For the final term of year 1 we were given the ability to do almost anything we could imagine. wether that be an idea of an alien to a game world. This would be a great way to expand on out portfolio and improve any of our skills that we have been working on.
My Idea
After reading through the document I had thought of the idea of what a humanoid alien creature would look like if they lived in an environment similar to earth but instead were able to live underwater as well. By using ai image generators I had come up with some ideas on how they might look. I felt that being both a land and sea creature they’d need some sort of fur coat to keep them warm and so I went with the idea of a green coat to help them camouflage in the wild. I also felt that maybe they have a different form of respiration when swimming and so I thought of the idea of two tubes, similar to that found on the sides of the xenomorph from Alien, that would provide for an easy access for air.
I first began with the creation of the head as I knew it would be the most detailed part. I sculpted out the basic appearance of the head by adding eye sockets, a jawline and position for the nose. then I added two simple eyes as well as two translucent tubes on both sides of the head which joined at the mouth to create an illusion of something like a snorkel. Then i went into the making of the nose. i began with two UV spheres and slowly sculpted the nose making it look similar to that of a humans but having the nostrils be more pointy and arched. Finally I added the hair particles and ensured as much as possible that it would not clip through the other features of the head. After several attempts and long loading times I was able to complete the hair after a couple days due to my Blender constantly crashing from overloading the software. As I carried on creating the alien, I started making the body by adding a subdivision surface modifier as well as a mirror modifier which was very quick to complete. Below is my progress.
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The main issue with the body, however, was the hair. I noticed that my hair was rendering inside the mesh and not outside it and after a couple hours of looking for solutions on the internet someone had recommended that I press ctrl+N to re-mesh the object, by doing this the hair began to extrude the body from the outside instead of being within the body.
Finally, I began adding a rig to the creature. This way the model wouldn’t just be a still figure and could be used as an asset whether that be in a game or a movie or just an animation.
Originally I had plans to make a walk cycle for the alien but my rig wasn’t working as intended and refused to be altered for an unknown reason. I had began the cycle but was unable to complete it due to complications covered prior.
To conclude this term I know I could have done much better but due to the particle effects taking up a lot of cpu power I was unable to run Blender efficiently and get my ideas all across.
