DEADLINE = 21st January 2024, 11:59PM
PLAN TIME (INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT),
Set up an Itch account ASAP,
Define my style and tone,
Create an original, game ready character,
Model this character,
Present in Unreal Engine 5, AT LEAST 2 distinctive POSES & emotive EXPRESSIONS,
All of the development process MUST be documented, from pre-production to final presentation,
Demonstrate my abilities,
The character should be innovative and emotive. I can use additional assets in my characters presentation, but they should be my focus,
I can use basic or auto-rigs for posing,
I can use existing concept art and ideas that I have made previously or another persons (WITH THEIR PERMISSION!) or a mixture of both. I want to create a new character design, but there is a piece of world building that I thought of previously, that I have desperately wanted to expand on, so I would like to use this as a base.
This project shouldn't take more than 60-70 hours! Spread across several weeks.
My choice of themes are: Metamorphosis, The Big Bad, Fourth Dimensional Tourist, Opening Night, NeonPunk and Emotion Embodies. I wouldn't mind doing any of these themes other than opening night. Opening night doesn't have any appeal to me. I have an interest in all of the others themes:
Metamorphosis is always interesting and it can be applied to pretty much everything, since it means change and everything and everyone is always changing, even if they don't realize it,
The Big Bad is a good theme for me, because I usually prefer the villains in stories rather than the hero. I always find their backgrounds and motivations more interesting, so I enjoy designing them more. Play to your strengths and all that...
The fourth Dimensional Tourist just sounds fun to do, and I could apply a lot of meme humor to this,
NeonPunk is awesome and I quite like the punk aesthetic myself, so designing a character with it would be fun,
Emotion embodied allows me to create a strongly inspired narrative character design. I can covey their backstory and motives through this more than most character designs, that just use Easter eggs or reference it. Although this theme could cause me to fall into stereotypes, since different personalities and dominant emotions cause us to subconsciously impose stereotypes on those that we meet. This theme could be quite hard to work with because of the ethical considerations, but it is still a good theme, with lots of depth.
I can use any software and tools to create my outcome, but I must render in Unreal Engine 5. Out of the recommend software list I will probably/might use:
Autodesk 3Ds MAX. This is the software I learned to model on so I am better at it and have more experience with how to use it,
Blender. A back up in case of any problems with 3Ds MAX,
Substance Suite. Have assess to this and know how to use it,
Photoshop. A useful tool to create stickers for texturing and textures themselves. I can also use it to refine final outcomes,
Procreate. Another back-up, plus I tend to travel quite often and Procreate is much better on portable devices than Photoshop,
Trello. Project management,
Cite This for Me. For Harvard referencing,
SideFX Houdini. I've never used this but I would like to try it,
Marvelous Designer. Again never tried it, would like to,
PureRef. Never used this but could be a useful backup in case Cite This for Me start playing up (it doesn't like my home computer, for some reason),
Microsoft Word. To organize and submit all of my written documentation as a single PDF.
Concept development. Reference and explain all choices. Mixed media visual and written documentation of development of concept idea,
Technical workflow. Practical poly and technical budget should be considered. Show a focus on efficient UVs and Topology. Create your own textures, show maps and meshes. If I have used any default/presets still include general notes in documentation,
Creative Development,
Written documentation,
Final presentation (Essentially the layout of all of your work). All development work must be presented with outcome. Think about layout and composition. A high-res final render, include other text shots. Show thoroughly thought out judgement in lighting, colour, tonal balance, framing and composition. All development (character topology, UV, maps & materials. Screenshots, image exports, Marmoset viewer renders, they must be clear to see. All written work should be provided as a single PDF. A video is recommended.
Development engine for presentation is Unreal Engine 5,
Finished projects should contain a minimum of a zipped project file, a series of images and a PDF document,
Projects must be submitted using the Itch platform.
Please note that there is no ‘fail’ or ‘disqualification’ criteria. Do what you can & submit what you are able to. Even unfinished pieces and works in progress can be valuable at showing your abilities!
