Concept Art for Starfish Island

Meet my Seagull for Starfish Island. His/her name is...Gullah.. I decided that just this moment.Throwback...Anyway!

Here is the original concept art I worked on. Besides the art I had to make Gullah's boxy proxy models. The concept was a challenge, cuz it had to look extra cartoony, but I tend to veer towards a realistic aesthetic. So I punched out some vectors and abstracted the original look. My instructor encouraged me to keep pushing towards a simplistic and yet iconic design. So he recommended I study the Finding Nemo design for a gull.

 Later he advised that I combine the two and make Gullah my own. And so I tried my best!

I had issues with UV normal map seams.. They were baaaad. And then I realized that was because the low poly model needed a lot more help before it could match my ZBrush sculpt for reference. So I had to make changes to his UV's  (really Brian helped like crazyyyyy!!) and recover from being UV-cut-tool-happy... Changes to UV's explain why the color map is so messy. And yet the colors still mapped well. I just know how to do a lot better next time. Going to learn retopology with help of high res meshes, this winter break.

Very happy with Gullah, we've shared great times. Still he looks way better in Unreal Engine 4, alongside our island's other assets.

My trees were worked quite a bit from these initial sketches. A Malayan palm/coco and a fiji fan palm. I really wanted to make trees. And this was an awesome experience. Wasn't as hard as I thought it would be! UV's weren't a problem at all. I just had to learn a little more about transparency maps. And the transition between maya and unreal engine 4--in terms of transparency..

Color maps! Much neater this time. I stretched the UV's to make one of the palms taller and warped though. Won't do that next time.Will rework the geometry and UV's for that.

Here is the gradient I used to apply wind to only the leaves of my trees! With UE4 wind effect node.