Senior Capstone Project Progress: Pre-Production

I finally came around to buying the models and props that I needed for my animation project. In this blog, I'll go over my items and why I chose them.

To begin with, some explanation of what I'm doing. Gist Echno: Sector 1 is the title of my animation. It takes place in the city the title is named for. The city housed the headquarters of a advanced weapons technology firm called Aegis Technologies. In trying to develop AI-based robotic infantry, the company instead unleashed a mechanical army whose primary target is humanity. Several years have passed since the initial fighting, and the city is barren. A few pockets of humans still struggle to survive, and the short will tell a quick story of one man.

To summarize, the animation involves advanced weaponry, a dystopian city, a post-apocalyptic setting, and robots. To accomplish these parameters, I did a considerable amount of research, budgeting, and planning. Sadly some of that went out the window when it came time to buy, but I think the decisions I made on the fly will inevitably keep the project going and allow for more creativity later on.

First we'll go over the setting, Gist Echno itself. The city's design is very modern, with a futuristic Japanese feel to it. It embodies the ideas of efficiency in the cities design over the visual appeal, but this in turn gives the city its own unique look. The product itself is linked here and here's a picture of what part of the city will look like:

Next I'll go over character models. A problem I was coming across was trying to find a way to get multiple characters in my project without going horribly over budget. Thankfully I found some items that gave me simple solutions. The way this project will work is there is a male model, we'll call him Bob for now. Now Bob is, for all intents and purposes, naked when you bring him into the software, so you need to give him clothes. In this case, I went with advanced combat armor. Linked here and shown here:

             

Now this armor is pretty impressive, and it comes with a few different color variants and helmet mods. Considering that I can bring in multiple Bob's and dress them up differently, I can have a lot of different characters all based off of Bob. So Bob can look like a couple of different guys, but none of it really looks very machine like. Thankfully, I found a variant made for this armor setup, linked here and shown below:

Bit of a difference with this one right? The pack also came with three other variants, so using just Bob as a base, I can make an entire robot army. I felt like among all of the models I'd have available, this one would be the easiest to write as a machine with the right sound effects and mannerisms.

There were other options for this project, but I think I picked the best ones not only for this project, but also for later projects, which is just as important in this case because I'm paying for the items!

By combining the futuristic setting with the advanced and machine-looking combat armors, I will achieve the feel and ambiance that I set out to with this project.