Real worlds- Brief and Research
Project information
For this project, we have been given a client brief from Mantic Games, which is a table top games company. The product that I will be focusing on for the duration of this project, is their Deadzone game. For the project, I have been given two different areas to choose from to work in, I can either work primarily in 2D or 3D.
I will be choosing the 2D path for this project, as I feel like I can best communicate my ideas and designs through a 2D medium rather than working with 3D software, as I am not as confident with Maya and Zbrush as I am with Clip Studio. The one area I'm less proficient in when working with 2D however, is building design, as I generally prefer to work with natural environment designs rather than man made buildings. This is something that I am looking forward to developing on however, as it's a very important part of environment design.
Intellectual Property
What is Deadzone?
Deadzone is a two player table top skirmish style game owned and developed by Mantic games, "Set on the fringes of space, Deadzone takes place in containment zones - cities or entire planets that have been erased from planetary maps and left for dead". As stated on the Mantic games website, Deadzone is a futurisitc skirmish game, where two factions battle it out for resources and victory over one another, with the idea of win or die.
For the brief, I have been tasked with coming up with a design for two characters, both from different factions, and also an environment design including one main building and three bits of "street furniture". In order to do this, I will need to research Deadzone properly, so I know what sorts of weapons, clothing designs and style I should be aiming for with my designs.
SWOT analysis
For this project, I would consider my main strengths being 2d environment design and humanoid character design. Which will work well when I'm designing the environment for the key art and for my Forge Father character.
I am less confident with my ability to draw more beast like designs, which will probably effect how long it takes for me to design the Veer-Myn character, so I will try to get the Forge Father character design finished sooner allowing me more time to do some studies for the Veer-Myn character so I have a better idea of how to draw a more beastlike form.
From completing this project, It will give me some experience working with a real industry client, which is something that can be talked about when applying for jobs in the industry. Being able to talk to the client will also give me a chance to get real industry feedback rather than peer feedback which will allow me to develop the way I work with a more professional backing to why I'm doing what I'm doing.
The main threats I have in this project are having to spend time on doing some observations of animals in order to develop my skills for designing the Veer-Myn character. Meaning I will have to spend less time on the design process for the areas that I am more confident in.
Factions
For my factions, I will be going with the Forge Fathers and the Veer-Myn. When picking my factions, I was trying to think of what would make the most sense for a match up, and I felt like the Forge Fathers would work well with fighting against something more beastlike.
The Forge Fathers (Space Dwarves)
From a first glance, the Forge Fathers are a technologically advanced Dwarvern race, equipped with heavy metal armour and high power guns. They also seem to have powerful military vehicles such as bipedal mechs and tanks. This alone gives me a lot to work with when coming up with design ideas for my character for this faction, it also gives me some scope for potential details for my environment design, incorporating things like parts of either broken or yet to be assembled vehicles and weaponry.
The second faction that I chose, the Veer-myn instantly gave me quite a few ideas as to what I could do with them as they seem to work well as an opposition to the Forge Fathers, as they both seem well equipped for an underground setting, which instantly gives me an idea of what sorts of things the characters I design will be equipped with in order to combat their subterranean competitors.
Genre
For the game genre, I was thinking of taking the characters in the direction of an Action RPG, following a theme similar to monster hunter, with the more human characters taking the places of the hunters, in this case, the Forge Fathers being the more hunter-like characters, while the less human characters will take the place of the monsters that you hunt. This is something that I feel would work quite well given the pretty even divide between humanoid and less humanoid factions in Deadzone.
Licencing
Licencing is when a company gives someone permission to use their IP for a something, in this case, Mantic Games has given permission for us to use their existing IP Deadzone in order to come up with ideas for their new game Deadzone Nemeses. This means I will be able to take inspiration from their existing designs and factions in order to come up with new character and creature designs for a spinoff game based on two of their existing factions.
Art direction
Mood Boards
For my first moodboard for the Forge Fathers, I wanted to look at existing fantasy dwarf armour designs, as this will serve as a source of inspiration for the character's armour that I end up designing. While the end product will be more scifi inspired, this will serve as a base for the different shapes that I end up using in my design.
Based on this moodboard, my shape language will be following a more boxy square theme as Dwarves are generally portrayed as quite sturdy durable characters, which is also shown in existing Deadzone products with the Forge Fathers' armour being thick and bulky, and their mechs also being heavily armoured.
For my next moodboard, I'm going to look more in depth at the existing Forge Fathers character designs, how I can incorporate a more traditional dwarven aesthetic with the more updated sci-fi theme that's used in Deadzone.
