Adaptation Part B - Experimenting with Style and Clothing Thumbnails

I tried changing the style of the character, by caricaturing him a bit....stretching the likeness of the top three actors, I'd like to see as Robert Neville; these were, Ben Stiller, James Stewart and Jason Segel.

I also did a few thumbnails, testing to see what clothes he might wear...I put the clothing thumbnails adjacent to the heads that fit the body type. so Jason Segel heads are from A-C and 1-4 are his clothing thumbnails

  

In terms of style, I like the cell shaded tone of games like Borderlands and the Walking Dead tell tale game. The short animation Black Water Gospel , made me want to have this very cartoonish feel in terms of design but realistic in terms of the tone, at the end of the day Robert Neville is the last of the human race, it's actually quite a depressing story which pretty much describes the end of civilization as we know it and a birth of these Vampire like creatures.

Maps Part 10 and 11 - Sheild and Look Development

NOTE: I didn't model the sword. I downloaded a model to practice texturing...

Maps Part 8 - Diffuse Maps - Wood and Metal

Adaptation Part B - Casting Robert Neville

Casting Robert Neville was the first step to figuring out his design, he's described as a 36 year old man with blue eye, but in the book he's a man who gone through a transformation, before the pandemic he was a normal average family man and he had to adjust to his environment, I tired to look at characters who encapsulate the average man, but had an edge to them or a look which shows they're perfectly capable of holding their on.  

This world would be set 20 years in the future and with fashion always looking back for innovation I looked back to 70's and a little further for some colour palette and clothing designs.

Maps Part 9 - Diffuse Maps - Fabric Flag

Maps Part 7 - Diffuse Maps - Rope

Maps Part 5 - Diffuse Maps - Stone Base

Maps Part 6 - Diffuse Maps - Stone Pillars

Adaptiation Part B - How the Zombie Virus could spread

In a stem cell research facility a bereaved staff attempts to bring back his wife, he uses an evolved version a parasite that controls animals to their death to control his wife to act as if she were hman. After she had been reanimated she attacked her husband, he didn't know for the parasite he had created to complete it's life cycle it needed to merge with another Human brain.

How it Spreads

On impact (bite) the parasite duplicates itself, to attack the other human. during the attack one of the duplicates moves to other host infecting it indefinitely.

Adpatation Part B - Thumbnails

The Story of the Robert Neville I'll be working on exists 20 years in the from now, so I thought I'd briefly look at what the world could be, I touched on technology by look at how cars could change. I'd also imaging city spaces would be more dense.

Adaptation Part B - An Apocalypse 20 years from now

Looking back at the source and identifying it as story of a dystopian earth; I wanted to go further into the future and situate my adaption of the book (I Am Legend). I was looking into retro futurism, but in the process started to loose sight of what the book was actually about....moving away from the source material.

Every movie iteration of the I Am Legend book sets the apocalypse around the time the film was released, like the book the story takes place 2-3 years after the outbreak. In my adaption, I'd place the beginning of the apocalypse 20 years from now.

What could cause the dehumanization of civilians

Neurogenesis
This is the process by which neurons are generated, it's responsible for populating the brains with neurons, which is the most important part of the brain, without neurons the brain wouldn't be able function as it should, in essence it'll just be a tumor. in 2006 a pathway through which steam cells can create neurons was discovered, it is already possible to regrow the brain of dead patients, if they were able to put that dead body in a state of suspended animation, it'd very much represent the idea of a Zombie as we know them today. Reanimation research found in max-planck-gesellschaft website suggests that one of the problems with reanimating a corpse is that it kills the cortex, leaving the corpse with basic motor functions (walking, running) and primitive instincts (survive, kill)

Nanobots
These are microscopic robots who can build or destroy anything inside our bodies. Scientist ahave already fused silcone chips to a virus creating a type of nano-cyborg. this cyborgs can opretae for up to month after the death of the victim. It wont be long till nanobots can be inserted into the brain to set up neural connections replacing damaged ones; in the hands of the wrong person someone can rewire your brain, and your way of thinking.

Brain Parasites
Toxmoplasmosa gondi is a parasites that infects rats, this takes over the rat's brain and it's primary goal is to be inside a cat, so it intentionally moves the rat to where the cats are, half of the popluation on earth are already infected with toxoplasmosa, though this doesn't have the same brain control reaction as it does in a rat, it only takes a more advances version of the parasite to make us want "braaaiiiiiinnnnsss"

Neurotoxins
There are various poisons which can render a human "dead like"(slowing your bodily functions drastically), and an alkaloid toxin can bring these victims back to life in a tance like state with no memory, but still able to perform simple tasks. This already happend in Haiti, where the word zombie originated from.

There are many possible ways a vampire/zombie outbreak can happen 20 years from now, it could be an accident...created while trying to save humanity, which will be ironic because in the book the "evolved" humans end up wanting to kill Robert Neville, so we start the Apocalypse and wipe our whole race out single-handedly, or it could be an attack from life form on other planets...like maybe lifeforms from Jupiter's Moon, Europa.

Maps Part 4 - Base Diffuse Maps

Stone Base 2048

Wood Base 300dpi

Maps Part 3 - Ambient Occlusion Maps

Adaptation Part B - Direction and Influence Maps

In terms of direction, I believe I found a starting point. The game'll be a survival game themed as though it was from an 80's action film, I initially thought taking it down a more kid friendly root and have the main character as a kid genius; changing the whole mood of the adaptation.

I stumbled across something while researching called Retro-futurism, it's pretty much the future envisioned through the eyes of someone from as far back as the 1960's. A main thing I wanted to do seeing as I Am Legend has dystopian themes was to have it set in the future and a retro future zombie game sounds different enough it kind of moves away from genericism.

...and here's my current Inflence Map

....and initial doodles

Adaptation Part B - Aim

I will be Adapting Richard Matheson's I Am Legend novel. This will be a character design project where I'll be recreating the main character in the book (Robert Neville) for a game.

Text to Character Design for Games
All this means is after I've chosen what type of game is, and engine it'll be built in...theoretically, the final product should follow the normal restrictions; treating it like a real product going out to consumers. for example considering Polygon count, games have evolved since Half Life 2, where it had 2500-5000 triangles per character, current Xbox 360 games usually have characters with about 5000-7000 triangles, this varies with the type of game because depending on how many characters would be onscreen at once, in some cases the Polygon count will have to be reduced.

Before jumping into Modelling and Rigging the main character my tasks are to find out:

Who is Robert Neville
Though I'll be recreating Robert Neville, the model wouldn't be a direct representation of the character in novel; in the book and films, the key idea is Robert Neville is last MAN Alive, the story shows a dystopian future, Neville's character represents the last of humanity. Deciding on who he really is, and the tone of the story would is a starting point for this project

What are the Vampires like, how does it spread
The book describes Vampire like creatures roam the streets at night, they really represent the death of Humanity in this dystopian world, it'll be interesting to have a form of back story as to why they exist what caused the outbreak and what do they look like, what are they're traits.

What does his set up/Lair look like
Neville spends a lot of time in this house, in all movies he stays in the home he had before the outbreak

Video Infographic - The History of Zombies

It's a little over the time limit, but I did my best to cut it down...

The Making of: The History of Zombies

Video Infographic - Title Page and Final Assets

Video Infographic - Zombie Line Up

For the last section I decided to get the Zombie transform into a Human slowly...instead of the complicated section I planned in the thumbnails stage where I would have had the silhouette of the zombie filled with things like rocks falling and waves of water to show the environmental disaster but I decided against it. I'm still working on the final section, and the voice actor's sorted...