Second round of design based on the animatic, script and board postings.

For our Patient Zero we modified his wheelchair to be a bit more hi-tech and incorporated restraints into his clothing as well as the chair. There’s some question still as to how outwardly “artificial” he should appear… small seams in his skin and technical markings in areas such as the face, tongue or eyeballs might emphasize it in greater or lesser ways.

We looked to a combination of crystal structure and bone mutations which result in skin-piercing spurs (real stuff, very scary) as the inspiration for the primitive growths that serve as the focus and visual cue of his powers. They can be more or less jewel-like and faceted depending on whether we make them more crystalline or more bony.

Next up is Our Lady Of The Jar, who’s psychic stone growths appear more as polished gems rather than painful growths. The pattern of the stones is less random and more spaced to resemble a maangtika or a ferroniere  (basically forehead jewelry).

Flowing, floaty hair can be very time-consuming to animate well (lots of mixed wave-forms), so while we want so show that she has a full head of hair, we can trick the amount of frames down by containing it in some interesting way. We might also incorporate the prop as part of the larger apparatus that surrounds here, with cables leading out of the sides or lights that indicate activity.

Our design of the “bug” starts with the basic form of a wasp, in this case Vespa Mandarinia. Also known as the Giant Asian Hornet, it measures about 2-3 inches and is powerfully venomous.

It’s also a good basis for the study of wasp anatomy, since it’s so big that the details of taxonomy and anatomy are readily apparent. Our little mecha-wasp has a similar basic structure and outward appearance, but replaces biology with technology and adds in a few tricks (like retractable antennae and a wide-range multi-spectrum visual array with macrotelescopic depth options.

I don’t know what any of that means, but it sounds awesome.

Attached are a series of preliminary character roughs, based on designs seen in the animatic or on the board. First is the Hacker. Board designs suggested an alternative vision of the character who’s a little less tidy than that seen in the animatic, and that design seemed to fit more fluidly with the character as described in the script. We’ve drawn up a pair of headshots based on those designs but using the house style, and we’ll pursue one or the other (or a different option) based on feedback. In addition, we explore a couple of variations on his glasses, through which he interfaces with the computer. Click for larger:

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Next we check out a few variations on the labsuits worn by the technicians attending to the captive. The first is a fairly straight take on the design as posted in the boards, the others offer variations in helmet design and external apparatus.

Switching the focus to a single cut, we did a rough pass on the soldier who agitates the captive into action. The armor is simple but follows the lines of modern suits, with a focus on covering the torso and groin. It’s been suggested that we leave the helmet off this particular character, both to emphasize his character and heighten the horror of what happens next.

The rifle is a basic bullpup design based loosely on the lines of a Kel-Tec RFB and then adding more modern, sculpted curves for the grips to reflect against the harder lines of the firing mechanism. The weapon is cocked by pulling the knob along the top of the barrel, not unlike sub-machineguns such as the Uzi or MP5.

The goggles we went with here are basic shooting goggles, but an alternative might be something more articulated and cybernetic (having the implants rip out along with everything else could notch up the eww factor another tick).

Once he’s made the mistake of agitating the captive, things get messy. Sounds will be 70% of what you see, but in addition to the twisting of limbs into interesting shapes, showing the secondary effects (such as suddenly pouring blood from the splits in the body out of the bottom of the ball of meat that used to be a man) effectively re-emphasize the horror of what’s taking place.

A new angle for the headscraping action emphasizes the observing scientists place in the scene. Even as silhouettes, they can react by body language, or they can not react at all… either way it says something about them as characters.

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Finally, once the soldier has been wrung out and given a shiny new haircut, we switch out to a low angle that places all three actors (the captive, the soldier, and the scientists as a group) into the frame and displays the mass of pulpy, chunky gore that’s been sprayed across the laboratory. After holding him in the air to squeeze out a bit more juice, he’s dropped into a floppy lump that barely resembles anything human now.

This is a one-day initial rough pass on elements from the animatic, board and script. With additional time and focus we’ll improve the level of detail and design.

Some quick lens tests (using old Halo models). This coding gets us optics that will be equivalent to ~15mm taking lens for a 35mm rig. Things aren’t overly distorted until they get marco’d and then the lens will bend them significantly.  Click for full size:

Here are some quick concepts to start the design process on the compound & the hacker’s lab.This is without much EFX lighting that will help blow out the lighter compound colors… and without the contrast EFX that will pull the hacker’s lab into near WoW addict-level darkness/loneliness. Click for full size:

We decided to have a little fun with one iconic scene to provide a quick example of the potential look of PostHuman‘s animation process.  In the first, our key artists have drawn quick key frames, (some of them rather rough), for the animation of the soldier getting his head torn off. In the second gif, we’ve begun to draw breakdown frames and inbetweens for these keys.  If you look closely at the part of the animation up to where the goggles come off, you will notice that the second gif has a bit more detail to the motion.  Eventually, more frames would be added and cleaned-up until the action is completely seamless.

Click an image for isolated view: