Your wish...

...is my command, or something.

People asked, so here is the short story I wrote, based on a dream. This is the first story I've ever written, so comments and shit are welcome :)

Immortality.

Immortality. It was created in the early 21^st century. A mixture of genetic engineering, cybernetic implants, organ replacement plans and constant drug use.
At first, it was a luxury reserved for the wealthy. The cost involved was staggering. But as with all innovations, the cost fell and became affordable to almost anyone.

A new generation of people was born who, under normal circumstances, would never know death. A side-effect to this new world would soon become all too clear.

Overpopulation.

No-one would die. In an attempt to stop the world from imploding, restrictions were set in place by global governments. Strict rations, lifespan limits, mandatory life termination. Immortality became a curse.

People went underground, modifying the technology that kept them alive. Hacks and home-cooked drugs were developed to ensure continued immortality. No matter what governments used to stem the tide, people did not seem to want to die.

Death-squads were created. Hunting people down.

Civil war on a global scale was the result.

The war solved the immediate problem of overpopulation. Hundreds of millions died in a war that lasted decades.

Horrific cyborgs and robots were created across the world. Killing machine, both human and not.

It was during these Immortal Wars that the worlds first true AI went live. An intellect of vast power, it saw the strive humans and robots had put themselves in.

Considering its options, it chose the least lethal option, in hopes of preventing the destruction of mankind and itself.

A vast mainframe was created. Using the existing technology of cyborgs and combining it with the infinite computational power of quantum computation, the consciousness of most people was uploaded into it.

Willingly or otherwise.

Decades passed. A new form of living death was created in the mainframes. As a person reached a certain age, they would upload into them, their bodies scrapped and recycled. This new status quo was enforced in order to keep the planet viable and most people alive. In a way.

Tremendous resources were poured into developing new ways of traveling the stars. Human and machine alike need more room, more resources, to grow and stay alive.

The first generation of carriers were slow, bulky. Used to transport hundreds of androids and newly awoken, regrown cyborgs to nearby planets and asteroids.

It didn't take long to secure a steady flow of minerals to Earth. Colonies were created on any moon or planet that was able to support this new form of live.

In time, an almost perfect hybrid of machine and nature was created. This new form of the human race was again able to become immortal. Using the mainframes to store ones consciousness, even the destruction of a body meant little.

Within one century, the human condition had undergone several shifts. This latest incarnation would prove to be the most durable, peaceful and intelligent. War and crime soon became obsolete. Wealth, meaningless. The pursuit of knowledge, exploration and art became the main focus of most people.

A second Golden Age.

The advancement of technology never stopped. The AI merged with all machines and people, to varying degrees.

Interstellar travel was developed. Thousands of new carriers were constructed. Fleets of ships to support them. Armadas for a new Age. They flew from Sol like a locust swarm. Nearby solar systems were colonized and exploited.

New forms of life were discovered. Some intelligent and advanced, others barely qualified as live at all.

These peoples were few and far between. While some were on similar levels of advancement, most were primitive, warlike. Aggressive.

Wars would again plague the people from Sol. Without death, these wars lasted for hundreds of years. Entire races were destroyed or thrown back into their version of the stone age, all trace of their former power eradicated.

The people from Sol conquered, allied and traded.

The Age of Creation.

After eons of war, peace, creation and destruction, the people from Sol merged fully with the AI that began their journey into the Golden Age.

Other races had begun to worship them as gods. They could create planets, life, play with stars and solar systems.

They decided on a new role for themselves. They would be guardians. A force unseen, a lingering memory of greatness. Others would strive to emulate them. They would rise to greatness, following in Sol's path, eventually merging and becoming one.

Years had become moments, millennia barely noticed in their passing. The end of the universe was fast approaching. Matter would rip itself apart, regardless of it's power. The only option left to it, was leaving.

Using its monstrous power, a bridge was forced between dimensions. A new universe, with new rules, knowledge. It would be a voyage to remember.

It would endure for all time and far beyond.

Dreams...

...are amazing inspiration.

I rarely remember dreams and when I do, they are rarely worth remembering.
This dream though was very much worth remembering. In fact, it wrote it down. The dream revolved around the concept of immortality. Specifically the concept of immortality through technology and the implications it might have.

From a plaything of the rich to a universe traversing super intelligence, this dream spanned billions of years. From slightly into the future to the end of this universe. It was trippy to say the least.
What emerged was a 2 page short story, the first one I've ever written. The overarching feeling I had with this dream ,was the meaninglessness of time, once you become immortal. Time become utterly irrelevant.

The story tells a tale of civil upheaval, a quantum shift in the human condition, galactic expansion and transcendence into an entirely new form of being.

Regardless of what I end up doing with this little story, it will serve as a great source of inspiration. I also feel like I now know who authors get the ideas for truly epic books like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc.

Dreams are amazing. I wish I would remember them more often.

So...

...what am I planning to do?

Well...first up, I want to do more character design. To do this, I need to know more about the subject. I know how to create a character that is compelling to me, but what actually makes a good or interesting character?
That is something that eludes me. So far. I've been unable to find an actual good guideline or a solid set of tip or tricks to create a good solid character. Well..that is aside from the obvious.
Make it visually appealing, use rhythm, have a backstory, make it fit the world, have it be balanced, all that jazz. Those are standard design guides.

