PROJECT_PARAGON

What is PROJECT_PARAGON?

My Final Major Project for University, PROJECT_PARAGON is the complete collection of Concept Art and Design works for a fictional Fighting Game, taking inspiration from existing media such as the GUILTY GEAR series. 

Working on characters has been the main goal for this project, so as a result the project has a heavy focus on Character Design and its process.

In addition the project aims to cover Weapon Designing, making weapons that tailor to each of the characters in the project, alongside some Environmental Design thumb-nailing as a way to practice Photo-bashing techniques and take a dive into building the world of PROJECT_PARAGON.  

Initial Sketch Work

A series of rough character and weapon sketches, beginning to get a grip of who the characters in the project are and how this can be visually presented. Here I also start to think about the types of weapons these characters might use, and their expressive personalities. 

Also to consider was how these characters would play into a story with each other, such as Gideon and Wrench, A mechanic and his apprentice.

Figure Sketches

Having created a base to work off, the next step was to create a series of figure sketches to further test out both the looks of the characters and how they would use their weapons. For this I looked at a series of videos on the use and techniques of these Weapons as reference to get a result as accurate to reality as possible.

I originally sketched for 5 characters, however later in the project I decided to drop one of the characters due to time and to remove the weakest parts of the project early on for something stronger in the long run. 

Action/Motion Effects

Moving on from the figure sketches, I developed these further by experimenting with drawing up some visual effects to go with attack motions, like something you would see between frames in a fighting game or animation. Doing this really helps to give the characters that extra 'oomph' and power to their actions.

It was at this point I also decided to make some minor changes to the weapons, for instance playing with the idea of rocket propelled gauntlets and swapping out the katana of the skater character for a skateboard to better suit the character.

Weapon Designing

An essential part of the project was designing the weapons. These images are documented examples of where I have explored and expanded on some ideas, pushed other ideas into new and different directions, and is where I have first used photo-bashing in my concept workflow.

Developed Sketches

Bringing the figure sketches and the recent weapon designs together, I began on a series of new developed sketches. In this I thought about how i could play with perspective and posing to create some interesting gestures, taking into consideration how each character would be wielding their weapons.

When I later decided on the final colour schemes, I returned to these sketches and added this in, as is shown under each row of sketches.

Character Sheets

Moving on to the final step of the character design process is the character sheets. In these sheets are renders of each character, with quick notes that breakdown the outfit and any additions to it. Also included are turnarounds of the body, a simple side/profile view of the head, quick render of the eyes, colour variations, extra details and accessories on the design and a complete callout sheet to show the reference use.

Character 1 - Gideon the Rogue Mechanic

Character 2 - Bridget the Underground Fighter

Character 3 - Nine the Peace Keeper

Character 4 - Riley the Lambent Yōkai

Rough Render Test

The purpose of this experiment was to get one of the developed sketches from earlier, and using Blender create a mock up 3D Model to use as lighting reference for a colour render.

World Building Thumbnails

In a series of photo-bashes I have tried to flesh out what the world of PROJECT_PARAGON would look like, using each of the characters as a anchor for different possible areas. The abandoned and rustic train yards of the runaway Gideon, deep city and metro tunnels for street kid Riley, Inner Lambent City policed by Nine, and the mid-city life of boxer Bridget. 

Looking back on it, PROJECT_PARAGON has been a personal test of creating an idea and expanding it to the point that it can become a full fledged concept. This project started with just the number of characters there would be, and from that PROJECT_PARAGON has grown into something that if continued could become its own story, game, anime, mange etc. I would like to someday come back to this and build on it more, but until then thank you for checking this out and I hope you have enjoyed what you have seen.