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Alien Character designs: Megamind

Megamind, from the 2010s movie of the same name, is a blue alien witha. larger cranium than most, hence the name Megamind. The movie deals with topics like appearance, who you are and can you change, and nurturing and nature.

His design is reminiscent of old comic villains. The design gives that goofy edge that captures the character perfectly, faults and all. After all, it's all about;

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Alien Character Designs: Frieza

Frieza is a character introduced in Dragon ball Z as the main antagonist of the Namek arc. With a number of individual forms that have a unique flavour to them, it's no wonder Frieza has remained one of Dragon Ball's most iconic villain.

The most well known Frieza design is probably his 4th form which has since become the standard for his design. Fun fact, Frieza's design is based on a real estate agent in his first form, as the creator disliked the business practices of estate agents.

While they vary greatly between each, the design has a sleek edge that I think makes it memorable. The character was also memorable for his cutthroat personality that remained just as memorable.

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Alien character Designs: Beerus

Dragon ball has a wide variety of different alien designs, and one of my personal favourites is The God of Destruction, Beerus. His design is heavily inspired with Egyptian themes. Not only from his clothes, but with his cat like physique.

Speaking of physique, Beerus's design is meant to look rather skinny, presenting the lack of substantial care he has for most things, even himself.

What I like about the design is the calm and silly coldness I feel the design gives. As it both looks silly, but also holds that serious edge the character is known for. It creates a fun contrast for the design.

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Mars poster

For my Mars Poster, I wanted to use a few of the highlights of what I had made. To start, the spaceship design was influenced a lot by the classical U.F.O design that everyone knows.

I then went on to turn the design into a book cover with a retro movie poster feel for the style.

On the other hand, for my alien design I wanted to better capture my character drawings, so with a few bits of practice before hand, I designed an alien character that I felt fit the theme.

And lastly, my plushie was more based on a bizarre mechanical pet turned puppet. Like something you would see on an old commercial. I feel that it was the weakest of my projects this term, but think that the overall outcomes all came together well enough. Though the flaws are still evident.

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Plushie design: Finale

I finished off the headboard design for my plush, just needing to laser cut it out for the final product. While the design is simple, it does play well into my alien robot themed plushie, with it being more of a fun finale to the design's concept.

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Personal Projects: Writing

During the year, I have been working here and there on a few side stories for personal projects. Now, is it hard? Sure. Does it affect me? Not overly.

Take for example my first major writing project"Rabbit's Foot: Heartbreak Hero". it was a simple sci-fi fantasy blended story based on different mythologies.

The series taught me a lot about how I work, from overcrowding ideas to being rather good at set up and pay off. But when i tried doing a sequel, one thing I learnt far to late was that i need to plan my ideas out before I start them.

The story fell apart with too man ideas and it was overcrowded with different characters. it was to the point that I scrapped the series and began working on a new one with a plan in mind.

But when I do make a plan, I do feel I have to change details here and there. Like when i rewrote an entire narrative arc in a day to fit the story better. I then had to improve a bit for the next two arcs before finally getting back on track with my plan.

Another thing I do well with a plan is that I can foreshadow properly within the narrative. From small lines, to obvious statements looking back. It all eventually comes to ahead in the finale.

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Artist: Chris Foss

Chris Foss is a British sci-fi illustrator who mainly does imaginative spaceship designs. His style feels very retro futuristic to me, with a large scale to his works elevating it among others.

While it doesn't strike me too much, i can still see the talent behind the works.

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District 9

A movie with a racism allegory so boringly played out that it takes away from admittedly an interesting concept? Wow. I have never seen that before in a movie.

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I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

I have no mouth and I must scream is a short story written by Harlen Ellison about a sentient supercomputer named AM ending humanity and playing with the last survivors in a torturous game to amuse itself.

The story is rather bleak, with the main character of the story assisting in the suicide of the others, leaving him to be tortured by AM, turning him into a meat slug.

I do enjoy the hopelessness of the story, with my personal favourite part being the most well known part of the story. AM's Hate Speech.

“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”

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Spaceship design: A Marvel Of Tech

This video provides a substantial view into spaceship designs and the many iterations and inspirations that can be used for personal works. I think that this video is easy to digest in terms of understanding, and while I do view the long path to improving as a slow climb, it still helps to have research like this to keep up the flow.

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Returnal

A game about reliving your own death over, and over, and over again. The concept has been done better in other series and games, especially with this triple a copy of deadcells.

Point is Roguelites without style and substance are forgettable.

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Stellaris

Stellaris is a strategy game themed heavily around space. The game has many features, taking inspiration from many different series and tropes.

For instance, one of my personal favourite features is the robot ascension path that allows for the player's race to become immortal robots. But there is always the genetic ascension path, or perhaps even an apocalyptic tyrant.

I enjoy the game for its varied approach to gameplay and story telling, letting the player tell their own narrative.

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Cowboys V Aliens

A series about cowboys fighting aliens. I never really found the appeal in either concept or execution, still I have to briefly touch upon it.

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Chorus

An open world space sim in a similar vane to No man's sky, Chorus is a flat, long slog of a game that has little substance. Still, I'll just leave this video to show the basic gameplay

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No Man's Sky: Failure To Fantastic

No man's sky is a massively open world survival sim where the player is given a spaceship, infinite planets to explore, and realistic flight times.

Well, that was to start with anyway. No Man's Sky on release had nothing but the exploration, which got old quick. Sure some of the randomly generated environments looked nice, but it felt hollow.

Eventually they began updating the game, adding more ships, environments, planets, exploration. They added to the game to actual make it entertaining. Take for instance the underwater environments they added. Seeing the sea of a foreign planet, the stylised geometry. It all comes together in a strange beauty.

The game lets you travel anywhere. Even tot he very centre of the universe. Its vision of space being this endless void is captured perfectly, since you get to experience time following in a normal state. It can take actual days to travel between planets without using certain upgrades.

I think that the game excels at giving the spacefaring fantasy most people would want from something like this.

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Robots: Artificial Intelligence

In this video, someone creates a robot using a multitude of different things. It has a very animatronic edge, like those old mascots from yesteryear. I find the concept interesting in what it actually does, and think how exactly I can incorporate robotic designs better in my original works.

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More Robots: What Makes Them Spark?

This video is all about sculpting robot designs with clay, making for an interesting short video on how to sculpt designs. While things are difficult to sculpt, this short video did shed some light on some lacking details.