Creature Creation - Corrupt and Uncorrupt.

By gathering research on prehistoric creatures and their stages of evolution I have been able to develop creatures for an alien planet with similar anatomy types in order to resemble a similar evolutionary pattern thereby adding a sense of realism.

Game basis:

The game project is aimed at sending the message of environmental pollution, this is done by showing corrupt environments that the player fights to clean up/ cleanse. This is done by showing the pollution as corruption.

Aim with characters:

In order to best show the corruption in the game the characters need to reflect the pollution.
With the creation of my basic creatures for the game environment, as the game project is designed to show corruption/pollution I have designed two versions of each character , corrupted and uncorrupted. By creating two versions of each character I can best show how pollution affects animals in their environment thereby increasing the message of the game. The corrupt versions of the character will also be shown with UDK particle effects, as the corrupt creatures will act as one of the main in game enemies.

The corrupt creatures are designed to be harder to fight and look more gruesome.

Anatomy & Visual Appearance of alien Creatures & Characters

Design intent:

With creating characters for an alien world that is fantasy based whilst resembling alien life I want my characters and creatures to signify planetary evolution (the characters and creatures have similarities e.g. facial features or anatomy features a specific requirement of evolution as it is too easy to explain this through showing characters DNA in the game I will be showing this through physical biology).

Reason:

this is influenced by looking at the Jurassic period and how certain animals evolutionary chain despite difference in size there are still visual similarities. For example the evolution of feathered birds although the anatomy has changed over the years there are a few visual similarities e.g. leg shape.

The reason for this is to add a unique feel to the characters but adding a form of realism in the way they are visually presented, avoiding the need for multiple limbs e.g. 4 arms if their environment does not require such anatomy. Following this guide line I will be able to design and create characters and creatures that work with the environment avoiding unusually large creatures that do not fit in the environment especially if they are herbivores.
I will be using the Jurassic period as a main influence for creatures that will be located on the alien this allows me to insure the player will be aware of dangerous creatures by judging their size and appearance.

Character development

I have designed my characters with light body clothing and armour the main reason for this is due to the fact I want them to have abilities and agility that match their body type. 

Characters with light armour will be incredibly agile and fast. I have designed the character with varying detail along her body clothing adding detail in certain areas and keeping some areas light on detail this is due to the fact that with the intended movements required it is best to keep the detail light in order to ensure that that there are no texture issues with the movement.

Along with the character designs changing the art style for the game project has evolved to use a 3 step shadier, this has allowed for simple base colours on the mesh which means all the detail of the character has to be shown using normal map, but along with a normal map, I will be adding an ambient occlusion map on the characters to add more to the detail, as shown in this video this shows how the ambient occlusion boosts the details in my normal map.

-Created ambient occlusion map using Photoshop as this is a faster method than rendering it in Maya or xnormals