The theme I have chose is emotion embodied because the whole idea for my character revolves around their emotions. Their emotional state reflects the reacting of their power, if they are upset they release evil spirits into the world as they lose control of their power but if they are experiencing a positive mood they draw positive spirits already in the world to them, which they can them bring to peace and allow them to pass on to the after life.
The world building that I am recycling is from a previous project. When I first wrote this piece of writing I really got into it and I really wanted to expand on it, but I ran out of time and it took a back seat. Over the last 6 months or so I have been periodically thinking about this piece of writing that and I think that it would be the perfect fantasy world to make a game out of, so I have been thinking of way to expand the universe with other characters, history, religion, the world itself, etc... and what is the big story of this universe and how can I turn it into a game. Making a game out of this will be a massive and long work in progress, but by recycling this idea for this challenge it allows me to spend some more time on it, while making a great portfolio piece. The other reason I have decided to re-use this is because of the world is set in I could pretty much design any character with any ability and it would fit into this world, so it gives me an endless amount of possiblities of what I can design. It also allows me to combine to for my favourite genres, which are fantasy and futuristic. It would also save me time as I would have to come up with something from scratch.
There are multiple gods and goddesses. There are the two main gods of creation and destruction. The other gods the other gods are split roughly 50/50 between the rule of these two gods, as these forces must always be balanced. They typically come under the side that they have the most in-common with. Each god has their own world, galaxy, galaxies or dimension. It depending on their importance and where they are in the hierarchy of the gods or if they have lost their territory to another being (some mortals are able to take on the weaker gods). These territories are inhabited by a population that they have made in their own image, although not all of the gods are capable of creating there own races, but they can influence other races in both good and bad ways. They cannot totally take over the common characteristics the population has with their creator god. Creating a race can be an intentional or unintentional choice. Gods create their own races for many different reasons, an example could be that they are lonely and want companionship of a similar mind, or they wish to solidify their presence in their territory, etc... The closer the god is to the concept of destruction the harder it is to create life and vise versa. Out of the most destructive gods, there is only one that has managed to create their own race and this is the God of destruction themselves. Their presence is so strong that it corrupts everything within a galactic sized radius very quickly, and would eventually corrupts the whole universe if not for the goddess of creations presence that balances out the corruption. This corruption effects animals, plants, anything living really, eventually their presence caused the corrupted to gain a mind of their own, but only so that they possessed base instincts and rarely evolved any further than this, if they did get past this phase, then their bodies would start evolving faster than their minds. They would eventually end up killing themselves.
These civilizations work a lot like medieval kingdoms combined with the Roman senate (but without all of the drama), with the ruling god acts as the king. These populations may have abilities, powers or characteristics that their god is tied to, but at a much lower magnitude. Other races like humans still exists but they don’t have a connection to the divine as a result they don’t have any powers or abilities (although they can forge one with patience and training or they can be given one if they earn the favor of a being who is able to share or transfer theirs). Races who have no connection rely more on technology to assist them instead of magic, as they would naturally move toward the most available resources to better their standard of living, since they have no connection magic would not be their most abundant and useful resource. The fact that they were not directly created by a god but something that the gods made means that they don’t really know much about the their existence or in Earths case nothing at all. They don’t have any loyalty to them and aren’t one of their subjects. On the other hand other races that haven’t been created by the gods, but have knowledge of the gods and their people’s existence hold them in high regard and if someone from one of the divine civilizations travels to one of these planets they can either be grated with warmth or distain. Races that know of the gods interact with their people, but weren't directly or purposely made by them often envy the races that are born with a connection to them, most races are pretty welcoming towards them as it allows them to have some degree of access to basic magical abilities and advance themselves (this can sometimes result in them having more power and influence over these races, which can result in corruption or a god complex, but in most case they can get along with relative ease). In extreme cases this can result in almost cult like worship of them or a deep, uninformed fear and hatred of them. In the cases of hatred they try not to outwardly despises them to much as they fear divine punishment, although they don't really understand the hierarchy of races born of gods social structures, in reality they tend not to interfere to much unless these unconnected races specifically insult or target them, although their not really a threat to most of them. The gods can sometimes be a bit vain.
