Digital art

Weapon / Prop Design

Introduction to Weapon & Prop Design

week 1

With our character designs complete, it's now time to give them epic weapons & items!! Within this brief I want to design a couple of items and weapons for her, focusing on functionality and narrative! I don't want to just slap on a crazy sword and call it a day. I want to be able to design props which improve her character and which allow easy visualisation of her interacting with these props during idle and attack animations.

I want to produce a minimum of two props for this brief, which include orthographic views of the hard-surface objects, a finished rendering of each in perspective, and a simple illustration beside it demonstrating how she would use them (unrendered). It would also be fun to show how these animations would work in game so I could work on the skill's effects (like showing visual indications of when a skill is ready or when it is being reloaded etc).

I added my concept page beneath for easy access to make sure my props harmonise well with my character.

Looking back at my character design, there are obviously aspects I am not 100% happy with. If I where to pretend I don't know anything about her, I would assume she is a crazy academic aboard a ship who would tinker with all sorts of things such as broken shards of sunken ship treasures and write nonsense in letters. This, unfortunately, was not my plan. She was never meant to have a resemblance of the sea BUT it is good to be honest with how my outcome has gone so that I can try to bend them back to my initial idea through the prop.

Although the theme of time isn't blatantly obvious, it means I can capitalize on more intriguing and crazy prop designs that do, but I must make sure to maintain visual consistency between them and my villain. I will do my best to remain within the limitations of this design. It will be more difficult to do so but it will provoke more unique solutions :)

Character Concept

I found that if the item is too long, it dominates her figure and prevents her from standing out. I need something that complements her figure by following the same aesthetic and shape language, but differs enough to make both her and the prop stand out. If the item matches her too closely, it merges with her, which isn't ideal, especially in games where players need to easily distinguish when a prop, skill, or weapon is being equipped and used. There have been instances where weapons contradict their owner entirely, such as a small character wielding a massive weapon, but this is often done for comedic effect.

Weapons & Clock Motifs - Technical Ref

Hand Grenade, Teacup & Teaspoons, Dart, Butterfly / Balisong Knife, (Spherical) Astrolabe, Hourglass, Clasp Knife, Cogs

starting off, I wanted to look at a wide range of prop and weapon choices I could design. I stumbled across the Balisong Knife also known as the 'Butterfly' knife when looking at weapon possibilities. They have a really cool spinning mechanism - similar to clock hands spinning around their clock face - to be opened. They are cool but they originated from the Philippines so might not be demographically or historically significant for my character so I also looked at the traditional folding 'clasp knife' which is used for more practical everyday tasks. I could look at how she can use her hair spikes as darts, or have a teaspoon within her clasp knife. add additional utilities within so players can get a better glimps at her everyday life and interests. I also looked at hand grenades since they are an embodiment of ticking distruction.

Feedback: When pitching my initial ideas, my lecturers liked the hand grenade idea because it suited her unhinged personality. They suggested I look into incorporating an hourglass motif to the grenade designs and designing a belt or bandolier to hold them, which will help add complexity to her simple design.

Another one of my lecturers weren't so keen on the Balisong knives though, finding them too barbaric for her design which I agree with. They suggested a longer weapon would suite her better considering her lack of armor and appearance, which suites a long ranged character rather than a close combat one. I was thinking of something long and elegant for her anyways and was using the butterfly knives more as an inspiration for functional design wise..They also question how these blades would relate to entropy which, unlike grenades, don't relate directly to disorder. I also agree with this point so should make sure to focus on her themes better when narrowing my prop choices.

I really like the items that have varying levels of revelation. This is exceptionally fitting for her themes because it shows change, progress, energy dispersal, and the passage of time. This aspect alone, however, won’t help with portraying the theme of 'time' to an audience so I need to be a bit more literal and loud about it. I guess this is where Hand grenades or bombs really work in my favour because just by looking at them you know it is a ticking clock of violence and disorder.

Industry & Artistic Design Examples

I love the multi-era steampunk camera design by Richard Peng Lee, the dark prop designs on the top left by Chris Baldwin, and the abstract clock work by Eric Freitas. Not only amazing designs, but perfect examples of presentation and rendering. I quite like the mashup of antiquity and novel items. Products nowadays are so sleek and discreet, very different to the exposed bodies of old objects. I prefer the way old items are designed because you get to inspect and learn how all the cogs and levers work together, admiring the craftsmanship of it all. New products don't let you learn from them because everythign is tucked away in thick plastic bodies.

Analysing these works, the style of these are visually delicate whilst simultaniously looking robust and sturdy. The colour pallet is mostly cold and muted and the pure materials speak for themselves instead of being covered by too much paint or casing.

Victorian Fire Grenades

When researching hand grenades, I stumbled upon a page about Victorian Fire Grenades, which I have never heard of before.

