HW_08 Thomas Gorski

 

Hey Xin, sorry I couldn't make it today. Here are a few sketches I did for my week 8 I managed to complete. Any feedback welcome. 

-Thomas Gorski

Week09 Recap

For next week:

• work on your creature assets
• refine your brief if necessary
• reference board, mood board
• post at least 6 different ideas
• think about gameplay design requirements for these, or specific abilities/actions that must take place for the story.

Lecture slides on creature design

Rhino paintovers

Centipede sketches

Belcher variant sketches (baby/capture, generous, twin)

Week09 - JP Benoit

 

Week 09 in class Jessie Jiang

 

HW09_Shen

 

HW_08 Kobe Bekoe

 

HW_08 Serene Hu

Genre: 

Action/Adventure, Fantasy, Film Noir

Setting:
- Spiritual world will be entirely ancient/fantasy China
- The human world is also fictional ancient China, but the fashion has some influence from the 1930s-1940s 

 Bai SuZhen: Snake demon disguised as a young woman. The intelligent, morally ambiguous ‘femme fatale’ of the story. To most, she seems mysterious and shady, but towards her husband Xu Xian she shows a kinder, caring side of her personality.  SuZhen genuinely loves her husband and will do anything to protect him; even if in doing so she causes harm to others who are innocent. She is often seen assisting her husband in his shop.

XuXian: SuZhen’s human husband. An herbalist who is studious and dedicated to his craft; a hard worker, but often to the point that he neglects his own health. Though he may not always show it, he is kind-hearted and loves his wife.

FaHai: Tortoise demon disguised as a monk; plays the ‘detective’ role in the story. He is on par with SuZhen in terms of cunning but is less skilled in magic abilities. Envious of SuZhen for consuming all of the immortality pills and still bitter about his defeat at her hands. Currently travels around searching for SuZhen, using his disguise as a means to get information from people.

Story:

The white snake and tortoise begin as lesser demons training in the art of magic. One day the snake acquires magical pills from one of the Eight Immortals. These pills grant immortality and strong magic to whomever consumes them. The tortoise learns of this and demands that the snake share some with him. When she refuses, the two battle each other. The white snake emerges victorious, promptly eats all the pills, and disappears. The tortoise, humiliated by this costly defeat, swears revenge.

After many years of vigorous training, the tortoise is strong enough to take on a human form. He disguises himself as a monk named Fahai and travels the country searching for the white snake. He finally catches a break when he hears of how one village miraculously recovered from a deadly plague, and goes to investigate. Fahai uses his identity as a monk to pass himself off as a detective/exorcist to the villagers, and through questioning, is led to Xu Xian’s herbalist shop. He suspects Xu Xian’s wife, SuZhen, to be a demon but is unable to trick her into revealing any clues that might implicate her as one. 

He eventually figures out that SuZhen is the cause of the plague and has been providing the antidote, helping XuXian's business flourish. This confirms Fahai's suspicions, but he will need to see her true form in order to verify that she is the demon he’s been looking for. Fahai then hatches a plan to have Xu Xian serve his wife a special wine during the DuanWu Festival.

His plan succeeds and SuZhen’s true form is revealed after she drinks the wine. Xu Xian dies of shock when he sees the snake demon. Fahai’s revenge is satisfied and he leaves in triumph when he sees SuZhen’s despair over her husband’s death.

 SuZhen then goes on a mission to obtain the magic herb needed to revive her husband. Her mission is successful and she is allowed to revive her husband under the condition that she goes into exile and is sealed under LeiFeng pagoda (punishment for releasing the plague)-- to which she agrees.

HW_08 - Simon Cardinal

 

HW_08_Wes_Fraser

 

Xu Xian: The current reincarnation of Bai’s lover. There have in fact been  a great many reincarnations Throughout Bai’s long lived life. Some previously deceased versions may even play a part in how she will play. Perhaps Xian was in a previous life, an architect who built healing shrines, or a weapons crafter, all which will Aid in Bai’s journey. Currently, Xuxian is ill, and Bai must find a way to cure him.

Bai Tsu Zhen: The Immortal White Snake. She is a demon who cannot die, and is constantly hunted by both Demons and Humans alike. She hides her true form through multiple layers of clothing to blend in as best she can. She is a tragic character, constantly mourning her dead lover, who of course, keeps forgetting her upon rebirth.

Fa Hai: A pursuer of Bai, and a member of a corrupt order of the Dao. The Dao are no longer human, extending their lives artificially through heretical magic. They seek the white snake for her scales, and play a third insidious antagonist on Bai’s journey, neither human, nor demon.

Initial Sketches

Ref Board

HW_08 Daniel Castiblanco

 

   Brief descriptions:

Morrigan (Still working on the name): Despite being the goddess of war, fate, and death, she decided to live among humans and eventually fell in love and married a doctor during the 1800s in Ireland. While in her human form, she helps her husband in his work but with a more alternative type of medicine derived from her knowledge of medicinal plants, ancient methods gathered during her long life. 

After her sister comes to take away her powers and kills her husband, her goal is to recover her godly status and bring him back from the dead. 

Nemain: The jealous sister of Morrigan. She resents her sister for not appreciating the role she has as the goddess of death. so she conspires to trick her husband and steal her powers. She is a trickster and master manipulator that enjoys playing with people's minds.