This universe is set in the genres of fantasy and sci-fi/futuristic, this ends up with the designs of my characters being a combination of the past and future, as a result I have a massive range of design possibilities.
When looking at the Sci-fi/futuristic genre, the franshises I think of most when I think of a sci-fi/futuristic genre is: Warhammer 40k, Transformers and Voltron ledgendary defender.I specifically like looking at the styles of cyberpunk, techwear and neon lights. Cyperpunk has a futuristic appearance but it isn't set to far in the future from our own world, so it still has a sence of fimiliarity to it, you could see yourself living in this world in future but mabye not to the extent of replacing our whole bodies with metal or becoming a construct. Techwear is an interesting style with overall simplistic clothing but loads of detailed add ons like lanyards, lights, masks and unusual textures. It is often quite stealthy in its appearance. I love the look of having lights incorperated into clothing. It provide much more complex and interesting lighting within a scene, rather than just having one directional light within the scene. By including lights in clothing it imeditely makes feel futuristic as these are artificial lights which make people think of technology and the futuristic genre often if always portrays the human species as being more advanced.
The fantasy genre feels aged and historical, it is often set in a time that is less developed than the present. This genre is closely associated with magic, the past and amazing imaganitive things and creatures. Fantasy is the main genre I work in as it allows me to do anything I want to in regard to design and the story. When I think of fantasy I think of franshises like: The Lord of the Ring, How to Train your Dragon and Zelda. The things I specifically like (design wise) about the fantasy genre are: the historical look, magic and the imaginative design. I like the hostorical look of the design as it give the world an aged feel and that these things could have actually happened we just can't prove it, while with the futuristic genre you can only guess how things will look, while fantasy is more informed. The idea of magic existing is always a cool thought as it basically creating another timeline where you ask yourself if human were actually magical and could do the things that technology would our would look the way it does now or would we have kept to a more rural and natural way of living. The genre of fantasy is incredible broad because it pretty much covers anything fiction as it is literaly making a world from your imagination, which is what fiction is, plus the fantasy genre can be set at any point in time even in the future, as a result it allows for so many different possiblities regarding design as you can do pretty much anything you want to do with it.
I have had this idea for a character in my mind for some time now and this seems the perfect time to explore it. My idea is for this character is for them to have loads of tiny mirrors integrated into their body, which they can use to summon spirits through. This idea came to me from the belief that mirrors could/can be portals to a dimension filled with good and bad spirits that can pass through the mirrors, in the TV show ghost hunters. Currently I see this character as being female. In my mind this is ironic because in the episode of ghost hunters where I got the idea, the spirits haunting the building seemed to target women. The hunters believed that the spirits in this episode were suspected occultists that preformed satanic rituals who used to own the building. I thought it would be cool that my character is female and she will end up controlling spirits who tormented other women (or anyone who has taken joy from harming another and/or feels no guilt for the harm they have caused) as a form of punishment after death, since they have been able to escape it so far by coming back to our world and continuing their ways, due to their hatred of women they would obviously hate the fact that they are at the whims of a women who can summon them and get rid of them whenever she like.
Female, Adolescent (16-19 yrs), tallish, small frame, priestess looking, sheltered, bubbly, eager, curious, a bookworm, clever, intuitive, frightening, strong willed, responsible, kind & righteous.
This character could quite eazily fall into the troope of wizards or those with magical abilities being calm, unemotional and wise, but I am trying to aviod this as pretty every mage type character I can think of falls into one or all of these 3 traits and even if their character doesn't have all of these trait you can garentue that the one that they do share with the ones i mentioned above will be the dominant trait. I intend to use one of these trait as these are common characteristics of a mage it would be weird to not include one at all as these are common characteristic but I don't intend to make any of these a dominant characteristic.
