Character Develpoment —- General （1）

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Design Analysis: Creation of The Gods I: Kingdom of Storms

In order to design the general’s armour, I have analysed and studied the armour design in the recently released Creation of The Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (which tells a series of stories based on the list of The Investiture of the Gods). First of all, we can see that the overall tone of the armour in this film presents white and gold, white in our impression of the kind of symbol of the sacred and gold is a symbol of nobility, the combination of these two colours together can visually give the audience to create a feeling of noble and magnificent, and because they are all bright colours of the reason, the whole gives a very refreshing and clean feeling. Look at the style of the armour, the helmet of the soldiers in the film is recorded in history, archaeologists in the excavation of the ruins of China’s Shang Dynasty found a bronze armour, the helmet in the film is based on the bronze armour as a prototype for the re-design. The conceptual designer used jade, a material different from bronze, to express the prominent bronze texture on part of the helmet, and the same design is also used in the body armour part, in addition, the conceptual designer also made the armour have both bronze and leather parts, so that a pair of armour has four different textures, leather, fabric, bronze and jade, and the appropriate combination of different textures creates an interesting visual effect on the visual level. The appropriate combination of these different textures creates a sense of hierarchy on the visual level, which looks like a very rich element, and the audience can even practically experience the touch of the armour during the viewing process.

In the texture design of the armour, the designer used a lot of bronze texture as reference, especially for the breastplate. The texture used by the designer is the Taotie pattern, which is a kind of Chinese ancient bronze. Taotie is a mythical beast in China, which has a very big appetite and can never get enough of food, so it is often tattooed on eating utensils, such as bronze tripods. At the same time, Taotie symbolises greed, desire, life, death, change and eternity, all of which contributed to the widespread use of Taotie in ancient Chinese sculpture. Based on this, the conceptual designers focused on the Taotie pattern, but interestingly, the designers didn’t take a flat relief form to carve the Taotie pattern, but rather a part of the hollowing out process, if we look closely we can actually find that there is a layered relationship between the patterns on the armour, it looks like one layer on top of the other, which is very interesting, and I think it is very conducive to the creation of visual layers. In addition, in order to enhance the texture, the concept designers added three layers of armour to the shoulder armour part to highlight the sense of thickness, three layers of armour stacked up the broad shoulders, making the character looks very powerful at the same time rich in the visual language.

Sketches and Color Test

When I got to the colour testing stage I was a

bit overwhelmed as colour has always been

a weak point in my painting and it was hard

for me to make a choice on a character’s

colour scheme, so I had to look for colour

schemes for other characters or things, I tried

solid black, black and red and black and gold.

And then I saw a picture of a bronze vessel,

it was a wine vessel, after years of baptism,

the original gilt bronze has been greenish, but

unlike other bronzes, this goblet of wine is not

completely green, there is still a layer of gold

on it that may have been freshly cast and then

gilded, the texture is just great, as if something

hit me, I decided in a flash that it was the right

colour.

Wepon Design

Character Drawing Process

Deatils Analysis

In my opinion, a thick enough chest armour is the key to
surviving in battle, so I always wanted to make it look thick
and sturdy when designing the chest armour, so I took a
leaf out of Creation of The Gods I: Kingdom of Storms’
book and made the chest armour with layers of texture
and added hollows to show the thickness. In
addition, I chose the dragon pattern, which is more suited
to a stacked design, as the pattern itself is intricate and fits
my idea perfectly.
For the design of the shoulder armour, I have
borrowed the bronze door locks, which are mostly
in the form of animal faces with open mouths biting
bronze rings, which is similar to the shoulder armour.
In addition to this, I have made the shoulder armour
into three layers to increase the sense of thickness,
along the lines of the conceptual art of Creation of
The Gods I: Kingdom of Storms.

For the shoulder armour
I wasn’t very happy with
the initial version, so I
designed another version,
again choosing the animal
face locks as a reference,
this kind of open-mouthed
animal face image is
really perfect for shoulder
armour, this time I chose
a more flat style for the
design, considering the
mobility of the shoulders
and the aesthetic issues,
the shoulders are still
simple in design I think.
The design of the Qin sword is actually very interesting to
me, and I’m sure it will be an interesting part of the modelling
process later on, simply because I’ve always loved this kind of
weighty looking sword since I was a kid, and the Qin sword’s
blade is generally on the broad side, which creates the feeling
that the sword is very heavy and heavy, and that it’s a heavy
and secure thing to hold in your hand. I searched the official
websites of some museums and found some artefacts of Qin
swords. The makers of Qin swords would have engraved some
bronze patterns on the hand guards, ranging from animal face
patterns to dragon patterns, and there were all kinds of different
patterns. I chose the animal face pattern because the hard
lines of the animal face pattern could be very useful in shaping
the hardness of the Qin sword. Moreover, for me, the animal
face pattern is more aggressive, which fits the positioning of
the sword in the weapon. Another interesting point is that the
swords of the Qin Dynasty were very long, the sword of Qin Shi
Huang even reached 97cm, which even caused Qin Shi Huang
to hide around the pillar when he was assassinated by Jing
Ke because the sword was too long to be unsheathed and he
shouted “Assassin! There is an assassin! “. That’s why I think
it’s interesting to make the weapons longer, and it’s also worth
restoring.
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