Steampunk Wild West Project

Steampunk Wild West Project

This is a project for one of my 3rd year university modules. Our task was to design a bounty hunter character, a weapon of our choice and an environment mood piece for the bounty hunter's base of operations for an open world RPG game.

For this project I wanted to go for a steampunk wild west theme because I am drawn to the steampunk genre and thought it would be interesting to design a series of deliverables for a project set in an alternate version of the wild west United States. 

Initial Character Silhouettes

To start the production of my project, I began by sketching some initial character silhouettes to begin exploring shape language - I wanted this character to be a villainous bounty hunter so I tried to incorporate sharp edges into the silhouettes where I could. I was also at this stage trying to play around with the bounty hunter's personality by posing them - would they be serious, would they be confident, would they be outgoing etc.  I also tried to explore the characters status in the form of the clothing they wear. 

Refined Character Silhouettes

I took my favourite designs and then started to create some variations of those silhouettes. This time I was playing around with the height because in my initial round of thumbnails the height of the my character silhouettes were all fairly the same. I also tried making the silhouette look more unique and distinct by adding attachments to the weapons, extra bits of clothing accessories.

Character Thumbnail Iterations

Moving forward I then took my favourite silhouette designs and started to create a series of thumbnails. When making these thumbnails I really wanted to communicate the idea that this bounty hunter is wealthy, confident and outgoing. 

Hair And Face Thumbnail Iterations

While iterating on thumbnail designs I was also doing some face and hair thumbnail sketches trying to find a hairstyle that was both fashionable while still remaining practical. I took particular inspiration from the Gibson Girl style of haircut which was popular during the 19th century amongst other hair style.

Colour Variations 

At this point in development of my character I had chosen my favourite thumbnail design (number 19). I then started to create a series of colour variants. I wanted to go for more saturated colours (but did not limit myself to only saturated colours) to emphasise her wealth, because the wealthy of the time would be able to afford more vibrant and colourful clothing. I liked the idea that she would also wear more vibrant colours in order to stand out from the crowd, which is not something you'd expect from a bounty hunter - you would more expect them to want to blend in, which shows her confidence in her ability to acquire her bounty targets. 

I ended up going with my 3rd colour variant because I believe it is the most well balanced. I liked the vibrant red dress because red is commonly associated with danger and confidence/bravery.

Bounty Hunter Character Sheet

Here is the final character concept sheet for my bounty hunter with turn around orthographic views and callouts of some of her accessories. I went for design 19 out of my thumbnails because I thought it was the best balance between showing off that she was wealthy while having her outfit be practical. I did not like the pose of design 19 so I decided to take forward the pose of one of my initial silhouettes, silhouette design 6. I believe it was the most fitting for a highly confident villainous bounty hunter. 

Bounty Hunter Weapon Thumbnails

 I was also thumbnailing and designing my bounty hunters weapon alongside designing the character. I thought what better way of showing that my bounty hunter is not only wealthy but views their job as a sport by having them wield a big game rifle like an elephant rifle.

Bounty Hunter Weapon 3D Base

Bounty Hunter Weapon Sheet

Once I had chosen my favourite thumbnail design (which was design number 3) I then jumped into blender and created a 3D base and applied some very basic materials to the model and I then rendered it out to be painted. 

I coated the rifle barrel with filigree and gold accents and had the stock and other wooden elements of the weapon covered in carvings.

Environment Mood Piece Thumbnail 3D Bases

For the bounty hunter's base of operations, I really enjoyed the idea of them travelling around in an armoured train. I had the thought that maybe this bounty hunter is perhaps a main villain for the open world RPG game this was meant to be for, and the player would be hunted by my bounty hunter and followed from town to town by her in her train.

I wanted to focus on the interior of the train showing the cart in which my bounty hunter lives in because I like to create interior environment concepts. However I did not want to close myself off too early idea wise, and  wanted to see if I could show off the bounty hunters base of operations from the exterior.

I created some very primitive 3D block outs in Blender. I was trying to both iterate on the design, and mood. I could take these into Procreate and paint over them to play around with the mood and colours. Using 3D not only sped up my workflow but also gave me block outs that I could then go back to and flesh out once I had chosen a design I liked. 

Environment Mood Piece Thumbnails

Environment Mood Piece Rendered Scene 3D Bases & Mist Pass

I picked thumbnail design number 2 because I liked the layout of the interior and I also thought it had the strongest mood. So I then went into blender and created a detailed 3D base which could then be exported and painted over in Procreate. I rendered out 2 versions of my 3D base, one with glass in the train windows and one with out. I wanted to show the train being on the outskirts of a town, however the primitive town block out that I made disappeared whenever I enabled the glass texture that I set up in the train cart windows so I decided to render out 2 versions of the scene and then cut out and paste the town into the 1st 3D base.  

I also rendered out a mist pass that I could then overlay when painting my scene to add an extra layer of depth.

I modelled all but one asset within the scene - you can find the models I made for the furnishings arranged on a sheet further below. I used a Sketchfab model for the sofa because I couldn't figure out how to model a chesterfield sofa properly. I will include a link in order to give credit. 

Chesterfield sofa model credit - https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/couch-chesterfield-2-person-v2-68ec00320b6049228788cc4e5ad82fe2

Environment Mood Piece 3D Assets

Environment Mood Piece Final Concept

Thanks for taking a look at my work!

If you like my work and want to see more then you are welcome to take a look at my portfolio over at Artstation and feel free to connect with me over on LinkedIn!

- My Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/monochi

- My linkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-may-537ba9293