Week 5: Michael, the secondary protagonist

This week I modelled/textured/rigged & animated Michael ! Michael is the counterpart to Azazel - and her main guide through the world of Elsewhere. He can be seen in my CBR Key Art piece :) As part of the development, I've recently been working with my friend, on fleshing out the narrative & character motivations so here's the rough outline for Michael & Azazel (without spoiling anything too much). This isn't the best written, so bear with me! Azazel; similar to characters like Furiosa & Princess Mononoke, she is wild and kinda feral. She has an innate magic, which she wants to get rid of, as it has only caused her pain and suffering - but she must learn to use and control it to stop the apocalypse that now curses the world. She has turned her back on humanity, seeing it as the reason for both the terrible parts of her past, as well as the hellish events that are unfolding. She refuses to even speak anymore. She sees nature as the only thing left worth saving, so that is what she chooses to fight for. Michael; a mysterious angelic figure, that revived Azazel upon her first death, offering her a simple yet literally impossible-to-refuse deal - He will continue to resurrect her, an infinite count, as along as she stops the apocalypse. He is obviously keeping secrets from Azazel, and his true motivations to her are unknown, he only says that he wants to 'make things right'. Counter to Azazel, he does actually care for humanity, being drawn to their passion, love and creativity. He sees all the terrible things that have happened, are happening and will happen, and has vowed (for one reason or another) to fix everything. So that's them - I have a bunch more things narratively, but I'm sure we'll get to them later! Here's my process for modelling Michael: I started by drawing over my Azazel sketch to get a rough idea of proportions - I wanted him to be a decent bit taller than Az. to feel both powerful and slightly intimidating.

Then, I took my Azazel model and just started editing that - Using Az. as a base made a lot of things much quicker and I will continue to do that for my other humanoid characters.

After modelling I moved to rigging. This was a lot more simple in some ways as I didn't have quite so many issues the second time around - though Michael has a few more bones than Azazel.

As you can see, I made a few bones for the wings, which work well for my purposes (he is not meant to actually fly, so I shouldn't have to animate that). I also ended up adding a couple of 'skirt' bones, as when I tested out the walking animation, there was a lot of clipping/collision issues. These bones are tied to the front and back of the skirt, which allows me to control the flow/volume as it moves. Lastly, I tackled textures, which was a breeze. I'm really happy with how they came out, and even with the lowpoly/256px texture, I think you can really get a sense of the character.

I still have a few animations to fix for Michael, so will work on those next. I also want to create some animations that are more applicable to him (mostly sitting down at a desk, looking stressed and writing. same, Michael, same.) I'm also interested in creating some environment assets next. I plan for these to mostly (if not all) be 2D assets, so I'm excited to start making some basic ones, such as trees, grass, rocks etc.