The Radiantly Mad King - Week 3

The Fat Queen

I spent time this week designing the queen and her outfit. After gathering a collection of old queen paintings I began copying their forms to commit them to memory (clothing design is not my thing). I then decided that the queen, being her arrogant self would not openly note her own weight so I drew her dress as if it was designed for a thinner figure. When drawn onto the queen's body, the dress becomes stretched and strained with bulges of fat folding out around her sides. I attempted to look up references for this sort of thing but google was not being friendly with its search results.

At some point I drew a front facing image of the queen's face, matching up the contours of her wrinkles as best as I could. Add a bit more grin and a bit less age and it'll be right where I want it.

Finally, I messed with her color a bit. I had basic color schemes for the guard, minstrel, and the king and when I quickly sketched an idea for the steward, I immediately liked the result (purple and gold). I took these and lined them up next to different color schemes (which will remain up in the air until I get to the texturing process).

Everything Else

This week I ordered some resources that will come in handy later in the quarter. I bought a book on dynamic posing, a dvd on character rigging, and a digital tutorial on exporting and rendering displacements properly from ZBrush (a workflow that can easily help with Mudbox as well). I read a few articles about good character design (which all turn out the same in the end) as well as an assortment of other tutorials from my 3D Artist magazines.

At some point in my sketching, I redrew the three non-royal characters in simple T poses. Displayed next to each other gives a better sense of the style I'm going for. I also drew the steward for the first time and liked the result.

The Radiantly Mad King - Week 2

The Steward

The steward will be the most mistreated member of the king's retinue. The task of a steward is to do all the dirty work of running the kingdom so that the king is free to get himself into trouble (as they were wont to do). Unfortunately, the mad king insists on his presence and does little to aid him in his task. He has since become hunched, old, and fraught with sadness and boredom.

I did some basic design for the steward, starting by sketching some faces of distinctly old people. The difference between my quick starting sketch (between the T poses) and the updated faces on the figures is a big improvement. It was helpful for noting the places where wrinkles form and where the bones of the face protrude. As with the other characters, I determined a body shape- unnaturally thin, bony, and bent. His face is long and his cheeks sag.

The Minstrel

The minstrel is where the dynamism is at. As per a suggestion from a friend, I added another female to the procession. Being one of the two frontmost faces, it is probably a good thing. When imagining a male minstrel, I see other faces similar in structure to the king (the minstrel is a bit mad him/herself). Besides that, it balances out the picture a bit by creating a pocket of men in the center to compare amongst and by drawing the queen back into the picture.

I'm still brushing up on my sketching skills and was having some trouble stylizing the face (on purpose) in a way similar to the king. This face, therefor, is not the final face but still represents the character (the face of the sketch beside the final drawing is closer). I worked on creating a feminine form and creating dynamic curves in the pose of the minstrel. I also designed her a custom lute with a bit of a melted shape and a color scheme that reminds me of a spanish guitar.

The Guard

The guard's armor is going to be somewhere between ornate and heavily worn, something that looks like it was passed on for generations from a long dead knight. This was just a design I created, one of several hopefully. I was trying to retain his broad upper body relative to his legs while deciding on what types of helmets might be good for giving him that intimidating look. It needs to shadow his eyes, offer protection, and not look cheesy (like a roman legionnaire helmet).

Previs in 3D

I've been a little bit slow on producing a good blocked out scene in 3D (which I should rightfully have done right from the start) so I did that this week as well. After modeling out the king, I liked the simple human model I was using and decided to make one that could be more easily morphed into other body shapes. The other four characters all stem from the same base mesh, tweaked and posed into place. Now that I see it in 3D I prefer the closer angle which means I don't have to worry so much about making it an entire throne room. I also found that I need to work on fitting the queen in better (though the quick lighting I applied darkens her a bit too much) so that she fits better.

After block modeling the scene, I started sketching over it the characters that I have been designing. Right now it is just the minstrel and the king but the addition of their bright colors does a lot for the scene and ensures that my vision is still fitting together.

