LEAFCUTTER Models

Character Models

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These 3D models were made for our class project LEAFCUTTER, and were all created within the span of two months. For this project, I was the Art Lead and sole Character Artist/Animator. I was tasked with establishing the style of the game, creating all character assets and guiding the team in ensuring the game maintains a cohesive visual fidelity.

I went with low-poly humanoid insects with segmented limbs. sketched all the characters at once so that they have a consistent style. With the entire process in mind, The premise lent itself towards models that were comprised of simple shapes that were easy to texture and rig, while still giving me the creativity to make memerable designs with expressive animations. I used techniques such as strong silhouettes and assigning each face to a color palette rather than using texture maps. These are techniques I learned from this GDC Talk by Ethan Redd. Another thing to note is that these characters have no feet, limited fingers and many of them can fly. All of these design features played a role in reducing the time it took to animate these characters significantly.

The full process involved 4 different programs: Procreate, ZBrush, Blender, and Unreal Engine 5
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      1) Sketching Concepts in Procreate
      2) Modeling in Z-Brush
      3) UVing and Texturing in Blender
      4) Rigging and Animation in Blender
      5) Implementation in Unreal Engine

Animations

This video demonstrates each character with all of their unique animations. While these character models were passed on to another programmer to implement in the final game, I programmed my own character controllers for each character for demonstration purposes. I animated the player character attack animation to be more snappy, while I animated the enemy characters to have more drawn out anticipations to telegraph their attacks. I learned these animation principles this GDC Talk by Ian Cofino.

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