These beautiful glass flasks where early fire extinguishers which originated in England in the early 1800's. They were popular during the 19th and early 20th century within industrialised european countries where fire hazards where prevalent - such as warehouses, and crowded residential areas with poorly constructed buildings. These glass grenades where designed to be thrown into fires where they would shatter to release their substances. Early Fire Grenades simply included only salt water within, but others where filled with a more effective fire suppressant: Carbon tetrachloride (CTC). Although more effective at it's intended job, CTC is highly toxic, and when thrown into fire, the heat converts it into phosgene gas (a chemical used in WWI ), so they ceased production in the 1950's.

I think the material of these fire grenades are nice to reference off of if I choose to design glass cased grenades. I was thinking of having a grrenade which isn't so much explosive but more playful which would allow a more fragile material such as glass to be used. purhapse a grenade that releases fumes instead or cogs, something that would be less detremental to the person holding them if they were accidentally set off. My lecturer didn't like the idea since it wouldn't be practical which is fine but it was fun getting to find out about these fire grenades and thinking of different ways I could give visual hourglass motifs to my own designs.

notes

Like time, she passes undetected from her enemies until too late. Instead of killing her enemies in one grand swing of an extravagant axe or riffle, she likes to ensue terror and watch chaos unfold slowly. That is why I think designing darts and hand grenades will work better for visually telling her story. Something small but chaotic which creates a lot of disorder by starting off as something small and unpredictable. Something that goes from extreamly low entropy, to high entropy, that trasition is necessary.

I was still questioning what props / weapon I would design for my villain so I read a bit from a book titled 'Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers' which went throught all the different ways humans have tracked the passage of time throughout history. This read was more entertaining than useful but I did get to find out about interesting items such as the pocket Sundial which comes in the shape of a ring. Through this read, I also came to the conclusion that choosing a smaller prop might be better for my character.

A more refined reference board. These are small and unintimidating but can transition into something explosive. Alarm Clocks for instance, are small but releases an explosive sound. I also looked at Piggy banks which may seem completely unrelated to my theme but to me, they signify a slow and steady plan for the future. If I were to incorporate broken shards of a piggy bank, it will show impatience for the future, giving up on plans, and growing out of childish sentiment. Broken mismatched items could be incorporated in her items to bring out her disorderly characteristics which I feel I haven't managed to successfully capitalise on in her final design. This idea could be a bit too far removed from my theme though.

Up top, you can see antique Candlewicker cutters and candlestick holders (Since people have used burning Candlewax as a way of tracking the passage if time). These are quite fun so I'm thinking of ways I could turn these into villainous props since their shape language is already quite sinister and slender.

Form Follows Function

week 2

Think about the 5 spot rule (having a space for 5 fingers / hands) since props are almost always an interactive object, how would players / characters interact with this? how would they pick it up?

I sketched a bunch of prop and weapon ideas from retractable blades to hand grenades and hanging contraptions that store them.

Feedback

My lecturer liked the designs on the left and talked about how the sand could be electrically coloured to visually sell the idea that this goes into the grenades and has the ability to alter the passage of time. My lecturer also suggested that this glass container could be COVERED in multi era clocks - digital clocks, alarm clocks etc. These would all whizz at their own pace until Entropy needs a grenade, and that would cause all the clocks to chime harmoniously to spit out a unique grenade.

He also really wanted to see me make her shoe as one of my prop submissions because it has a lot of narrative potential and my final concept page doesn't do the idea justice but I will have to see how I manage my time.

I have decided to focus my time on just designing the Hand Grenades, and the Bag that holds them. It will be a challenge to not only design interesting funtional concepts for both, but it will also be tricky to make them work together visually withought overpowering the other. If I choose to go for a crazy bag design it would be wise to have quite simple hand grenade designs which can be interpreted quickly amidst the mayhem. and the opposite is true if I choose to design a more unique set of hand grenades; the bag / container should be simpler so that it allows their small intricacies to shine.

Hand Grenade Bag Silhouettes

week 3

I tried to generate a few design ideas using the lasso tool to block out silhouettes using circles and stripes to both match my character and build shapes that hold resemblance to clocks.

Hand Grenade Silhouettes

week 4

Separate refs into smaller chunks + anntoate

make initial sketches spread across two slides

blog less organised, smaller pieces of text with smaller images

Refining designs through line-art

week 7

I was running out of time to really finalise these designs well. This design is quite basic and doesn't seem to relate to 'time' at all. It follows the shape language of my character but I wish I had more time to give it more time-related qualities.

this one does look time related but could look more explosive and unique.

3D Blockout & Rendering

week 7 - 8

3D blockout in 3DS Max

The Value read was poor here because the props weren't easily distinguishable from the background so I decided to brighten the background so that the metal can be the spotlight of the piece: it will take up the darkest and brightest values of the piece.