BMET Games - Connor Byrne: 2015

In order to be able to keep track of my work and monitor my progress in addition to the blog we made a project plan that allows me to see what specific tasks I have and need to do. If I have done them I can manage and keep track of things I may be missing and highlight what I have done as I go along to keep in check of my work.

To better grasp not only the idea and theme of my character but the narrative and story behind my character I needed to further my development. I did so with taking five robots from games and movies and then beginning to break them down with a series of questions.

Here I listed the five robots I know from movies and answered the following questions...

What learned about this technique and research was that the more you begin to understand how and why a Robot or character is the way that is it then you can better develop a story or lore and overall the look and purpose of your own character, which is really useful.

Here is the exact same system but done for Robots in games. Again this trains my mind to be able to spot fundamentals and certain elements in both Mecha's and Robots and use these in my own work. Not only this but understanding the background and lore of a character helps in understanding a characters personality, perks, traits and cons. From this I know what I'll avoid and what I could potentially use for my design work.

As part of our contextual lesson with Shiam to aid our research further in terms of story and development we had to look at how Robots work, function and are used in day to day life. We had to look at various Robotics that aided production and design as well as medical and health.

What this enabled me to do is further my knowledge in how Robots are used today so that way I can take in consideration the pros and cons of design and functionality for my own.

As with my previous project in order to start any design or creative process I needed to create and build a foundation for ideas. I did so by producing a mind map and a series of moodboards alongside it. The mindmap after a quick class discussion with Chris helped not only establish ideas but also a narrative and backstory as well, of which I found more than useful and beats my old method of brainstorming and mindmapping. In addition to this, I produced a number of moodboards that show a range of source images including humanoids, robots from both film and game and of course, Mecha's. Overall I feel as though I have good starting material.

Here is my mindmap/idea brainstorm showing the various routes I could take my idea. As mentioned after a class discussion with Chris this method and layout of mind mapping is highly beneficial purely because it almost constructs a narrative for my future design which will be pinnacle for crafting the final look and feel of my character.

This is moodboard 1 of 3. This moodboard particularly focuses on humanoids. Although at this stage I am unsure of whether or not my idea would be based from a humanoid, it doesn't hurt to have some ideas down in order to assist the design process.

This veered off into more armoured and 'power suit' type robots and mechas from film and games. Reason being is there are core components in the design of robotic armour that can be very useful to any mecha-like design. I couldn't avoid this area.

Lastly, this is a moodboard exhibiting full-blown mecha and robots. Trying to gauge the size, design, colour and impression that these create from a design and artist's viewpoint. I felt that it was essential for me to have some research for these since there are fundamentals that can be used in my design that these show. For example the broad, square and symmetrical features in the arms, head, legs and torso. This removes that organic, natural look, which I may consider.

Wednesday, 25 November 2015