Creating Hell

Since the christmas period this piece has gone through quite a few changes. Initially I did what I said I was going to do at the end of my last post. I made a hell environment for my scene, shot my reference footage, and turned the Max rig I plan on using into the devil.

I made a few sketches in Photoshop for possible ideas for the 'Devil's' look and did a few pose sketches of some ideas I had:

I wanted my guy to have a speaking podium where upon rests the book of hell which he consults in place of the clip board Rowan has in the actual comedy sketch.

I also made some some thumbnail sketches for my hell scene. The first 4 were my initial ideas and the last two I did more recently going for a more simplified look:

And this is how my original hell scene looked in Max:

I decided to have my devil in clothes as it the guy was dressed up for the performance. I decided against the pitch fork and opted not to give him a cape as that would just make more work for me. I did add in a tail though...but I'm not going to apply any animation to it until I see how much time I have availiable after I've got the more important areas nailed.

My hell scene was based upon the initial designs, but when I got to the stage where I started putting in the gate I decided that all this detail on the scene wasn't necessary and thus why I began looking for alternatives and drew the bottom two sketches.

I also decided to make my character the actual devil and ditched the clothing so he is now all red. Hell itself is currently at a cross between the old and new design ideas, though I'll probably develop it to resemble the more recent thumbnails at a later stage.

This is its looking at present:

I definately prefer how the scenes starting to look now, though I think the lighting and colours will need some work. I guess I'll mess around with that when the animation's done. Got most of the main body actions blocked out now so I'll upload that when it's all finished.