Guards

The main asset that I did for the game was the guard. I began by doing some rough concept sketches as to what we want the guards to look like. Because of our chosen style of dark and ominous, I decided to head in a similar direction to that of similar franchises "the men in black" and "paul" where the guys hunting the aliens are smartly dress in a black tie suit.

When designing their structure i made them top heavy, with smaller legs, implying they are not the brightest of people. Then as a groups decision we decided to give the guards tazers as their weapon, as one of the deciding factors was that guards could not die. Thus the tazer would simple knock the alien "Uddu" back into the other world.

Once I had decided on the guards appearance I began modeling him in maya and mudbox, creating a simple low poly structure at first, then slowly adding more detail. however i did keep the modeling detail to a minimum to help prevent to much detail. Which could result in lagging when he was put into the game. Therefore i paint most of the detail on to him, to help provide a more authentic look. bellow are some screen shots of some of this process. After the modeling I rigged the guard using IK joints, with a smooth bind in order to animate him. There are also two different types of guards within the game, standing guards, which don't move and walking guards.

After the rigging i began to animate the many animations we wanted in the game, these include the bellow menchioned. Before I created each animation I did a quick sketch to breifly plan how i wanted the guard to appear, and his movements.

Idle:

For the Idle animation I wanted something simple and repetitive, that could just be played in a loop while the guard was simply standing so we wouldn't have a lifeless guard when Uddu wasn't in the guards view

IdleOne

I wanted to create at least Two seperate Idles to play when the Guard has been stationary for a longer period of time as i feel thins would add to the game play. the first Of these the guard lifts his hand and touches his ear piece. Which helps enforce that there are more than one.

IdleTwo

For Idle teo i went down a simpler route an made him scratch his ars, which helps protray a more dim witted persona, which is what we were going after.

Jump

I went simple for the jump animation, since he is modeled to be slightly heaver I made him jump with both legs a once, to give the appearance that more power is needed to get off the ground.

Tazer

Tazer, is when he tazers Uddu causing him to bounce back into the other worlds, when the player gets too close. this animation was simple. The guard just lifts his arm, holds for a few seconds, then puts his arm down again.

Squish

Squish animation occurs when the player drops crates or pipes on to the guard, causing them to squish under the pressure, resulting in their death/

Explode

Explode animation plays when the player phases into a guard, which is an exciting way of killing, I wanted this animation to be more cartoony, thus giving more satisfaction to the player when they kill them.

Walk

For the Walk animation I wanted the guard to have a sort of swagger, and move with a lot of shoulder swing, to give a greater appearance of a heaver built guy.