Previs Rig

I looked into rigging a little bit to figure out how I might approach rigging these characters once I've finished them. I made some sketches of how I'd visualize testable rigs (blocked out rigidly bound forms) and modeled one. I got a bit carried away making it look nice but I can still use it. Strangely, my Maya just decided that mental ray doesn't work and won't load the mental ray rendering options tabs (I can't unload the plug-in and restarting doesn't help. Reinstalling is probably the solution). Anyway, these screenshots will have to do.

The Radiantly Mad King - Week 1

This is the first of many updates I will be providing during the run of this project. I've already begun designing some of the characters and props needed for the complete scene and will hopefully have the rest done pretty quickly in these first few weeks.

The Turtle in the Cage

I focused first on the turtle and the cage in which he dangles. The turtle is forced to the center of the image by the king but, being only a turtle, cares little for his importance and would rather just go hide in his shell next to a nice pond somewhere. After looking at turtles and getting a better handle on their form, I drew some images of what I would expect a turtle in this situation to look like. As for the cage, I had a shape in mind already but I also wanted to explore elements of its design and add some extra textural details. I chose a rather open cage so that the turtle can be seen through its bars.

The Fat Queen and the Captain of the Guard

I began designing these two characters by thinking about their body types. The captain's primary feature is his size as well as the queen's so it was a good place to start.

The Players and the Stage

I've had the setting of these characters in my head since the beginning but am just starting to design it in full. My main concerns are how much of the set will be visible since so much of it will fade to darkness. I'm thinking about possibly cutting the entire set off on either end kind of like a puppet stage. I think the puppet feeling would go well with the characters since they're designed to seem out of place in a royal setting. Here are some sketches of the players and the stage.

The Radiantly Mad King and his Retinue

The Radiantly Mad King is a character I designed in my third year at RIT. And his Retinue is the expansion which I am pursuing this quarter as my senior thesis. Here is a recap of the work I did last year and a brief introduction to the design of the project.

*Critiques or suggestions are welcome.

The Concept

This mad king is not a cruel ruler. He is distant, perhaps unaware that he is the king. Like most kings, he brings with him his loyal retinue of advisers and counselors as well as his queen, each putting up with the king in their own way. I originally planned for three characters: the king, his minstrel, and the servant but have since expanded this to include his queen and the captain of the guard.

The King stands at the fore of the scene, holding aloft his treasure- a gilded antique bird cage inside which a lonesome turtle hangs from a ribbon. Rays of light bathe the dome of the cage in a golden light which illuminates the figures where they stand along the aisle of the throne room. A wide smile spreads across his face as he displays the hapless reptilian friend.

The Minstrel plays his lute merrily, encouraging the king in his madness. His love for his music trumps his concern for the antics of the king and his melodies echo hollowly among the assembled figures.

The King's Steward was originally to be a disgruntled servant or a representative of the church but neither quite fit the position. Being the king's right hand man, he must take his cues from a man with no knack for paying attention, let alone the running of a kingdom. He is essentially the intern hired to carry coffee and clearly wishes he were doing better things than the menial tasks the king requests of him. He holds the king's long cape off the ground, a task usually assigned to a servant.

The Fat Queen is a deviously charming woman. She married for power and smiles to herself at the helpless situation the king's steward finds himself in knowing that it leaves her to run the kingdom. Despite her insatiable desire for power (and food), the queen is a cheerful woman who may be the only one patient enough for her king.

The Queen's Captain of the Guard is a tall imposing man who's eyes are lost in the shadow of his helm. He wears his decorative armor here in the throne room and does what he is told. In this case he pulls the queen on her mobile throne, a cart on wheels, further enforcing the impression that the king's court is in shambles.

Progress Recap

In my first go at the project, I completely designed, modeled, UVed, and textured the king. I spent a considerable amount of time designing clean reference sketches of him in Photoshop because both character design and digital sketching are fairly new to me. After layering the outfit in Photoshop, I moved into Maya and began to model the king. I started with a base mesh which I completed fairly quickly before making base meshes for each layer of clothing. I took these base meshes into Mudbox where I sculpted and painted each piece before exporting a final mesh to render with. At the end of the quarter I had taken a simple 5 minute sketch all the way through to completion in 3D.