My character is:
Bubbly, to the extend that it is contagious, the spirits around her normally are quite happy themselves and don't mean any harm. This is also useful in preventing bad spirits from entering the area and causing trouble,
Eager to learn and experience new things,
Curious, they are quite sheltered in their way of life so are fascinated by new things,
A bookworm. Passionate about learning,
Intuitive, she excels at noticing and realizing things long before other do, a useful skill when dealing with solving the problems of people and spirits,
She is strong willed and few can alter her course or overwhelm her own spirit,
Responsibility is something she learned from a young age as she needs to learn how to control her powers from a young age or she could cause a lot of damage to the people and things around her,
Kind by nature, always trying to help others,
Righteousness is a very important trait for them to have as they need to be able to know the difference between right and wrong so that evil spirits can't influence them to do bad things,
They are not an emotionally bankrupt person but she has had to learn to control her negative emotions as negative energy will impact the spirits turning them evil, while positive emotions have the opposite effect so there is no need to repress those.
This character poses one main power which is to summon spirits through mirrors, to control this power they have had to learn a subset of abilities. As mentioned in my worldbuilding and this characters story they were not born with powers but was passed on the connection to the source by another mage shortly after birth, humans are not born with the connection to a divine being that will give them access to these powers. They need to be trained to master and strength their connection in order to not be possesed and to be able to control themselves. The abilities that the have had to learn are:
Energy sensing to be able to tell whether a living thing or spirit carries negative or positive energy this will give away their intention on whether they want to harm my character or help them,
Defense spells, such as barriers and defensive outwards blasts of energy. They are not a built to take a massive amount of hit as they are a mage not a tank,
Revitalization (healing) spells, because as they weaken so does their control over the mirrors on there body which could be dangerous for both enemies and allies,
Sealing spells, such as how to close a portals and communication so nothing nothing can come through,
I didn't want to give this character to many abilities as it would be to hard to keep track of the all if they had loads. The other reason I have only given them 4 abilities is because they are still in training and wouldn't know as much as their mentors, plus these four abilities can be simplified, combined or strengthened to give them access to more abilities that fall under these 4 main categories.
They are taller than average, but overall have a small build. They have long hair that is straight cut, that is dark in colour. A slightly more masculine square shaped face, but with more feminine features, although they are only an adolescent so the strong cheek bones typically of a square face haven't quite come in yet. Due to the bodies integrated into her body the clothes she usually wears are able to be modified or moved aside at a moments notice to expose these mirrors, so that the spirits can be called upon. Obviously I don't know excatly how they are going to look yet, I want them to look sort of like a combination between a mages and a priestess.
I don't think this character really requires any weapons as the spirits the summon are their weapons and they are always avaible and can't be diarmed. The only thing that they might have would be more of a symbolic thing than of any use, like a staff since they use magic and staffs are typically used by wizards and such, but since their own abilities are so specialized they don't really need it and for other things like rune casting they can just write them down. I think they would be more likely to carry around items that could help them to regulate their emotions (other wise the spirits will react to it and the emotion will be amplified, explain more in the character story) or items they could use for learning, like a hand scrapbook/journal, runestones, crystals and candles. I'm thinking of giving her some kind of textbook journal thing to carry around, so that if they find any interesting and useful things to do with magic they can transcribe them for later, this way the book is specialist to them, instead of them carrying around loads of books that they can only use a few select things in, plus having to find a way for them to transport all of these books might cover up part of the design I want to show off. I might also give them a pouch to carry around, that has some dice, crystals, rune stones and various other things in it that they can use for spell casting. I'm also going to give them some kind of sentimental object, maybe a necklace, a ring or a bracelet (I haven't quite decided on this part yet), as this will be a useful tool to help them get their emotions back under control.
Yellow = bubbly, eagerness, curiosity + links to ability,
Red = passion and kindness + links to the dangerous nature of their power
Green = Youth/living, natural,
blue = peace, trust, religion, coldness and sadness,
Brown = nature and stability
white = righteousness, innocence,
Black = Power, responsibility and strength.
The genre of this character is fantasy mixed with futuristic/sci-fi, this is because this is the genre of the world that this character lives in, but this character also has their own range of sub-genres that are incorporated into her design the main one is historical as their design is heavily inspired by ancient religion, cultures and superstition, so I wanted to give the style of their attire a sort of aged and vintage look. There design also includes the religious fiction genre as they are being educated and guided by a group of different spiritual instructors I wanted them to look more religious in their appearance kind of like a priestess as they have mastered and are a student to many different teachings it would make since that they wear items of clothing that resemble theses religions and belief system, since it shows that they are a part of the community.
