some robot concepts for personal project - feedback required/optional

[-Zero-]

While messing around with Autodesk Maya and Photoshop, I had the random idea of creating a transforming robot. Now you may be wondering just how the heck I'm going to pull this off. Frankly I don't know either (I do actually) but at this point I know enough about Maya to get something nice out of it. It'll take time, I don't know how long but it'll take time. Now I created some blocked-in concepts just as a way to lay down ideas and what not. Obviously I drew inspiration from sources like Gundam and what not, with some being traced over (this was done as practice, and to get some inspiration for other pieces). These were blocked down by a combination of my Bamboo tablet and the Polygonal Lasso Tool, all within Photoshop, and all in about an hour's time. These are just the building blocks of course, concept art to get my brain started. I may add more over the following days and completely disregard these or maybe I'll choose one of these and refine it further. As to what the robot will be transforming into, it's this:

 

 

Again, at this time I would ask for people not to ask me how I'm going to be pulling this off because it would take WAAAAAYYYY too much time to explain it right now, from Maya to Zbrush, driven keys to render passes, all that good stuff will be dealt at the very end (which I don't even know when it'll be). I'm thinking about possibly having a dual-transforming robot but that's stretching it right now. The following images are the images I created the past hour. Please feel free to give feedback if you wish. These are very crude but that's intentional and is part of the Concept process. Think of it as step Numero Uno (lol) of who knows how many steps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[† LimitLess]

Right idc how you pull this off, I want to see the finished product

 

Maybe you can do one for me

[lemmingllama]

I personally think that robots 1, 2, 4, and 5 are the coolest of the bunch. Although robot 4 is kinda weird, he also has charm Anyways, I look forward to more updates.

[Tsukumo Yuma]

I think Robots 2, 3, 5 and 6, are the best

 

As for having them move as to transform, is the old fasion way of animation and doind it frame by frame, and moving it a little bit at a tame out of those many frames.

[-Zero-]

Well guys, I was pretty pleased with #3. It really captures that Gundam slickness and stealth like design, not to mention it looks like a good compliment to the Koenigsegg One:1. I'm going for a slick look and this one captured it quite while. I went back and redid the legs a bit and I pulled in some details from the other models. At this point, I can now move on to the next part of the drawing process which is the long, arduous task of roughing in details and pulling in more stuff from the car itself like the wing spoiler and the wheels. From there I'll clean it up and then get it colored, after which I'll finally have a good concept to work the 3D model out of.

 

[Kouhai]

Not sure if I'm too late, as your post above me seems like you've sorted it out! But anyway, I like #2, #3, #5.

 

I think 1 and 4 feel a little pudgy to me, and 6's upper body seems to small.

[lemmingllama]

Well guys, I was pretty pleased with #3. It really captures that Gundam slickness and stealth like design, not to mention it looks like a good compliment to the Koenigsegg One:1. I'm going for a slick look and this one captured it quite while. I went back and redid the legs a bit and I pulled in some details from the other models. At this point, I can now move on to the next part of the drawing process which is the long, arduous task of roughing in details and pulling in more stuff from the car itself like the wing spoiler and the wheels. From there I'll clean it up and then get it colored, after which I'll finally have a good concept to work the 3D model out of.

 

 

Now that you have fixed the hands and feet, #3 looks much better. Seems very similar to the machines of Patlabor.

[-Zero-]

 

Well guys, I was pretty pleased with #3. It really captures that Gundam slickness and stealth like design, not to mention it looks like a good compliment to the Koenigsegg One:1. I'm going for a slick look and this one captured it quite while. I went back and redid the legs a bit and I pulled in some details from the other models. At this point, I can now move on to the next part of the drawing process which is the long, arduous task of roughing in details and pulling in more stuff from the car itself like the wing spoiler and the wheels. From there I'll clean it up and then get it colored, after which I'll finally have a good concept to work the 3D model out of.

 

 

Now that you have fixed the hands and feet, #3 looks much better. Seems very similar to the machines of Patlabor.

 

 

I went and checked out Patlabor. You're right, they do look very similar, although the head piece I have in mind will look drastically different....or not, lol. We'll see how this goes.

 

Not sure if I'm too late, as your post above me seems like you've sorted it out! But anyway, I like #2, #3, #5.

 

I think 1 and 4 feel a little pudgy to me, and 6's upper body seems to small.

 

Yeah sorry about that. I wasn't expecting to choose one so quickly but it's one of those "nail it on the first try" moments, although as you can see I went and redid the legs.

 

I think Robots 2, 3, 5 and 6, are the best

 

As for having them move as to transform, is the old fasion way of animation and doind it frame by frame, and moving it a little bit at a tame out of those many frames.

 

Yeah that's pretty much the gist of it, although it's far more complex than that. Unlike the usual hand_drawn/Flash based animations, I'm dealing with 3 dimensions here. Add to that the fact that what appears to be one object transforming is actually TWO things transforming. I'll get into greater detail later on but you can start seeing where stuff like this is hefty to make, from the modeling to rigging to texturing to rendering to compositing. It's not impossible but for a one man team, it's horrifically time consuming.

 

lemmingllama, on 28 May 2014 - 06:16 AM, said:

I personally think that robots 1, 2, 4, and 5 are the coolest of the bunch. Although robot 4 is kinda weird, he also has charm Anyways, I look forward to more updates.

 

Thanks. Hopefully I won't disappoint with the results.

 

Right idc how you pull this off, I want to see the finished product

 

Maybe you can do one for me

 

Haha. Thanks. We'll see how this goes. I know it'll be stupidly time consuming but I always wanted to give this type of thing a shot. If all goes well I might just make one for you.