What is more difficult than creating a character from scratch? Recreate a pre-existing one from low resolution images
Something extremely difficult is to imitate a 3D model only with poor quality reference images. It is a tedious and slow job, much more difficult to do than creating a character from 0, at least from the point of view of whoever writes this article, especially if the intention is for the imitation to be as accurate as possible.
Recreating Major Gooding
So let’s start at the beginning… we’re going to design Major Gooding, before he became Lord Malice, for a flashback animation. So let’s “hunt” the reference images directly from the source: the CGI FMV of Sarge’s War
We have 2 640×480 blurry CGI scenes where we see Lord Malice’s past, when he was Major Gooding. One is Sarge Hawk’s point of view when he arrives at the kitchen that brings back his memories, the other is Malice’s point of view before he dies, when he tells Hawk what really happened. From these 2 scenes we captured the following images…
Another source of reference could be the 3D model of Lord Malice that we fought at the end of the game. But that is a topic for the second part, perhaps.
Recreating original Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
In this case we have the reference illustrations for Alice’s original design, from which we will create the 3D modeling
…Creating…? Bullseye
Bullseye is the latest addition to the Bravo Company Commandos, seen only in RTS. Although he has an in-game model and a piece of concept art, we never saw his CGI look like the rest. So here’s an exploration of how we’ll get his look.
Anyway, we’ve spoken directly with RTS designers, and through them and the obvious on-screen, the look of the Commando’s Ice Man will be almost the same as in-game, as the in-game models are based on the CGI models.
Woodstock ’99 VS current era Woodstock
Recreating Woodstock from Army Men: Air Attack 2 from reference footage was a difficult task, given the lack of good sources. But, in the end, after speaking with Air Attack 2 designers, we have the best result, expanding the character further, with a 25 years later version, a veteran somewhat battered by a plastic-solvent addiction who works at the Green Army helicopter pilot school.
The best reference images of Woodstock our there…
