Extreme Makeovers! | Vailias | MegaMan X

[Vailias]

Extreme Makeovers! | Vailias | MegaMan X
http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/competitions/uploaded_thubnails/33-game-concept-art-917-1182125459-thumb.gif

Vailias has entered the competition!

[Vailias]

Alrighty.
I was thinking of doing a re-design of this guy anyway, then this competition showed up and gives me an excuse to do so.

I'm planning to take X from anime to "next-gen" hardcore (concept wise at least, 3d wise later)

Take a few parts Casshern (megaman anyway), a little bit of MGS4 raiden, with a sprinkling of gundam and away we go.
ref
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/casshan2.jpg
ref
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/untitled111.jpg
more ref

http://s36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/

[Klockwerk]

Nice reference pieces. Should be cool trying to incorporate those in your character.

[Centrifuge]

have to admit, the moment I read the new comp brief I saw this one coming, lol. This is another one I see as a difficult choice [reason I like it]. Mega Man is nothing but dozens of variations of the same character. Hence, Mega Man becomes Mega Man "X!". He has had crazy caches of new weapons, powers, colors, suit designs/ redesigns. It will be very interesting to watch and see if this one can show us something very new and unique, while still holding true to the origins of greatness that is MEGA MAN. gl!

[Vailias]

oh I plan to delight. :D
X had to get taken, I've dug the character more than the original megaman since he came out. He's one of the first 3d models I've ever made with a program that could only distort primitives. (loads of fun that)
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/PreliminarySketch.jpg
preliminary sketch to get a feel for how I'm going to take the character

[Vailias]

I always was bothered by how megaman's hand just magically disappeared when he wanted to start shooting. After a few thoughts on internal storage, and fold away hands etc, I think I hit upon a solution.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/handnarm.jpg

also I wanted to figure out how to do humanoid motion but with the most efficient mix of artificial muscle and existing mechanical technology. internal space was a concern, as you've got to fit the micro fusion plant, wiring, and coolant systems in somewhere.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/skeletal.jpg

[Frozan]

cool concepts. always a good idea to figure out the mechanics behind it.

[Vailias]

more demicrappy sketches
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/Back_BaseArmor.jpg
back exterior
And because I kept feeling like there was too much of the original in my design, I did some overly quick sharpie sketches on break.
We've got MegaMan Unreal Tournament X, weird centurion x
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/CrapSketch1.jpg
Mega Man-of-War, and a more front lower half structural sketch. I like the feet, not sure about the legs.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/CrapSketch2.jpg

I'm gonna try and put in some real time this weekend on it and nail down a final direction.

[Vailias]

So slow progress so far, but I think I've nailed down how the base X is going to go.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/finalDesign.png

I'm going to draw more from the bulkier sharpie doodles above for the fully armored X, which.. well just has to be done as part of the same character. ;)

[StefanH]

I think your progressing pretty sweet. I suggest giving him bigger hand and feet, stylize them! Especially the feet are tiny. Your gun design looks promising.

[Vailias]

Thanks. :D I have little aspiration to win this comp, 2d isn't my strongest area and some serious talent has come to the table (as always), but I'll try and make a show of it.

I agree on the feet.. and legs. I looked at this again and the feet and legs are just far too small. I think I got my proportions off in the smallness of the sketchbook. (doublechecks) yeah actually that scan is larger in screenspace than the original sketch.
I Don't want to go too far with the stylized proportions, likely a bit more bulk with his armor upgrades on, but I'm wanting to stay closer to human proportions with the basic X.

[Vailias]

I think I've got this worked out.
Rather than having the upgrades just affect a specific part of him, I'm thinking of having them be upgrades for a certain purpose, speed increase, in movement and firing, targeting accuracy and perhaps number of enemies that can be targeted at the same time, firepower upgrade, and just normal armor protection.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/MegaMan_X_ReDesign/SidebySide.jpg

thoughts?

[sinz]

Sweet design.

C&C:
From what I can see I would redesign his old leg armors since you've seem to have stylized his forearm armor which looks nice btw.

