Yr2 Week 7: Sentry Gun Intro

Week 7 saw the beginning of our new project, the sentry gun. The brief for this project is different from those we have had before; we have specific blueprints which we have to follow for creating the individual parts of the gun, but we have creative freedom with design and style. We have 5 weeks to create our guns, including concepts and development, and also a high and low poly model, both fully textured. The tri limit for the low poly model can not exceed 5000 tris, which I was quite pleased with, as this is quite generous in comparison to previous projects.

As someone who is not a large fan of guns, I decided I wanted to go for more of an unconcentional gun and started looking into ways to disguise a gun. Previous students had done designs such as a lucky cat, which gave me the idea of creating a statue which has a concealed gun turret.

I thought of many different styles of statues, such as gargoyles, totems and human-like figures, eventually coming to the decision that I wanted to created a lion statue, but I am still undecided if I want to create a traditional themed lion statue, or a more asian lion design. I started to create some quick sketches/silohuettes to experiment with my ideas for designs.

These were the first "silohuettes" which I created, though it quickly became obvious that a lot of my silouettes would look quite similar. So I quickly began to create some more detailed simple sketches instead, as a lot of my design iteration is going to be quite similar and just changing positioning of the lion ever so slightly.

I did some quick sketches of very traditional lions, using different poses; some sitting, some standing and some laying. I experimented with different gun placement, such as in a ball that the lion has his paw on as seen in a photo reference on my mood board and also different stands/bases for the lion to sit on top of. After this I started looking into an asian lion statue, known as a Komaino. I found these quite intriguing and quite nice visually to look at.

Undecided on a final concept but aware of the basic shape I wanted my statue turret to have, I decided to start creating a block-out in 3DS Max to aid me with my idea generation and for paint overs. I have created an extremely simple lion so far, as I was a little unsure of whether I wanted to go with a traditional lion or Komaino lion, so made a blockout which could easily be changed. This also allowed me to decide where I wanted each part to be and how I wanted the model to move and operate, as a statue is something quite static, but for this project needs to be quite moveable. After creating a quick block out and modifying it to be recognisable as some form of lion, I started experimenting with the function of the model. I decided that the moveable part of the statue would be the head; it will rotate and move backwards and forwards. The barrel of the gun is held in the lion's mouth, this could also be moveable to provide more accuracey and range.

After creating a very basic block out I then started to experiment with the block out. The lion was a little bit too thin from the front, so I made him wider and also experimented with adding a mane and I even moved the paws to create a more interesting shape, as in the first design they were spread apart but the design seems to flow better and appear more realistic with the paws meeting in the middle at the front slightly. I also tried experimenting with a circular base, as I had the idea that along with the head being moveable, the base could also rotate, giving more coverage and functionality.

I have noticed something wrong with my model however, there is no where for the ammo to be stored and ejected, which is something that I need to look in to this following week, as I don't want it to be too obvious that it is there, but it still has to be animateable and believable; if I place them at the bottom of the stand, this is probably too far away from the barrel and wouldn't make sense, so I need to take this into consideration and find the most appropriate place for me to place this instead.

At first I wasn't quite sure of how this project was going to go, as I have previously mentioned I am not the biggest fan of guns. But I am now quite looking forward to this project and am curious of what I will be able to achieve from this unconventional idea. Hopefully it will function correctly but I have a feeling there are modifications that will have to be made to the blueprints. I am hoping to create the low poly version of this model in zbrush, and then bake it down to low poly.