

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lU4hwHZfBvnDAwSj1iJe4bRAJWmzOyNhoGW-qUrPZck/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0
Doc for images because My blog won’t let me add more.
First lesson, I decided on an IP I will be working on with a friend, which turned out to be league of legends because of its versatility and low poly count. The range of regions was also nice as I decided to focus on Noxus and The Shadow Isles. I compiled mood boards on LOL itself, color schemes and other characters to get inspired by. My idea so far is to make an ex Noxus soldier that got assassinated and returned as an undead in the shadow isles. Now I plan to develop my ideas further by looking more deeply into LOL lore, and especially the lore behind the two regions that inspired me.
I watched multiple videos about Noxus, a region that inspired by character. It helped me learn about the lore and get inspired by what I hear. But also understand the lore itself better. I also read the Darius (One of the Noxian champions) short comic to further understand the lore.
https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_GB/comic/darius/bloodofnoxus/0
I then also looked more into The Shadow Isles lore, reading the champions information and cinematics specially made for the region to further understand how it works.

Designing League of Legends’ Katarina Arcane-Style in ZBrush & Maya – 80.lvl article
This article told me a lot about the process of 3D modelling a character, especially a character from League, albeit in Arcane style, and not the game style itself, however the principle of it should work in a similar way, The character also turned out to be Katarina, a champion of the noxian empire and in turn someone that fits my own theme and character I will be making. The process of sketching down a design in the desired style, creating a low poly model in maya and bringing it to zbrush to turn it into a high poly model, then texturing it in substance painter and rendering in a program like blender also works. The switching of software’s to maximise results is something we have been and will be doing in our project moving forward.
I gained some useful tips from this as well, such as good resources on modelling stylised hair which will come in handy, and how to manually paint in the desired style. Even if Arcane style differs from LOL’s style, it still shares some similarities as well, and will help me if I were to colour in skin and weaponry, it would just need to be heavily simplified for the lowboy style LOL has instead. This article also brushed up briefly on retopology and how if animation is planned, then the steps to get to that point would be slightly altered. This article helped me keep in mind what I will need to remember and do in my own project and how the process might also differ from mine. This allowed me to gain some confidence and that I should give it a try no matter how intimidating it may be.
I have begun my concepting for my character, I used the references I compiled to make multiple rough silhouettes and sketches, and now I am ready to move towards designing the final concept, for now focusing on the overall design and then experimenting with colour. In hopes to get a turn around done for Mondays lesson or sometime early next week. I plan to focus on the clothes themselves and fixing up some parts so that she appears more like a gladiator. Once the design is done I plan to make splash art and some in game information, as well as a design of how the character would look like in game, while beginning to sculpt her.
I begun to sculpt the 3d model , specifically the basic structure of how an arm should work proportionally and so on. Now that I finished modelling the anatomical proportions I begin to model the clothes which includes the armor.
I began to focus on topology and practiced to do baking, there have been issues along the way however progress is steadily happening, moving from the face down to the rest of the body.
I have finished topologizing after multiple errors and losing my progress, with it out of the way I can finally get onto uv unwrapping on monday and then baking. Not much time left but hopefully with no more setbacks it should be done on time.
When it came to rigging and rendering there was a struggle when trying to figure out how to show correct opacities, and then a struggle when trying to bind the skeleton to the model however, with trial and error it had finally been completed and more or less is ready for animating. I plan to do an animation involving the cape, perhaps an entrance animation of the character entering. Such as the cape swirling around them and them walking into the scene before posing. This is my first time animating
The animating process was difficult as I had to figure out and improvise a lot of it on the go, it is quite different from 2d paper animation, however in some ways similar to 2d puppet animation so it was not as difficult as imagined if i have to animate basic movements. I decided to animate it myself using Maya instead of mixamo because i wanted to learn this process and see if i could make a workable animation with the rig i made myself. The end product is simple, it is meant to be a step forward as if stepping onto a platform, with the cape swirling around. The focus of the animation is definitely the cape, and while it is not the best animation i could have produced, for my first time animating in a 3d software and learning to do it myself it is still something I am proud of. Overall this project came with a lot of ups and downs however I can say I am proud of the result I came up with in the end.



































































































































































































































































































































































