Having looked at existing Forge Fathers products, I have a lot of ideas for the direction that I can take my character design for this faction in. The vehicles that they have in their lineup gives me a lot of ideas for different weapons that the character could be wielding based on the tank turrets and other vehicle weapons. I also have an idea of what kinds of colours and details that I can use on the armour designs.
For the weapons, I will make one more moodboard looking at different kinds of weapons that I could make using the moodboards that I have made so far.
Having completed my initial visual research for the Forge Father character, I will start creating my mood boards for the Veer-Myn character. This time I will be focusing on a more bestial form, as this is this will be the monster that the Forge Father character is meant to be hunting down. Based on this, I want to look at different monsters in games that still take a more mammalian form to stay with the general idea of a rat-like creature but still follow the theme that I want to go for with it taking a more monstrous form.
For my first moodboard for the Veer-Myn I have looked at a range of different monsters in Monster Hunter that follow the general theme that I am going for. While I won't be following the designs too closely, it gives me a general idea of what kinds of things that I can add to my Veer-myn design as I want to make it look more monstrous than existing Veer-Myn designs, but still keep within the boundaries of their theme. I can probably do this by following the form of the monsters that I have looked at, but tweak the muscle mass and proportions to fit more with the idea of the Veer-myn
Similaryly to before, I will now make a moodboard of existing Veer-Myn characters, in order to look at what kinds of things I have to add to the design no matter what, and what I can tweak in order to get the design to fit the genre of game that I'm going for.
From the official Veer-myn designs that already exist in Deadzone, there seems to be a very common theme of long talon like claws both coming in natural and metallic forms and hand held drill weapons. Both of these weapon types are seemingly very multipurpose, potentially doubling as mining and digging tools, maybe allowing the Veer-Myn to travel around a subterranian area more easily than someone that's equipped with a more typical scifi weapons such as the weapons that the Forge Fathers wield. This makes me thing of the Veer-myn monster that I design, could potentially be equipped as a multipurpose monster, both creating huge mining tunnels for the small Veer-Myn to mine in, and also as a formiddable opponent for anyone that would confront it. The second thing that I noticed is a very common theme between all of their species, is the use of a yellowish colourscheme for their armour, as this is something that is even present on some of the bigger Veer-Myn, I will make sure to keep to this design theme when designing the armour for the Veer-Myn I make.
With a rough idea for what kinds of weapons I will be looking into for this design, I will start to look at a range of different claw and drill like weapons, and some potential weapons that they could be merged with in order to create something more offensive and terrifying.
For the weapons moodboard, I looked at different types of drills and variations of armoured claws that could be used as inspiration for my designs. One idea that I had while looking at the drills specifically is the Veer-myn creature potentially having side faceing drills attatched to its limbs and a a bigger front facing drill mounted to the top of its head. These are only some initial ideas though, so a lot more development and thought will go into these ideas as I progress with the design phase.
Art style
For this project, I want to try out an artstyle that better suits the Deadzone artstyle, going with something a bit more realistic that what I usually do, but still stylised to some degree, allowing for a bit more leeway with certain design aspects. The main thing with the art style is, I don't want to end up drawing in a more anime/ manga art style, as this doesn't really fit with the general theme of Deadzone as all of their official art is a lot closer to stylised realism than anime/ manga.
I will start to make a moodboard of different pieces of stylised realism artwork, both from Deadzone, and also from some other sources in order to give me a wide range of inspiration for my artwork. While I don't want to be copying existing styles exactly, I want to be able to develop my style in this direction in order to better meet the brief.
Based on everything that I have discussed so far, I have picked out a series of different pieces of artwork, both 2d and 3d that I feel like I can draw inspiration from in order to develop my artstyle for this project. One of the main thing that stands out to me across all of these pieces of art is the large contrast between the light and darker areas, with the lighter areas generally taking on a much more vibrant colour than the areas that are less significant. This is something I will really want to capture in my design process, making sure the main design features are the most noticeable in comparison to the darker, less important areas.
With a general idea in mind for what I want to do for the project, I will start to work on my design language, discussing what kinds of choices I will make for all of my desings based on what I have researched so far. This will include how I will get across certain feelings for my designs, whether it's trying to make a character look more sturdy, calm and collected, or more aggressive.
Design language
In terms of design language for this project, I will be using two main types for my designs. As I have chosen the Forge Father and Veer Myn, I feel like they both have a very specific design language from the research that I have already done into both of these factions. For the Forge Fathers character, I will be using a lot more square/ cube like shapes, as the Forge Fathers are very stocky in terms of their builds with a lot of ridged straight lines with very little in the way of curves or spikes. Where as for the Veer Myn design, I will be using a lot more spikes throughout the design to get acorss the idea that it's a dangerous creature that needs to be taken out.
References
https://www.manticgames.com/what-is-deadzone/ 12/02/2025
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