I began working on the cat earlier than expected in the guideline as I felt it is such an important part of the entire games design that it'd be great if I could nail down atleast the proportions of the character, this would mean I'd be able to confidently design character-based scenic objects knowing the player could fit through a door, or over a narrow bridge.
After having multiple coffees I began to play around with verts in Cinema 4D trying to get a really distinct cats face before starting on a body. I produced this (below) through my many iterations of faces, and I really like how shady his eyes look and how the simple two polygon forehead almost indefinitely shows its a male cat. As much as I liked it, it wasn't suited for the main characters cat as its meant to be happy and enjoying playing the game, so I continues...
I ended up after many more iterations from the previous face, with this one. I really liked this guy, it comes across more unisex and friendly than the last. I think its something about the mouth and how the eyebrows arc downwards which give him a more sincere look. After getting peoples opinions in comparison to my other objects I'd already made I decided it still wasn't right as it was too high-poly for what I needed.
After a long process (over a week of tweaks) I ended up with this guy, the face is almost a hybrid between the two above that I have commented about. It still isn't right, it needs a lot more character (perhaps that will come through the clothes?) but I feel this is in a much better place than the faces I previously posted. Theres also talks currently about the cats casual walk being on its hind legs, and if so I will need to re-design the topology of the cat to take this in to consideration.
After having multiple coffees I began to play around with verts in Cinema 4D trying to get a really distinct cats face before starting on a body. I produced this (below) through my many iterations of faces, and I really like how shady his eyes look and how the simple two polygon forehead almost indefinitely shows its a male cat. As much as I liked it, it wasn't suited for the main characters cat as its meant to be happy and enjoying playing the game, so I continues...
After a long process (over a week of tweaks) I ended up with this guy, the face is almost a hybrid between the two above that I have commented about. It still isn't right, it needs a lot more character (perhaps that will come through the clothes?) but I feel this is in a much better place than the faces I previously posted. Theres also talks currently about the cats casual walk being on its hind legs, and if so I will need to re-design the topology of the cat to take this in to consideration.
I then placed the cat in a quick scene I mocked up with some other concept assets, and it would appear it works! The cat does have more detail than the rest of the objects, but then this is a common trait amongst all games (and its more important the player doesn't regard the character to be of a lesser quality then the rest of the game, as it something they see ALL of the time whilst playing!).