The herbalist (Also still working on the name): In this version, he's less of a herbalist and more of an actual "modern" doctor. A truly altruistic person, he tries to help people as much as he can and because of his trusting nature, he's easily deceived by Nemain into giving his wife a magical potion that reveals her godly nature to him, and also strips her of his powers. Trying to defend her wife, he's killed by Nemain, giving Morrigan the motivation to get back her powers to be able to be with her husband.  

HW_08 Amandine Gendolo

 

HW_08 Maxime Dorval

 

HW_08 Phillip

 

HW_08Lin

 

HW_08 Peter Li

Jason is a capable soldier but a better people person able to rein in the egos on the Argonauts. A morally straightforward leader whose worldview centers around family, friends and going on space adventures, the quest for the fleece sees his psyche wavering between obligations to Pelias, the seduction of Medea and Aeetes’ promises of transcendence.

Medea is a renegade Colchian psychic and daughter to Aeetes. Subject to torturous cybernetic and biological experimentation by Aeetes as a child in an attempt to establish communion with the Observers, she bears a deep hatred for everything Aeetes stands for.

Aeetes is the enigmatic super-human emperor of Colchis who secures legitimacy by instilling an absolute sense of purpose and belief in his biologically altered subjects. Having recently obtained the Golden codex, he promises his people transcendence to a higher plane using its powers. In reality he plans on using it only for himself.

     Pelias is the temperamental and unscrupulous president of the Thessalian Star Federation. As a leader he inspires more fear than respect.

       Bottom right was inspired by the Landsknecht look. 
 

HW_08 Bettina Salvador

 

HW_08 JP Benoit

 

HW_08 Will Wong

 

HW08 Merry Alexander

 

CREATIVE BRIEF —

Hi Xin! While I’m still not 100% set on my Immortal White Snake IP design (I’ll make sure it’s finalized before the start of next term), I’ve picked a direction and written up a baby brief to use in the meantime!

> GOOGLE DOC LINK <

SKETCHES —

HW08 Jessie Jiang

 

Xuan (xuxian)

Xuan is one of the sky nomads. She is a young woman who has dedicated her life so far to become the head of the family. Note that despite having no blood relation, all the people in their nomadic group are considered family, with a shared surname.

Xuan is kind, determined, reliable, but secretly she is in conflict with herself about a past wrong-doing. She hides it well, because the revealing of such truth will mean that she will forever lose her chance of becoming the family head. 

In the game, she should be a sharp-shooter type of character that compensates for Bai's melee type. I imagine this game to have dual protagonists, and the player can switch between Xuan and Bai. 

Xuan also has a striking resemblance with her ancestor, one of the original crew members of the crashed starship. Her ancestor has fostered a companionship with Bai during their space voyage; she once broke the law (although it is never discovered) and unlocked Bai from her programming, just so Bai’s sensor can feel something other than threat level, just so she can feel some infinitesimal things like water fleeing from her palms. By some chance, this eventually saved Bai from being deactivated during the ‘second fall’, since she is no longer connected to the main system of Kun-lun mountain. 

Bai

Bai is an artificial intelligence from the star-faring era. There are duplicates of her archetype, but most of them are destroyed or deactivated during the second fall of the civilization. She has a humanoid disguise and a creature-like combat mode. Her shape language should exhibit symmetry that indicates fine engineering, but also some add-on element that breaks the symmetry. Bonus if the add-on element is that certain someone’s gift from star-faring era. 

Bai has been wandering through the earth ever since the ‘second fall,’ with a corrupted memory bank and without a goal. She no longer has a record of her friend(Xian’s ancestor)’s name, but still has image recordings of her. This AI still holds onto the imagery remains of someone who died long before the start of the second fall, but does not understand why. As for the second fall, Bai only has a vague recording of the event; her archetype has played a part in it, but her own role is unknown; Bai also knows there is something wrong with the starship site, but she does not have access to it anymore. During her wandering, Bai learnt to disguise herself, so she can visit different human settlements. She travels aimlessly across sky cities, cliff cities, and some repurposed ‘old empire ruins’. 

Bai is curious, and has a composed manner; she is a character who moves with a guileless grace. Her combat mode can be something of a serpentine form. It will also be interesting that her archetype has become a malevolent creature of myth after the second fall, and been recorded on potteries and tapestries. 

In the game, Bai is a melee focused character. As an AI, Bai is locked out of almost all the accesses from the terraforming sites. To access the system of those sites, she will need a human companion. In this game that will never be made, the player will need to switch between Xian and Bai to unlock the puzzles of the old empire sites. 

It will be funny if BAI stands for something like ‘biomimic anthropopathic instrumentation”.

Hai 

Hai is one of the elders of the family. Fahai’s ire towards Xuan comes from his grief. His daughter is killed in an event in which he believes Xuan is responsible for. And ever since that accident he has been hostile towards Xuan. 

He is also the falcon keeper. Himself is a character that is weighted down, however he is surrounded by birds. 

Fahai is wise, and has an air of knowing authority around him. He is old and imposing, but the imposing part comes from his judgmental look. It will be a bonus point if his visual-language also conveys grief. 

All of my three characters are somewhat in conflict with themselves. Fahai’s conflict comes from the fact that Xuan was like a daughter to him before, since they are in the same nomadic family. He has already lost his own daughter, does he want to lose another one as well? But to forgive Xuan is a discretion of his own daughter’s passing.

hw08_shen

hw07_Shen