Weekly Drill - BackBling

To start this weekly drill, I researched different skins to base my backbling on. I explored 4 different designs; magical mushrooms (Madcap and Hemlock), sea creatures (Starfish), fluffy monsters (Guff) and galaxies. I completed concepts for the sea creatures and magical mushrooms.  I researched further into the materials for texturing ingame. 

I modelled a jellyfish and mushroom backbling in zbrush to create initial designs. I used the basic body model from Zbrush to display the proportions of the design. 

I chose the mushroom design to model further as it has a more cohesive design.

Throughout the texturing stage, I edited the colours to give more contrast and character to the design. The eyes of the mushroom were referenced from another skin I chose to research (Guff), and the mushroom designs from the Shield pickup item. I initially wanted to design multiple smaller mushroom creatures but decided to create one large one to be like the pet back blings. This way I could rig and animate a larger mushroom with ease within the time limit. The rig was easy to make and weight paint, so I rigged the surrounding mushrooms too, in order to give the model more movement. 

The final design is a Pet Backbling with multicoloured mushrooms where the tree hollow acts as the backpack storage.