Rationale

Here is a more in-depth look at my full Rationale that i produced last year and also gives a better description of who and where my character comes from etc:

What is my project?

My project is to create original high polygon custom model of a human character, his weapon and his vehicle that could be implemented as a mod into the Unreal Tournament game on PlayStation3 and PC formats. My custom character will be fully playable within Unreal Tournament multi player modes, I will give users from the mod community access to my finished character and they can download my character, weapon and vehicle for free.

Humanity is struggling to survive on earth and must start to colonise other planets. War erupts in the process and a major battle begins against the human race and their humanoid robots named the Equivalents. An Equivalent raises its hand to a human after a hundred years of abuse; this small act caused humanity to issue the order, deletion. The leader of then Equivalents sent his final order, fight. Now after a ten-year war they have taken the eight colonies and have fought the Unification Forces back to Earth, now our last chance is William Molenar. Once a hero of liberation now a man destroyed by an act of violence that shattered his faith in his Government. Now he has been chosen to liberate the 8 colonies, take down their Equivalent Leaders and find Henry – Mankind’s greatest achievement and threat, a being based on Earths greatest Soldier, William Molenar.

Why this project?

The purpose of the project is to enable me to form high quality models that can be used and shared with the Epic mod community for Unreal Tournament 3. The Epic games community are always looking for new characters, vehicles and weapons to download. With my new models built the Unreal Tournament community will gain new assets to play and enjoy on both the PS3 and PC formats.

How will this be done?

My project will be split into two sections:

The first year is Pre-production where I shall be doing all my research and creating concepts from various sources i.e. Internet, books/magazines and taking photographs. I will then create blueprints of the 3d models ready to be used in the second year.

The second year will be production this is where I shall actually build the 3D models using mainly 3DS Max along with Z-Brush to create textures, Normal and Specular maps that will be required. After my models are built I shall implement them into the Unreal Engine editor.

The applications to be used throughout the project are Photoshop along with my drawing tablet, Illustrator, 3DS Max Z-Brush and the Unreal Editor.

Who is involved in this project?

I will be producing the work that is required for the pre–production, production and post-production stages of the project. Following the progress of my project will be my audience the Epic forums, my mentor John Dwyer at Sony Computer Entertainment and tutors.

What Intellectual Property Rights are used?

Epic Games allows users to access the Unreal engine so they can import custom content such as new Characters, Weapons and Vehicles into their game engine. Anything created outside of the engine is their own property unless users are using any of the content provided by Epic. However the user does not have the right to claim this content as there own piece of work.

Who is my audience?

My audience and market will be the Epic mod community for Unreal tournament 3 and I will create a model that can be imported onto both PlayStation 3 and PC formats for a broader appeal. Epic Games encourages social modders to create new models to be shared and keep the game fresh and new. Epic Games created a website forum where social modders gather and talk about new concepts and ideas. It is also the place where people post their own concepts and models and receive critiques from within the community. This is also the place where modders share their newly created models with each other.

When will this be done?

Pre-Production

1st October - 21st October 2008- Initial Ideas and Research
22nd October - 3rd December 2008 - Character, Weapon & Vehicle Research
4th January - 14th February 2009 - Character, Weapon & Vehicle Sketches
15th February - 28th March 2009 - Character, Weapon & Vehicle Final Concepts
29th March - 18th April 2009 - Character, Weapon & Vehicle Blueprints
19th April - 6th May 2009 - Pitch Bible, Power Point Presentation and Hand in work date

Production

1st September – 27th October 2009 – Character, Weapon & Vehicle Low poly meshes
28th October – 19th December 2009 – Character, Weapon & Vehicle High poly meshes
1st January – 11th February 2010 – Character, Weapon & Vehicle Z-Brush and Shaders
12th February - 22nd March 2010 – Character, Weapon & Vehicle Rigged
23rd March – May 2nd 2010 – Character, Weapon & Vehicle Implemented into the Unreal Engine
3rd May – 5th May 2010 – Share the models with the Unreal Community and obtain feedback Handin Date and Presentation