A Growing Triffid

After working on bill i wanted to get on a work on making the iconic triffid, after my initial designs i decided on a plant that i wanted to base the triffid’s head on and that was an Albany Pitcher Plant (Cephalotus follicularis)

I started to rough out the base shape based on my sketch from a previous post, Here is the base mesh that i created

After working on it further i decided that it was to clean and tidy, the silhouette wasn’t broken up so i went in and added branches and general growth to the triffid to make the shape more intersesting.

Updated Triffid Base Mesh

For the final mesh i am going to use normal mapping to add extra growth and branches onto the main mesh, i will also use alpha maps to add leaves and foliage on the mesh.

More development to come

Construction of a man

After creating the base ideas for Bill Masen i decided that there are a few things that i wanted to bring out of the book, Bill was described as wearing a lounge suit in the book so thats what i decided to make him wear. When he is hunting triffids he has a mesh mask helmet and some work gloves, this was the outfit that i wanted him to wear.

I built the mesh using 3ds max using the my workflow that i have been using for years. i wanted to keep the poly limit nice and low so that this can be used in a low level game.

I then continued on to unwrap the mesh and sculpt and texture using mudbox, i prefer using mudbox for it features as the projection tool allows me to get a good base reference material. Here is the textured version of the character.

After a few iterations i eventually ironed out some of the things i didn’t like about the character and that was things like a few proportion issues and some extra details into the character, ive tidied up the character to this stage and will now concentrate on creating the Triffids. Here is a render of Bill Masen in his current state.

Bill Masen

The texturing and lighting is the style that i would like to see in my game.

More to come soon 😀

The Triffids Are Coming

The Triffid is the carnivorous plant that takes over the world in the original book. There have been many adaptations of this classic plant. Here is a description of the triffid,

“According to the novel, the fictitious triffid can be divided into three components: base, trunk, and head (which contains a venomous sting). In The Day of the Triffids, adult triffids are described as measuring on average seven feet in height. European triffids never exceed eight feet, while those living in tropical areas can reach 10 feet.

The base of a triffid is a large muscle-like root mass comprising three blunt appendages. When dormant/docile, these appendages are rooted into the ground and are used to draw nutrients, as with a normal plant. When active, triffids use these appendages to propel themselves along at a moderate walking pace. The character Masen describes the triffid’s locomotion as such”  Wikipedia

“When it “walked” it moved rather like a man on crutches. Two of the blunt “legs” slid forward, then the whole thing lurched as the rear one drew almost level with them, then the two in front slid forward again. At each “step” the long stem whipped violently back and forth; it gave one a kind of seasick feeling to watch it. As a method of progress it looked both strenuous and clumsy—faintly reminiscent of young elephants at play. One felt that if it were to go on lurching for long in that fashion it would be bound to strip all its leaves if it did not actually break its stem. Nevertheless, ungainly though it looked, it was contriving to cover the ground at something like an average walking pace.” Day of the Triffids

The Day of the Triffids (1962)

The 1962 film version of the triffid didnt fit the proper description of the triffid from the book. It was to human like in its motion, the movement was true too the description the legs were backwards.

The Day of the Triffids (1981)

The 1981 Triffid is alot closer to the original version described in the book, the plant its self was’nt quite menacing enough the colors of the stem are to bright and cheerful.

The Day of the Triffids (2009)

The 2009 Triffid is the best one that ive seen so far out of the adaptations, the sting and shape of the hood where menacing and creepy. this is something i want to portray in my version of the triffid. The movement of the stump/feet roots was to smooth they looked more like they were gliding along instead of the swaying movement described in the book.

These are the sketches that i have produced of how i feel the triffids should look.

The will be more to come

The start of a man

The main character of the story is Bill Masen he is a triffid-ologist that works at one of the oil companies. He is struck blind by a triffid sting across the face, this strike is normally enough to kill a man but as Bill has built up a resistance he was only temporarily blinded. During the story he develops as a character and it would be nice to show this through the game. the point that i want to place him at is when he is scavenging for supplies in the triffid ravaged world. He is described as wearing a gentlemen lounge suit as his normal clothes, when he is scavenging he puts on heavy work gloves and one of the wire mesh helmets to protect himself from the stings. he also has some protective glasses to stop the poison splashing into his eyes.

Below is a sketch of how i feel Bill would look

And Further On

With the world i want being similar to our world it means that things can be adapted from existing things, The weapons that they use to kill the triffids are really interesting. These to have been changed in various adaptations of the story. 

This is the triffid gun from the 1980s BBC series, this gun fired large spinning disks as described in the book but it is quite inaccurate and bulky, for my ideas i wanted to create a weapon that is fired more like a rifle. with a clip that allows the user to reload in clips intsted of loading one disk at a time. Loading one at a time would be scary if an army of triffids are coming at you (would be like fighting an army of zombies with a gun that only shoots one bullet). So i thought about this when designing the weapon. with the ammo i wanted to stick true to the book which describes the ammo as small metal disks, cross’s or boomerangs so i wanted to keep them the same.

Below are the sketches for the Anti-Triffid Gun (ATG) and its ammo

I wanted the gun to be mechanical and not battery. So i added in a draw back ratchet to the front of the gun which is used to spin the disks to the right speed. I got the idea for that style from the Ripsaw Nerf Gun here is a video of how it works  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgo6gH7d4A0

Journey In hope

This project will be heavily based around creating the main characters of the novel but i didnt want to just forget about the rest of the game world that i will be creating the characters for. So i wanted to think about the sort of things that would be in the world as a result of the triffids coming about. The oil companies all switched from traditional oil to triffid oil so would have changed their names, i have come up with some logos to which the company could have adopted. In the sketch below are some concepts i have drawn up for some things in the game. 

I have called the company Triff-Co

Also in the sketches i have added some other pieces like how i think the Face masks that the triff-ologist need to wear to stop getting stung by the triffids. This mask is a wire mesh front to stop the whip of the triffid, the rest of the helmet is designed on war helmets of the time to protect the wearer.

These are some ideas for the title

With the title i wanted to get the sort of 1950s horror film feel, the classic colors then for this style was red and yellow with a bold background, i feel i really hit the nail on the head with the 3rd one down.

Recreating the day the world ended

Welcome to my blog, this is a project i am working on for my master project. I will be looking into the original novel The Day of the Triffids written by John Wyndham for my project.

For this game concept i really want to bring the world that John Wyndham created to life. There have been film and tv series adaptations throughout the years that all differ in various ways from the original novel, I would like to keep true to the novel as much as possible while expanding out to create an imersive game concept.

Blurb from the back of the book to give you an idea of the story

‘When Bill Masen wakes up to a catastrophe, he is glad that bandages covered his eyes the night before. He finds a population rendered helpless by the green lights; now blind, they are at the mercy of the Triffids. Once, with their ability to move and their carnivorous habits, the Triffids were just botanical curiosities. But now, with vulnerable human flesh to feast upon , these homicidal plants are set to turn town and country alike into a killing ground, and, perhaps, replace humanity at the top of the food chain …. ‘