Happy Holidays Update

Once again, it’s been awhile, but it’s just been difficult to actually sit down and push out an update.  Here it is:

Here are the final, portfolio-ready redesigns for Elly from Xenogears. I’m still not sure which one I like best, but I think they all turned out pretty well!

Thumbnails/sketches of military/Xenogears inspired outfits for Elly.

Last week also marked my return to life drawing class for the first time in quite a while. I was a little rusty at first, but I eventually turned out something decent.

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I’m Back!

It’s been forever since my last post…been a little busy with life (wife just had a baby!) but I’ve done a little sketching and painting here and there:

Some more studies of robo parts…

& a helicopter study.

After the hard surface stuff, I decided to go back to redesigning Xenogears characters, moving on from Fei to Elly Van Houten, the female protagonist from the game.

Some studies of ladies I thought would be a good match for Elly’s face and hair.

Some clothing studies

Elly moodboard

Some Elly thumbnails

WIP: Elly clothing designs; I tried to maintain certain iconic elements from the original design, mainly the bangs, the color scheme, and the somewhat futuristic military clothing

 

Robot/Mechanical Studies

As I continued in my Xenogears reboot personal project this week, I spent lots of time sketching reference material.   Having completed Fei’s redesign, I thought Weltall, his gear/mech would be an interesting challenge to redesign next.

The original Weltall design from Xenogears redrawn.  Some key features that I may or may not include in my own design: two giant rockets attached to its back along with 2 large wings, humanoid build, large feet with 3 toes, large head fin facing backwards on small head, birdlike face, broad & heavy shoulders

Weltall’s helmet somewhat resembled a samurai mask, so I did a couple of sketches to point my mind in that direction

Below are just a few mechanical leg and arm studies I did to get an idea of some of the forms I would be using in my redesign:

Fei Fong Wong Redesign

Here is Fei’s Fong Wong from Xenogears’ redesign.  As I said before, I tried to modernize his outfit and make it less…martial-artsy as the original game designers felt that his original outfit was out of place.  I’m trying to make sure I make design changes and make all of the characters and the world itself more realistic as if it were a modern-day HD game and make sure to keep this an exercise in design and keep it out of fan-art territory.

Fei, front and back

Next up: redesigning Weltall, Fei’s gear!  This will be an interesting challenge since I’m not used to designing mechs…

Xenogears Designs and More Clothing Studies

Here are some designs I had come up with for my Xenogears reboot/updated game.  This is, in order, Fei Fong Wong, Lacan, and Kim Kasim, some of the different reincarnations of Abel, aka the Contact from the current day, 500 years ago, and 4000 years ago, respectively.  I tried to base the Fei design the most on the original character from the 1998 game, giving him (a less outrageous version of) the same hairstyle and the same color scheme.  Based on some developer interviews from the time, they meant to change his outfit from the martial arts uniform and it felt out of place, so I gave him a more simple, modern outfit.  Also in those same interviews, they mentioned that Lacan was supposed to have a different outfit altogether, so I gave him a slightly different but still recognizable hairstyle and more historically East Asian clothing.

From left to right: Fei, Fei behind, Lacan, and Kim

Below are some more clothing sketches and studies, some were to help me with Kim’s clothing and others are my way of absorbing ideas for Elly’s Gebler/Solaris military uniform.

Reimagining an old IP

So since last week I’ve continued in my clothing sketches….

Strange Japanese runway fashions

Also, I’ve begun working on reimagining Xenogears (one of my favorite RPGs from back in the day) as a modern day HD IP.  They are remaking everything else, so why not?  But instead of just making fan art, I want to actually turn this into a design project, completely reinventing the designs, especially of characters, while keeping the feel/essence of the original.  Something kind of like the 2007 Transformers movie attempted to do.  Say what you will about the movies, but I thought the updated designs were pretty cool.  Some of the designs that looked fine in the old anime/PS1 graphics might look pretty crazy in an HD remake, so that will play a factor as well.

A few man-ponytail sketches…ideas for main character Fei Fong Wong’s hair

Some sketches of Fei from the original game

Some early concepts for Fei