[brian_h]

Nice work..but man with some many upgrades you've made it tough on yourself. To some degree it also seems to fight against you...6 versions of something that are derivative might come off weaker than 1 really strong final version. My 2 cents...great work though.

[EVIL]

I have to agree with brian_h, you only have a week, in that time you have to do front top and side views of all your versions.

Also none of your upgrades seem to hit the mark telling me the upgrades are useful. For example the speed upgrade, you added the most armor on this one (not counting the fully "upgraded" version ¹) and does nothing on the legs. In bipedal motion the legs are the thing that give speed, so upgrade those and make them look damn powerful. Coming to the point that basically none of your upgrade designs look functional at this point in time.

I'd say think this trough and decide if you have the time and effort to spend on giving it useful looking upgrades that fit the design (concept art isn't only about making it look cool).
Or just focus on a cool traditional and normal megaman we all know an love, with a powerful design in an iconic megaman pose.

1 - Back in the days when sprite characters ruled, it alowed a concept artist a certain freedom of not having to make things look functional. But these days when everything has to be modeled and animated in order to make a character look and feel alive you have to be damn sure to spend time on functionality, like if some armors are really functional and are not in the way of character movement, like in real life for example.

[Vailias]

Thanks guys,

Evil and Brian: While I know that just one design could be more powerful than multiple upgrades, the upgrade system is such an integral part of the X series that to exclude it would feel just wrong to me.

From a gameplay perspective I wanted to merge the ideas of the part upgrades of the original X, with the full suit upgrades of the later X games. This way each of the upgrades could be worn by themselves or in combination for different styles of play, or levels of challenge (beat the game with just the targeting upgrade, etc)

This isn't the final pose by any means, I just needed a front shot since I have the back pretty solidly designed in my mind, but the front and just how the upgrades would go together wasn't quite as clear.

Your commentary does show that I'll need to be more illustrative in the final pieces as to just what each piece in the upgrade does.

Here's how I'm picturing the upgrades working.

The speed upgrade adds just a little armor, basically equivalent to a BMX chestplate, so it alters the look but doesn't do much for protection. It adds supplemental generators to the arm cannons for a higher fire rate, a secondary generator in the torso and a network of higher power distribution circuits to facilitate faster joint movement and what you can't see is in the back there are calf and shoulder mounted pop up/out dash boost jets. The functionality would be similar to the falcon armor in X4 but without the crappy weapon, and lower flight time. The armor added elsewhere is used for streamlining X to help add a little to the aerodynamics.

The Armor upgrade is just heavy armor. It slows X down a bit in all respects, but this is canceled if you wear the speed upgrade with it. I wanted it to look beefy like the UT2k7 players, but still work with the other upgrades.

The firepower upgrade adds generators to the legs and chest along with a supplemental coolant system venting out the chest. It also adds extra emitters to the arm cannons to actually create the larger buster shot, the ability to fire from both arms at once, and a bit of shoulder armor to protect those important arm cannons.

The targeting upgrade adds no armor, but it does add 2 additional camera eyes to the head, a pair of wide spectrum frequency analyzers to the "ears", motion sensors to the shoulders and an advanced fire control targeting and threat detection AI to the chest, and multiple targeting sights to the arm cannons (laser range-finders etc). The game play effects of this are the ability to target multiple enemies at once and fire at them in sequence, ala robotech's missile system, or the landstalker tank in ratchet: deadlocked. Also the suite of instruments gives the player some degree of threat detection/ spider sense, that can be implemented as a combination of on screen display and or autododge or a reaction based bullet time, combined with the speed upgrade this is more effective of course.

Fully upgraded is just all the upgrades stacked. Where he'd move at about the same speed as he does from the start, but can dash and air-dash a bit, while moving an a generally superhuman manner.

One thing that bothered me about the original X series is how much lip service is paid to X being really powerful, especially when he's been upgraded, but he always seems very very vulnerable against even basic enemies.
So if I were to re-design the character (and gameplay) I want the player to feel as if they are just terribly superior to anything on the battlefield (individual enemies are easy to kill, but there are lots of enemies), and the boss robots should stand out as being a serious challenge rather than just an enemy with a bigger life bar.
Sort of god-of-war like in some aspects.