Hey everyone!
We at Gear Guts' hope that you have been having a great holiday season so far. Today Da Boss wanted to give you some insight into his design process and to show you how things develop over time. So without further ado, I will let him take it away.
Five generations of Broozer heads from oldest (left) to newest (right)
"Did a bit of digging and found the various 'generations' of head sculpts that I've done in the past, ranging from the very first organic test sculps I did to each following version. I hadn't done so in a while, and it really shows how rough the original designs were compared to what I'm able to do now.
The original was really me playing, trying to figure out what could be done and imported. They were crude, lumpy and I didn't really grasp a lot of what the programs were capable of. They were far from perfect, but fit the bill for helping define what the Broozers were to be. These original sculpts and figures were incredibly solid but very limited in options, as their arm pieces were singular parts with hands sculpted likewise as limited. At the time, the program I was using couldn't rig anything, so I had to manually move components, smooth and sculpt out the edges, then save a snapshot before doing the next pose. This lead to having around four to five arm poses that I'd recycle into the different starting kits that were first released.
Over time, I sculpted new heads. I had started to learn about how paint would be applied, and what would and would not work for modeling and painting. The originals' main flaw was that their eyes were small, and part of the original sculpt, so it limited what could be done. The second versions had the eyes separate, and were overall smoothed down compared to the first versions. The teeth were thickened to allow for easier painting, but still had some of the original designs' flaws.
The next versions fixed some of the main problems with textures. The head shape that the Broozers are now known for was formed. The eyes get a bit bigger, the jaw was thinned, and a bunch of different versions were sculpted based off this version, which worked well overall. The main problem was the teeth themselves: while getting better, they still did not keep up in scale, and many of the 'roaring' faces led to teeth misprinting or looking smaller, especially in the upper jaws.
The fourth version further widened the eyes and this was when the leering head was added. Most of these heads in this generation worked really well, but the limitations of the sculpt were mostly down to emotions ranges. I was able to do Broozers that looked like they were having fun, either roaring or having a crooked grin, but with the teeth still part of the base sculpt there continued to be limitations to what could be done for expressions and pose.
The most recent ones now have the teeth as their own individual parts. This means I can knock some out for adding expressions. I can now vary the lengths to create more Broozer heads than before, using the same base components. Along with that, the sculpt itself is higher resolution, hence why it looks 'smoother' compared to the others in this quick render.
I've always pushed myself to continue improving, both in concepts, but also quality. I hope everyone who has stuck along for the ride continues to enjoy the madness that has been on display so far."