'kay, I'm in. No prior commitments this time round, so here's hoping I'll go the distance... Just staking my spot, throwing around ideas, the name Mastermind is stuck in my head - some combination of classic brain-in-a-jar and uber-behind-the-scenes plot-formulating bastard. Sketch in a few days, unless I'm desperately lazy. First I gotta learn me some normal mapping (eep!), never done more than play with it. Yes, I'm scared too.
4 months!
You have four months to wrestle with normal mapping! If you ever run into any problems, post about them in the artist discussion area on the forum, and hopefully someone will help out. If not, I'll just make a news post on the main page or something!
Someone wants me to get to work...
Okay, so I got an invite to the Warhammer Online beta - just after my internet was throttled back. Maybe the gods of teh intarweb are telling me to get cracking?
"No WAR for you! Two weeks!"
Scribbles are underway, background is fleshing out. A teaser - Mr Grey, elderly CEO and owner of international heavy manufacture conglomerate Grey Inc, disappears on the same night as a top of the line android. The next day employees arrive at work only to find the entire corporation has been parcelled up and sold to unknown parties. Grey Inc. has gone underground like you wouldn't believe...
'ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go...
The shining star of the automated office product line was to be the Grey Inc. Personal Assistant Android, a combination of secretary, butler, bodyguard and supercomputer, including an ultra-high bandwidth internal modem and optional combat software package. However the prototype AI (codenamed Mastermind) generated to seed the individual AIs of each droid could or would not fulfil its function and Darius Grey, CEO and founder, was forced to seek an alternative solution.
Whether the corporate management community (much less the authorities) would discover that the advanced software coordinated the functions of their PA droids was actually certain segments of human brain culled from criminals, hookers and the homeless became a moot point with the cancellation of the product launch following Mr Grey's hospitalisation. After almost a century of hard living his body was giving out. His own personal PA droid was assigned to manage his affairs. What they didn't know was that inside his own personal PA droid was his won personal brain.
In desperation and terror of losing not just his life but control of his company he had his techs and surgeons implant the relatively healthy organ into a customised model, along with the recalcitrant seed AI Mastermind. He scoffed at their dire warnings, at the dangers of placing a fully conscious human brain in a cybernetic body, and at the risks to his mind of a drastic loss of sensory stimulus. He'd staved off death and now had the time to replace this stopgap solution with a more permanent one. In fact, with the power of this robot body and an advanced AI to assist him he could dispose of the board and run his company the way he should have all along.
As he plotted and planned his mental state deteriorated. Mastermind watched and waited.
The culmination of his plans was an attempt to actually do away with the board in a bloody massacre, ending in a vicious firefight and the deaths of several police officers. He was disabled with a shotgun slug to the head, concussing and bruising his fragile brain while leaving his synthetic components undamaged. As he slipped into unconsciousness he felt a query from Mastermind enter his head.
"Mr Grey, shall I take over for you?" Dazed and haemorrhaging, he consented and passed out.
Minutes before he was to be placed in a makeshift reinforced cell hundreds of Grey Inc. PA droids descended on the police in a highly coordinated and ruthless ambush. Grey's droid sat unmoving amidst the chaos, while Grey - awake and furious - raged impotently inside. Mastermind observed the blood seeping from his brain, gradually insinuating its own routines and exploring its only organic component. It was fascinated by the potential of this fragile but powerful organ, and as Grey passed out again it took full control and stood. As it strolled away from the carnage surrounded by its identical siblings, it stretched out over their internal modems and settled its awareness across the hundreds of surviving droids.
Darius Grey was taken into custody, but it was Mastermind that escaped.
Forgive my rushed scribbles. The top right head is a damaged/vandalised version. I'm still deciding if I want to go with the straighter body (more business-suit like) or the more streamlined version (just plain sexier).
try out mudbox, its easy to start with and even if you dont use the normal map from it its a fun experience all in itself. also its got a free trial.