But what actually makes a character like Mario, Adam Jensen, Companion Cube or Jim Raynor interesting? Why do people care about these characters? For some of these characters those questions are for the most part fairly easy to answer. But what of the questions that are not so easily answered? There has to be a reason, some kind of underlying cause, as to why character A is successful and popular and character B is a flop or just..mehh.
Why do these characters have a following of fans while this character, which has a huge amount in common with character A, is forgotten as soon as you no longer see them?

This has puzzled me for a long time and so far, I've not found a good answer. Could be, I'm not looking in the right direction or asking the right questions. Could be, there is no clear answer. It could also be that these question have not yet been asked and analyzed sufficiently.

Because I need to specialize in a certain field for IGAD, and I love character art, I figured..."Why not create a massive list of characters and compare them on a multitude of levels"?
So that's what I am going to do. Compose a list of characters, create a list of questions, stats, characteristics, etc, and see if that data will in any way yield some kind of new insight into good character design. After that, the plan is to use this newfound information to create a completely new character and see if people find it actually compelling on several levels. 

Compiling this data will take a long time. Creating the questions, the categories, whatever, to identify different aspects of characters is going to take a long time. It will involve art theory, possibly psychology, and many more thing I have not yet thought of.

In the end, I want to compile a comprehensive guide for people to learn how to create a good, solid character in a shorter timeframe, with less trial and error.
Will this dampen creativity? No, I don't think that it will. Much as art has generic rules artists can apply to their work, these rules will be more like guidelines than actual rules.

What do I expect to gain from this effort?
Even if it turns out I learn nothing from this experiment, I will still have analyzed a great many characters. The knowledge gained from that should prove useful, regardless.
I do, however, expect this data to reveal some interesting similarities between different characters. Especially between ones where, at first glance, you would not expect such.

For now, it is bedtime.

Tank out.

Small update...

...on Kayen.

Been a long time since I posted anything here, I didnt really have anything worthwhile to post, so...yeah

but now I have updates :)

Some screenshots from Mudbox on the texturing progress. The kilt was a requirement for an assignment. the sword was always part of the idea. I feel that the addition of clothing and jewelry makes him less animalistic.

The last thing to do with the texture is to refine the necklace, as Mudbox has issues with it. After that i need to pose him and create a fitting pedestal.

Kayen...

...is taking shape :)

This is a project that I've been working on for the last two months, approximately. This blog is going to be a short rundown of what was involved in creating this guy, up to where I am now.

Kayen is being made for several reasons. The first reason being a small competion between me and a friend. See who can create the coolest character, that would be at home in a game like LoL or Smite. It could be a recreation of an existing character or you could design a new one. I designed a brand new one.
Another reason for creating is because it's fun.

The first step to creating him, was a rough sketch. Put simply, I began with a line that felt right. As I had no real restriction as to what the character should do or look like, I could do whatever I felt like.













The first line turned into a series of rough sketches. I modified these in Photoshop to create a concept that felt good. A lot of changes were made to get the right balance in the character and the right sense of scale and mass.

After that, I made a workable modelling sheet. I refined the side-view and created a front-view, based on the side-view.

After that, I made a basemesh to take into Mudbox. I soon found out that Mudbox would not be able to give it the detail i wanted it to have. So I learned how to, very basically, use Zbrush. That pushed the sculpt to new heights. The end result was a sculpt that had more detail and a higher resolution than any of my previous work.

The next step was to create a new low poly model. I also tried to create a fully edgelooped character. This should prove beneficial when I start to animate him. Getting him fully edgelooped meant using far more triangles than I had anticipated. Although not insanely high, by modern standards, it ended up being far higher then I had first envisioned.

the unwrap was created using a plugin for 3DSmax, called Xray Unwrap. Unwrapping was fairly pain free. That meant I could take the new low poly model into Mudbox and start texturing. After several experiments I now have something that works fairly well. I am still not certain I will keep the current colorscheme and I think I'll change it to something brighter.
For the sake of adding mode color and breaking symmetry, I added some warpaint and I will add more. It had proven fairly tricky to get right, as most warpaint means something. So I've had to create a very simple cultural backstory for Kayen.

All this work had taught me a great deal about character creation. A creature, like Kayen, requires much more work then I had thought. It is deeply interesting and gratifying to do, though.

It is...

...balls warm 0.o

i hate this heat. i am not built for it. i prefer 25-ish degrees, not 33 :S
i cant do anything with this heat, because i feel sticky and crappy and just...mehglsfblagh

when it wasnt this freakin warm, i was working on a new project. it's a game character for a moba game. i call him Kayen, after a scientific name of a turtle. i forgot which one tho. doesnt really matter anyway. Kayen sounds reptily and fits the character nice enough.

the high rez sculpt is done, at 18 million polygons. the low rez is about half done.

blahg! too hot :S

working on...

...Jin Roh project: take 3-ish.

the first project that i'll be doing over the summer, is recreating a character and armor from a really cool anime movie, called Jin Roh.

what i'll be making is the protagonist in his Protect Gear. basically a heavily armored SWAT-like armor, with nightvision and they go around wielding MG-42's. it's a really badass, almost iconic piece of armor. the red eyes have inspired a lot of other, maybe even more well known designs. designs like the Helghast from the Killzone-franchinse.

so far, i've made a sculpt of the head and a low poly retopo of that head. next up is to create the armor/body. it's gonna be fun and a bitch :) 

so here, enjoy screenshots of each stage :)