needed the most attention and polygons. However, since I’ve never done this in all my years of modeling, I’ve come to a point where I do this automatically in my head. So really, from here, I will start production right away!