I haven't quite decided how this she got her powers yet, but I know that they were not born with them (explained further in world building) and I know that they got them as an infant. The two options I'm thinking of so far is that they were either given them by a magical being although I'm not sure how they meet yet or they would come into contact with an ancient magical item from another world that created the connection between them and the spirits. No one knows that she has abilities not even her herself, she was to young to realize what had happened only that these wired see-through people kept appearing, she wasn't old enough to tell people what she had been doing that day and they would be to young to remember what happened when she got older.
After a few months of her being given these abilities, her parents noticed her displaying some strange behaviors mainly staring at the walls, specifically glass, mirrors, water anything that is reflective really (the revaluation that she is looking at reflective surface takes a few weeks to become clear) although no one knows why, much like how animals are seen looking and reacting to things that aren't there she seemed to be doing the same thing. Once any health worries had been put to rest her parents didn't think they had anything to worry about until paranormal activity started to happen in their home, obviously they didn't believe it at first but soon came to terms with their reality as the phenomena's kept getting more intense. Not only this but their nature of the activity and feeling of the room seemed to directly correlate with the mood of their daughter, if she was upset the activity was violent, if she was happy the activity would feel curious and playful. By this time the family had already gotten into contact with various religious and spiritual groups in order to fix the problem, although nothing seems to fix it only calm the activity for a few days, no one was sure about what was going on until they finally saw a spirit interacting with their daughter, it didn't seem malicious, but it still frightened them. They consulted various spiritual advisors and decided on leaving home for a while to try and let the spirit settle and stop the activity, but they followed. Once, they returned home they began to see faces of people from ages past in the mirrors.
After various attempts to try and move away from and stop the activity they eventually realized that this wasn't something they could escape from, eventually they realized that they would just have to learn to live with it. Their contacts came up with some method to try and make sure that the spirits in the home were not dangerous, by observing the mood of the child they devised that by keeping her a calm and happy as possible was the best way of stopping anything malicious from getting into the home and that if she did get upset they could stop her from getting so upset as to drag something truly malicious to them, since once the spirits were in the home they didn't seem to be able to leave. There was a case when the activity first started when quite a violent spirit entered the home after their daughter had been poorly and gotten very upset, it was preying on them but with the combined help of the priests they managed to banish it out of the home and back to the spirit world.
It had been about 6 month since the issues started by this point, this is when her parents began to notice that there were these shinny, hard and cold spots appearing on their daughters skin, originally they though that she had just rolled around in some glitter. They tried to remove them by bathing their daughter and popping them like a zit, but they would not pop, they only seemed to be upsetting their daughter so they needed to stop to make sure no evil spirit entered the home, like their priest said upsetting her would only make the activity worse. By the next day they were full formed little mirrors embedded in her skin. They were various shapes and some even had slightly coloured tints to them, in a way they would be beautiful, if they weren't so worried about their daughters health and what this meant. The faces appearing in the mirrors was already worrying as their spiritual advisors had already mention something about mirrors being portals to other plains of reality, now that their daughter had mirrors built into her what would this mean for her? They couldn't take her to the hospital because they would not understand, possibly anger the spirits and make everything worse, plus any attempt they had tried to remove the mirrors only caused their child pain, the hospital would certainly want to remove them, they didn't want their child to be in pain. They ended up contacting all of their contacts to stage an intervention about what they would need to do about these new developments.
For some time it had been theorized that the child had been the one who had been attracting the spirits and that she was the one who had been keeping them charged with energy so that they could stay in this plane of existence, so it was decided that these spiritual leaders would need to stick around in order to help out with the child and train her to control her emotions as the spirits she summoned would only get stronger as she did. As the years past she would need to be taught to control her emotions, how to commune with the spirits, how to banish them, how to summon them and a great number of other magical spells, as the minute her abilities were shown to the world people would be out to get her and she would need to be able to protect herself. Eventually she will end up being a useful ally in a world war that will eventually turn into a multi-universal war, that they will be a key player in the survival of the human race and useful ally.
