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Artwork / Alternative Plasma Weapon Appearances?
« on: July 04, 2012, 01:23:29 am »
Hello there, folks - wanted to see about maybe making a little contribution to this fun little game. Starting small for now - was thinking about the plasma weapons in the game, specifically the Pistol, Rifle and Blaster.
See, they are fairly neat designs, but I did sort of wonder if they really matched the sort of design aesthetic you get from the aliens' ships, among other things. These plasma weapons seemed to be designed to be quite smooth and contoured, rather elegant looking weapons really, whereas the alien ships tend to be rather angular and spiky affairs, particularly the Scout and the Fighter. Also, some have pointed out that the plasma guns look quite similar to the weapons the Covenant use in the Halo series - in fact, I was rather struck by the similarities between UFO: AI's plasma pistol and the Covenant plasma rifle. Even with the project being free, it does worry me that there could be legal repercussions involved...
Now, I don't know how welcome or unwelcome this contribution is, but I decided to try and do some alternative designs for the plasma guns, see if I couldn't get them to seem a bit closer to the general alien design aesthetic - or at least, avoid possible copyright infringement. For this set of plasma weapons I wanted to give them an angular, aggressive appearance - in some ways I based some of the parts of the weapons on the "fins" on the Scout and Fighter UFOs. I hope they appear good enough to fit in alright with some of the existing weaponry and armor - I won't know for certain until they get constructed in 3d and textured and all that.
Now, these are just my second pass on this idea (the first pass tried to retain the more curved shaped of the original plasma guns, with somewhat mixed results), so this is all very much open to change. In fact, looking at these now, I can think of a couple of possible changes already - for the rifle, I'd probably want to reposition the fore grip and/or the rear grip so that they form a more comfortable holding position for firing. For the blaster, I was intending it to be a sort of underslung weapon design (a bit akin to the Heavy's Minigun in Team Fortress 2), but for that I think the trigger grip may need to be angled a bit forward so it's a bit more natural to handle. Alternatively, one could shift some of the elements around so that it works more like how one holds a Light Machine Gun or grenade launcher or what have you.
I'd welcome your comments on these designs - whether it's constructive critique, approval, or saying these weren't necessary and the current plasma gun designs will do just fine. I look forward to hearing from you all! Now I just need to reinstall 3ds max so I can actually make 3d mockups of these...
See, they are fairly neat designs, but I did sort of wonder if they really matched the sort of design aesthetic you get from the aliens' ships, among other things. These plasma weapons seemed to be designed to be quite smooth and contoured, rather elegant looking weapons really, whereas the alien ships tend to be rather angular and spiky affairs, particularly the Scout and the Fighter. Also, some have pointed out that the plasma guns look quite similar to the weapons the Covenant use in the Halo series - in fact, I was rather struck by the similarities between UFO: AI's plasma pistol and the Covenant plasma rifle. Even with the project being free, it does worry me that there could be legal repercussions involved...
Now, I don't know how welcome or unwelcome this contribution is, but I decided to try and do some alternative designs for the plasma guns, see if I couldn't get them to seem a bit closer to the general alien design aesthetic - or at least, avoid possible copyright infringement. For this set of plasma weapons I wanted to give them an angular, aggressive appearance - in some ways I based some of the parts of the weapons on the "fins" on the Scout and Fighter UFOs. I hope they appear good enough to fit in alright with some of the existing weaponry and armor - I won't know for certain until they get constructed in 3d and textured and all that.
Now, these are just my second pass on this idea (the first pass tried to retain the more curved shaped of the original plasma guns, with somewhat mixed results), so this is all very much open to change. In fact, looking at these now, I can think of a couple of possible changes already - for the rifle, I'd probably want to reposition the fore grip and/or the rear grip so that they form a more comfortable holding position for firing. For the blaster, I was intending it to be a sort of underslung weapon design (a bit akin to the Heavy's Minigun in Team Fortress 2), but for that I think the trigger grip may need to be angled a bit forward so it's a bit more natural to handle. Alternatively, one could shift some of the elements around so that it works more like how one holds a Light Machine Gun or grenade launcher or what have you.
I'd welcome your comments on these designs - whether it's constructive critique, approval, or saying these weren't necessary and the current plasma gun designs will do just fine. I look forward to hearing from you all! Now I just need to reinstall 3ds max so I can actually make 3d mockups of these...