The Ogre, The Cottage, and The Sword

The goal of this project was to design a creature, environment, and prop for a 3rd-person 3D fantasy game. I had three weeks to complete this project. I was challenged to create designs that were stylistically consistent and could easily be translated into a semi-realistic 3D game.

The ogre had to be formidable, intimidating, and undeniably ogre-like. Anyone should be able to look at it and say, “That's an ogre!”

The cottage had to be somewhere between aged and derelict. It must be usable, but old and damaged.

The sword had to be heroic: a weapon made to defeat a great beast.

The Ogre

For the Ogre, I spent a lot of time experimenting with head shapes. It was important to me that I gave the ogre a head that was both reasonably scary and still maintained the iconic ogre look.

Once I decided on a head, I transitioned to the body shape and wardrobe phase. The head was relatively pig-inspired, so I decided to echo that motif throughout the design to maintain consistency.

I went through a few phases before I landed on a final design. I originally thought the Ogre’s weapon would be a simple, large rock attached to a stick. I thought that communicated a lack of intelligence, so I gave him a more intentional weapon that takes more skill to make.

Here is my final. If I were to revisit this design, I would spread the eye motif on his belt and wrist cuff to more of his wardrobe, and perhaps his weapon. I think this design is one of the strongest character designs I’ve done, and I’m proud to present it here.

The Cottage

For the Cottage, I spent a lot of time researching medieval French cottages to inspire my design. I paid close attention to the specific architectural details and elements to see what might aid my process.

It was difficult to create such a realistic-adjacent environment. My designs tend to lean more stylized, so I had to put a lot of effort into pushing myself past my comfort zone.

Here is my final sketch before line and color. Before this point, I struggled to make a design that felt fantastical enough. To help this, I emphasized the pointed roof, broke up the body of the cottage to seem more hodge-podge, and detailed the roof tiles and windows to create complexity.

Finally, I came to this design. My professor gave me the note to break up the symmetry on the last sketch, so the right side of the roof on this stage is broken to aid that redundancy.

Here is my final cottage design. If I had to revisit this project, I would likely spend more time with the stylistic consistency between this and the two other designs. Besides that, I am quite proud of this piece, and I believe I learned a lot about omitting detail, stylization, and proportion.

The Sword

For the sword, I researched swords from all over medieval Europe and Asia. These designs came quite easily to me.

Here, I received the feedback to be more decisive about the detailing within the blade and hilt of the sword, so I incorporated details inspired by traditional family crests to emphasize how the sword has been passed down through generations.

Here is my final design. If I were to revisit this, I would spend more time on the callouts of the page. I think there is a lot of good detail that I could have further emphasized through more complex angles and material/texture callouts.