The meeting with the mysterious stranger or mystical objects,
Paranormal activity begins,
Mirror manifestation & realization,
Education and spiritual teachings,
Eventually service in future war.
My own art style is a combination of surrealism, manga and art novuea so naturally I'm going to try and reflect this in my model. The model i intend to create isn't going to be hyprer realistic as this would take far to long, so i'm going for more of a semi-realistic look where thing will be reaalistic to the real world but stylized. I'm going to be surealism in my overall design of the character as the whole concept for the is influence by the real world but it this morehs into an unreal idea from the mind as fantasy elements (like the power to control spirits and cast magical spells) enter the picture. Manga will effect the shape of my character although intend to make mine a bit more anatomically correct regarding the proportions of the body, as manga is know for the large eyes and overly round heads, I intend to make the eyes larger and rounder head shape as well as the simplisticy of the style. The rounder head and big eyes are also benificial for showing the age of my character as they aren't that old and their story mainly focuses around their childhood so it makes sense to make parts of their body somewhat chubbier then they would be as an adult, as cicular shapes are often used to portray youth. Art noveau isn't going to appear on my model as much as the other two art styles, it will mainly appear in the design of the little details of my design and in the texturing,as art nouveau is characterised by continous lines that are organic in shape I can't really show this in a model but I can in smaller details as they aren't as dense and premote a light, airy feel to them.
This section will be the main inspiration for my characters overall look as these ancient religions fit into the fantasy genre and I can't really get any visual inspiration from facts or superstitions. Mythology is the result of a civilisation so I will attually have something to go off.
Mirrors were associated with the sun and Ra, king of gods. As a result they were highly prized objects, which represented regeneration and vitality.
Tezcatlipoca, lord of smoking mirrors, a reference to shiny flat polished volcanic glass. This glass was a vital part of human blood sacrifices.
Medusa, a gorgon or a beautiful cursed victim (the tale varies depending on the version you read, but I generally conform to the gorgon one since it is older than the victim one, which was dramatized to make it better piece of writing). A monster with head of hair made of live snakes, with the power to turn anyone she looked at to stone. Perseus defeated Medusa by cutting off her head but to avoid looking directly at her he used the shiny mirror like shield he was using to look at her so he wasn’t turned to stone. Another Greek myth involving mirrors is Narcissus was a beautiful young man who loved himself so much that he fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, eventually he turned into a flower. The tale of Narcissus represent how arrogance and vanity can lead to your downfall. Irrational levels of pride in your appearance, this often causes many negative personality traits, disorders and mental illness.
Mirrors are considered one of the three sacred objects in Japanese culture (along with the sword and the jewel). The most sacred mirror in Japan is the Yata no Kagami, a bronze mirror representing wisdom and honesty. A symbol of power and representation of the gods. Kami (deity/spirit) of mirrors (Shinto religion) is Ishikori-dome no Mikoto, while a tsukumogami (an object inhabited by a spirit), will take the form of possessed mirror, they are shapeshifters who morh into a monstrous figure of the human that looked into it. She created the mirror Yata no Kagami, this mirror was used to lore the sun god out of hiding. During the petty messy break up between Amaterasu and her brother Susanoo, the world began to suffer in protest of his childish antics she hid in a cave and the world was without light, to get her to come out the other gods made out that there was a god better than she was outside the cave, in curiosity she looked out and was greeted with a mirror, was resulted in her leaving the cave.
According to Chinese mythology mirrors are gateways to a parallel world, but the people in it are not human, they are spirits and demons in disguise and want to kill us their counter parts.
In a dimly lit room, chant "Bloody Mary" into a mirror three times, a woman dripping with blood will appear in the reflection. She might scream, grab, strangle and may even chase you. This myth is based off of Mary Tudor. She hated Protestants as she wad strictly Catholic, during her rule Protestantism was banned and if you were caught practicing it you were burned at the stake. I think that the reason she hated Protestantism is because for one she was raised Catholic, but her farther changed the religion of England to Protestantism from Catholic, just so he could divorce her mother, I think she may have held resentment towards her farther and the religion, so she took it out on the Protestants and wanted to eradicate any trace of them. During one of these burning she had hundreds burned at the stake ALIVE for it.
