After sending my 3D files to the CA workshop, I spend 1 week to wait for their print my doll. Sadly the result wasn’t satisfied with me.

1, the 3D printer automatically filled up the hole that I made on my model. ( hole for the rubber band to go through)

2, the size of the doll is small, the doll’s face and other detail have been printed very blurry.

3, the SLS printing material is much harder than I expected, I can’t make any major changes in the printed model. Too hard to use a knife to cut through, I tried to make her leg shorter by cutting off some parts of the leg after I cut myself for more than 4 times I have to stop for health & safety issue.

However, there is still some advantage of using 3D printing to making dolls:

1, perfect mirror symmetric, more accurate than human’s hands.

2, if the doll artist has sensitive skin like me, they do not necessarily need to make dolls out of clay. (which makes the hands feel dry and itches)

Improvement:

1, next time to making dolls, I would suggest getting the correct doll size in 3DMax or Maya first. Or just simply start the doll in Maya and then adding details in Zbrush.

2, never make the doll too small, it will causing the printer auto fill in all the cave & hole parts.

final work:

I have found some very useful working pipeline from Eve’s studio website, as Olga (the doll artist of Eve’s studio) is a successful doll artist I believe her working method will be useful for me.

Usually, BJDs are handcrafted from clay, but thanks for modern technology, now we can use ZBrush and 3D printing for making the doll.

Eve’s working method is: start with a basic human sculpt > cut out the body parts > placing the ball-shaped joints between the body parts > making the inside, holes and pins > print it out.

I followed her working method, but slightly different is I made the doll parts one by one. To get the correct joint size, I have been using the 3D scanner from the creative art workshop.

 

I scanned a similar size doll part by part, try to get the correct joint’s size.
To get the best scanning result, there are a few things that I have learned from my experience: 1, if the object you scanning has a shining surface, make sure you dust it. Because the laser will bounce back on the shinning surface.

The technician is helping me with dusting the parts.

 

Secondly, always remember to place the object/ the important part in the middle of the scanner, as it will give you the best result by focusing the laser.

my scanning position

However, the scanning result is not as good as I expected, but luckily I still had a guideline of how big the joint should be.

 

Reference:

Eve Studio Dolls. 2019. Digital Doll Making – Eve Studio Dolls. [ONLINE] Available at: http://dolls.evethecat.com/portfolio-item/digital-doll-making/. [Accessed 08 Dec 2018].

I have tried my best to finish the 2 parts of my game, the forest and the bunny heaven based on the story, but I still find some places that I can improve:

1, learn more blueprint script to add an interesting element to the game, for example, teleport, climb, chase&run, or just like super Mario, eat the mushroom and grow bigger. I made some mushroom assets but I’m not able to make any interaction between the character & the assets.

2, try to build the map in more detail. Although I’m satisfied with my design and art, there is still some improvement: I need to find a way to hide the seam between two pieces.

3, I think I might need to make the background story in more detail and longer, as a game, the playing time is too short to play.

4, hide few easter eggs in the map, which I did, like the little stars and starflower, but I need to make them intractable to the player.

My original idea is when you walk close to them or touch them, they will be able to give your coin or scores.

After I fully set up my map, I decided to add some interesting movement on my platform. Which I used the cinematics>add matinee function to the platform.

After your finished your animation, you have to add a trigger volume to tell the system when the player moved into this area, the animation should start. (the green box below is the trigger volume.)

In the end, you have to write into the level blueprint, about the relationship between the animation and the trigger value.

This blueprint tells “when the character moved into the trigger volume, the animation starts to play, and as the platform needs to move up and down rapidly, so I set it to looping state. When the character leaves the trigger volume, the animation will stop with a 10 seconds delay.”

Outcome:

To set up my theme, I tried 2 different approaches:

1, the unreal 4 tile map.

As the name suggested, unreal 4 tilemap allow you to use the sprite as tiles to build up your map. First, I imported my platform as PNG file, then I selected the block that I will be using in my map, and insert the tilemap inside the game.

This approach is can build the map by only using repeated sprite without duplicate them if you have a large map with the repeated element. But this approach has it’s a weakness, I didn’t draw my platform assets for the tilemap, when you look closely, you can see there is a gap between each tile.

 

Which I suggest, if you want to use the tilemap approach to build your map, you better draw your assets based on the tile box. So that’s why I think this approach is better to use in pixel games.

The second approach is much straightforward, just drag and drop your sprite into the game, and place them in the place you want. Although this is a 2D game, you can still see your game map in 3D.

There is really no guideline about how you should place your assets, but as a 2D game, you should always turn on the player collision view mode to make sure your character can stand on the assets.

And based on the changing approach, I need to change my design of the map, as you can see the different:

Also to add the watercolour texture in the assets, I scanned a piece of watercolour paper and multiplied it on the assets layer in Photoshop. (before and after)

 

In the previous section, I made a doll’s head, and the head has been successfully attached to the body (which I purchased from online.)

And for further development, I would like to build a whole doll.

my project start with a design of the doll’s structure, the type of doll that I designed is called ball jointed doll, and the doll has ball-shaped joints which connected with rubber bands. ( the blue parts are the S-shaped hooks, the red line is the rubber band)

I have also made a simple sizing chart for the doll.

As you can see, the sketched design is much complicated than the final.

 

I found my inspiration from other similar types of game, there are 2 games that I found most inspired.

The game Sally Face is an independent game designed by Megan Holmes, it’s a 2D video puzzle game which published by chapter every half year. To be honest, this game isn’t my favorite game based on its art style, but its story and character creation are truly bizarre. This game has no many fighting/shooting elements, the game is based on storytelling and horror, this is what I expected from my game: a game that focuses on storytelling.

Image1. Game Sally Face.

The second game I looked at is Lydia. Same as Sally face, this game is fully based on storytelling and puzzle, I look at this kind of game is because first I got attracted by the story and because I could imagine that making a storytelling-based game is much easier than other game in coding & blueprint set up.

Image 2. Game Lydia.

Lydia and Sally face both are dark & horror style, I have got some inspiration from Lydia’s game art style, the black and white line art is a reflection of the girl Lydia’s childhood story, I decided to adapt this art style in my work, and I will create a watercolour style environment for my game.

A good game always starts with an interesting background story, I’m starting my development project by writing the background story.

---

The story is about an abandoned bunny’s adventure in woods, a bunny found herself waked up in a trash station, and she decides to find her own way out of the wood by climbing up the treetops, in the end she climb to high, and she arrived the bunny’s heaven and has been told that she has been abandoned. But she still wants to find her owner and ask why the owner decide to abandon her.

---

 

Image 1. The original map design (2 different design)

The character design, I had 3 different design: a bunny with human body structure, cartoon bunny and realistic bunny.

Image 2. My character design

I chose to combined the realistic and cartoon bunny together, I used the cartoon bunny’s body and the realistic bunny’s face & ears.

Image 3. Photo by Koume_Tan, Instagram. And my analysis of the bunny’s face.

Image 4. My final character.