The sun is shining outside and the world finally seems to have been repopulated as I am reminded that I live next to a school. The kids are delighted to have finished their work for the day and so am I.
For the last week or so I have worked hard to finish a model I started ages a go but never got further then blocking out the torso.
It was originally intended to be an entry into this year Dominance War competition but I never got beyond designing the thing due to the work load at uni.
As part of my gearing up for the third year I decided it would be a good idea to get some Maya practice in and I saw no better way to do so than modelling this bad boy.
The design originally took a lot from insect physiology but over time changed to resemble those of us with endoskeletons.
The main design ethos however has been a HR Geiger inspired sexuality. This is supposed to be a nightmare creature and to this day I still think the Geiger's designs for the original Alien are the scariest monsters ever made and it made a point about the subtle and overt use of sexuality in the design.
The elongated head, the protruding mouth, The phallic objects erupting from its back. Even the reproduction method of a good ol' face rape all contribute, I feel, to its innate horror and the feeling of discomfort you feel just looking at it.
Granted the shock of the alien has been reduced as it is now a massively well known and established icon but i feel the theory is still sound. Although when considering HR Geiger in any sense it's worth remember he's a massive tosser.
To that end my design has enhanced sexual features. Once rigged I also wish the give the creature an extremely effeminate gait and pose.
The brief for the Dominance war also dictated that my design would be a cyborg. As a result I envisioned a robotic skeleton motivated and held together by organic muscles. I wanted the muscular structure to be recognisable but at the same time I needed it to look different, unique whilst avoiding it appearing as if I had tried to give it a human structure and just gotten it wrong.
This is the reason for the abdominal muscles and pectorals running down the back.
The first pass on the model finished. I intend to take the model into Mudbox or Zbrush and add some greater depth to the details. The high poly version will be for the normal maps as the finished version of this model I intend to be a low poly, game mesh. So I will be remodelling this again with a poly limit of about 10,000 tri's.
For now however I'm going to chill out and plan my next project, A set of test rigs for a transforming helicopter.