Waiting a few hours before picking up and burying fragments outside in the moonlight or throw salt over left shoulder at the devil. Another option is to touch a single shard and touch it to a tombstone. Catoptromacy, lowering a mirror into water for a sick person to see their reflection, if it’s distorted and ghastly bad omen, if fresh and healthy it’s good. This myth appeared around 2000 - 2700 year ago in Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.
In the 1800’s 1900’s women in pursuit of love created a ritual to see there future husband which included a mirror, a lit candle, an apple and a knife, that can be used on the night of Halloween. Cut the apple into 9 eat 8 bits, throw the last into the mirror, your soulmate will catch it on the other side.
Looking into a mirror with your partner shortly before you wedding and then saying “I do” shortly afterwards will, will unite their souls. If two people look into a mirror it is said that an alternate universe is created where their souls can live on together forever. However Asians cultures believe that gifting newlywed couples a mirror, on their wedding day will bring bad luck. This is somewhat due to symbolism, since mirrors are fragile, plus mirrors can hold bad spirits.
When the soul leave the body behind, it begins to roam. If a soul encounters a mirror, before the body is buried (3 days give or take), the soul will be trapped in the mirror. It can cause the mirror to tarnish or turn it into an image of the deceased person. When someone dies cover all mirrors. It is a Kabbalist tradition, they believe that when souls leave the world it leaves a void, which allows other spirits good and bad to enter our world. Any energy vacuum there is the chance that negative energy can sneak in. The Jewish also do this ritual during the mourning ritual of shiva, but many people in the U.S also believe in this. African folklore also has something similar to this myth but mirror take a persons soul whilst they are living and causes their death, instead of catching it after the persons death.
Gazing into a mirror can remove social awkwardness and understand yourself better. A mirror takes all of your problems through it into the spirit world, but if you gaze into the mirror to long it will take your soul. If you want a better sense of self try a true mirror (two mirrors placed at a 90 degree angle), it doesn’t have a reversed reflection like normal mirrors.
In china brass mirrors were hung above idols, if evil spirits were to enter the place of worship they would see their own reflection and run. Although people didn’t only use mirrors they would also use any highly reflective object, some people also used this method to protect their homes. Nowadays people hang mirrors on their front doors to reflect away and protect their homes from negative energy, plus mirrors amplify the energy around them, so if your home only has positive energy around it this will amplify its effects and can attract more positive energy and opportunities.
Getting a fright from your own reflection bring good luck.
Some supernatural belief is that mirrors are portals are to other dimension that spirits can use as portals to enter our dimensions and a group of mirrors can create a portal nexus. One mirror can double and increase energy within a room that can draw thing to them, a nexus can make this dangerous. This myth came from the ancient Mayan civilisation but they believed that water also had these properties and would transport you to spiritual worlds.
I'm sure you have heard of the superstition that vampires can't see their own reflection, because they don't have a soul to reflect, but did you know that at the time people believed in vampires, mirrors had a thin layer of silver behind the glass. Silver is known as a 'pure metal' because it was believed to have mystical properties like being able to burn the skin of monsters, another metal like this is gold, ever heard of the 24 carrot bullet, a vampire is classed as a monster so why would their reflection show up in a metal that burns them. Now mirrors are made of a sheet of aluminium, so a vampire would be able to see their reflection, it's is also why mirrors now are much lighter then the used to be (the metal and glass combination of the past could make mirrors quite heavy and difficult to move).
Mirrors reflect light not heat, although the light they reflect can generate heat. Mirrors can also reflect sound, these mirrors are called acoustic mirrors. They can also reflect matter, know as atomic mirrors. An electromagnetic field reflects atoms and trap the slower ones, they can also focus atomic beam. Mirrors are also used to split light for telescopes (and some other equipment), also known as beam splitters. The beam will be fired and hit the splitter and one half will continue in the same direction and the other will shoot off at 90 degrees.
If you sit 3ft from a mirrors in a dark room you may start hallucinating.
A giant ball that is completely covered in little square mirrors, that creates advanced displays of reflected light.
