2d Lesson 16 - Robot Paintover Brief

Our latest brief was to create a model of a robot, render it and paint over it in a similar manner to the previous paintover brief.

Character Description:

A simple robot worker used on the production line of a large mega-corporation. Is cheap to build, and makes use of a pulley, and ball system for it's joints in order to lift and move heavy objects. Built to resemble a human structure - in order to provide empathy amongst the human employees of the corporation. 

Robot Research:

•  Usually mechanical and artificial - if it includes organic material it is normally known as a cyborg.
• Typically used in industry as free labour - can accomplish more tasks quicker than humans, without the need for pay or rest.
• Can serve as the role of sidekick or villain in films and games - occasionally featured as protagonists.
• In Japan robots are given the same rights as humans. (???)
• More ethical questions are raised as robots become more advance - as whether they can be treated as just mere tools, if they develop consciousness.
• Can be given human features - such as eyes, faces, biped bodies, in order to make them more appealing/relatable to humans.
• Can be used as expendable weapons.
• In media the quality of the robot can vary - from being crudely built out of parts (Star wars), to a seamless and high-quality almost organic finish (I-robot).

 I was looking at different examples of how robots could be built with a more human/lean figure, I liked the examples seen in the I-robot and Star Wars, especially with the way you can see how the robot's parts form together and fit.

Initially I was going to aim for a human face - but due to time and more lack of experience thus far of modelling human faces I decided to go for a more simple head- model. The Geth in Mass Effect and the Battle Droids in the Phantom Menace had some interesting head models- that were simple but gave them a unique design overall.

I had a pretty clear idea of my design, but I had a look through some other images of droids-particularly more retro ones- to inspire my more scrapyard droid look.

Concept:

I started off with some rough sketches and silhouettes of my robot, mainly I wanted to get the shape down - a lean and scrappy biped type robot.

I settled with the idea of the lamppost head on to the developed body I had on the far right image.

 

In Maya I started off with constructing the main body/chassis, using cube and simply and altering the proportions. For the arms, I mainly used cylinders to create the tubes and edited their vertices's. 

I then created the pelvis and started working on the legs - I kept everything divided, because I wanted to envision where the wires and pipes would go between the different limb pieces, that I would add later.

Here I started adding more details, such as the pipes I mentioned and gears - I wanted the robot to look very mechanical, but not overly sophisticated.

I started working on the head, which I found to be more of a challenge - the topology isn't great, as I had trouble figuring out how to mould it into the shape I wanted, still I managed to get a result I was happy with - for a paintover it's fine, but I would of put more work into the model if it was an actual game model.

Once done with modelling, I mirrored the arms and legs, then posed the model into a stance that I wanted the character to be in. I then added some basic metal materials to give it a shine, before rendering.

This is the render I produced to paintover with in Photoshop.

 

I started off by adding details to the render, such as painting on the glow of the head and bulb on the chest, and adding wires between the segmented body pieces - to add more allusion to the scrapyard effect.

Using the skew and warp tool, I started to wrap and add a nice panel texture I found, around the render - I found this a little more challenging than my last project's attempt, due to the harsher angels - but I feel it created a nice result.

Finally I added some additional details, enhanced the lighting, and painted in some more decals and highlights using some grunge brushes.

I'm very happy with how this render came out, I feel the lighting works well and I'm pleased with the model overall. I gained alot more confidence with using Maya in this project and I can see why the program is useful in creating organic/bipedal structures. If I had a bit more time and knowledge I think I would of gone into more detail on the hands and feet, but as it stands I'm very happy with the result of this project.