Samurai Robot: Pre-Production

I decided for one of my projects that I wanted to produce a stylised character. I was in the repetition of producing props and vehicles and decided that I needed to show that I can also change my style of modelling and also show I am capable of producing characters. I was deciding between producing a hyper realistic samurai or Mechanical character, I wanted to try and stay with hard surface elements but wanted to show a variety of surfaces and textures during this piece.

I have a passion for hard surface modelling and wanted to replicate armour details and decided to try and design a concept mixing elements form traditional Samurai armour with a mechanical elements. There was another class member (a good friend) and we both decided we wanted to do a samurai character. I decided in order for there to be less competition between our two project to change my design to a robotic character with samurai influences.

As a start to the project I decided to research a variety of classical armour types and focussed into the samurai armours.

The pre-production of the project can be accessed from the link below ( Caution Spoiler Alerts):

Samurai Pre-Production PDF


I wanted to try and portray an underdog sort of character and reflect an unassuming appearance. I wanted the armour to create a sense of mystery about the character and also to reflect the hidden potential of the character. Samurai armour was very glorious and decorative and yet and crated a sense of power, I wanted to take inspiration from certain elements such as wrist and leg guards, shoulder pads, and assets, but to tone them down from being decorative, and more worn.

I looked into futuristic armours and more in depth into Mech designs. I found that Mech designs followed a very similar pattern and that I needed to create a slightly more original design or risks it looking like a modified version of a Mech character.

I decided that I wanted to keep humanistic elements to my design, a sort of android appearance. I developed a premise for the character as I thought this would help focus the character and perhaps help me clarify what exactly I wanted to produce. I had and idea but it needed polishing.

After I had worked out a story I found it easier to think how the character would work an feel to the audience, and I went back and re-searched elements further and then decided to concept some ideas.

 One thing I wanted to avoid, was to make the deign too heavily Samurai influenced, and to make it look like a lesser version of something that existed. I tried to keep the inspiration subtle and to work it into the design rather than juxtaposition objects and hope for the best. I played with a variety of ideas and played about with the amount sci-fi / samurai influence I put into each design.
 I decided to try and create a character that the audience could sympathise with so exaggerated the eyes and proportions of features  to make the character look younger, and this would to help reflect the underdog theme to the character.
 I narrowed down the character and decided to block out features as something that works in 2d will not always be achievable in 3d and will not always work as well. I decided to block out features and play about and tweak the design.

Once I was satisfied with proportions and  general fell of the piece I decided to go back and look at what weapons and assets I wanted to include. As I developed the premise for the character to be stranded in a western setting I decided to take a spin on the samurai katana and developed a gun sword as well as a more futuristic katana. I took influence form StarWars lightsaber pommels and looked in to sawed off shotguns with under mounted blades.

I decided that I wanted to try and keep the theme quirky and and yet try and hit upon the robotic android feel, the final textured gun will have a engraved patterns and details that relate to the character in a similar way that the Japanese did with their flint lock pistols.This detail will be sculpted into the base meshes in Z-Brush but I will take a majority of the details into the software in order to get the desired feel.

After finishing off the the test weapons I decided to play about with the belts and tassets ( the man skirt things) and I felt the need to add a rice paddock hat I liked the way it did help towards the samurai feel I think this needs a little more work to make it feel samurai like but still link with the robotic theme.

I found it easier to block out details and check scales my modelling as opposed to drawing turnaround sheets, however I did concept prior to modelling and always research and design before jumping into modelling.

There are  few areas I am going to revisit before finalising the design but I feel confident after the design is unwrapped and textured it will look more credible and convey the themes I desire.

There are a lot of organic shapes to unwrap as well as a mixture of hard surfaced details this is going to take a while to unwrap and lay out properly.

Let the fun begin and I will update when finished :) 

Please feel free to crit and comment, as always any feedback is greatly received.