Psychologists have found many uses for mirrors recently, some of these are to make patients aware of how their experiences have shaped them, giving them a new perspective of how to perceive them This can also be applied to their fears and insecurities relating to body image issues. They make the patient talk positively about the things that they see in the mirror, restoring self-esteem and creating a coping mechanism to change negative thoughts into positive ones. Another way mirrors are used to help people is by creating empathy for others, by removing preset biases based on appearance and gain a deeper understanding about their relationships with others.
A personality trait as well as a basic instinct that causes you to subconsciously copy the gestures, speech patterns, attitudes and actions of another. This is often a symptom of much more complex personality disorders, but it can also be an instinctual response. In other species that have social hierarchy structures will often cater to or mimic their clan members at the top end of the hierarchy in order to increase their own standing and/or to be excepted by the other members, it can also make us seem more similar to the person we are trying to connect with making it easier to create a rapport with them. Humans are social creature, it makes sense that we would also use this tactic. Mirroring is also something that we uses to learn, by copying other members of lives we learn things from them, like how to do things?, what is not to do?, why we do things? and how to interact with others?, etc… Mirroring is also a tool used in empathising with other, the best way to explain this is the expression “Try walking a mile in their shoes”.
Water reflects and distorts images. The first mirror when looking at ancient mythos when they talk about mirrors they are actually talking about water, for example in the tale of Narcissus he falls in love with himself after looking into a mirror, but the mirror is actually a pool of water.
I made 10 silhouettes for this project as I didn't have enough time to make around 300 (the normal amount usually made by concept artists). To create these silhouettes I first drew the outline of a body then blacked out the shape and drew colour filled shapes over the top to get a unique design. You can see that as I move through the designs they become more detailed.
These are my favourite silhouettes I thought I should zoom in on them.
For silhouette 4, I reduced the darkness of the silhouette and drew a sketch over the top. My favourite is number 3.
I love sketch 2 because it combines the most out of all of my inspirations onto on figure.
I quite like silhouette 5 on this page.
I like silhouette 3 on this page most because of the hair, flower on the shoulder and the cape. The balance between the really detailed stuff to the simple stuff is well balanced.
Silhouette 6 is my fave even though I am only supposed to have one fave per silhouette but I couldn't help it. I like the top, hair and shoulder amour.
All my faves. Green = Love & Red = Change it
The sketch on the right is my final design.
This is how I got the proportion of my profile the same no matter the perspective.
Profiles for modelling. Took out proportion line as they were obstructing my view of the profiles, which will make it difficult to model from.
Importing to photoshop to add rules line so my profiles are even when I separate the images.
Alt + Marquee selection, image, crop, save as JPEG. Orange overlay to prevent eye strain.
Alt + Marquee selection, image, crop, save as JPEG. Orange overlay to prevent eye strain.
In conclusion, I wasn't able to complete anywhere near as much as I wanted to from the modelilling perspective, but I was able to finalize the idea. Through this project I have been dealing with some very complicated personal issues at home that have severely impacted the amount of time I've have had available to work on this project. I have also never modelled a character to this scale before and this complicated, so it was an interesting experience for me, to say the least. My project had a lot of flaws, I wasn't able to complete my model let alone, texture, animate and render. Time was my biggest issue on this project as previously mentioned I had a lot of unexpected personal issue arise during this project and it severely impacted my performance, but out of what I actually managed to get done I think I was on track. If I had managed to complete this project I think it would have ended up looking quite good. From the things I actually managed to complete I was quite happy with the results, I just wish I was able to do more. Honestly, I feel like I completely failed with this project, I knew it was ambitious to begin with but there wasn't much I could really do about it. I am happy that I challenged myself though and hope that the feedback I get off of this project will help me to improve my character modelling and sculpting skill, as in the field of character modelling I am a beginner. This project has taught me a lot when it comes to sculpting and new ways to model that are more refined to what I was doing previously and for one of my first attempts at sculpting I think it went well. All in all this project is a mixed success I am disappointed with the outcome, but I have enjoyed the project so I hope to finish my character in future. If I don't have any personal issues arise next year, I hope to enter this competition again next year and show off my improvement from this year.