Hello! This devlog is going to be talking about the design process of our ranged coconut enemy, Jeremi.

Jeremi went through many design changes during the concepting phase. None of us artists had much idea on what he was going to look like other than  he was going to be a coconut related. Turns out there's not much references out there other than Kakamoras from Moana. 

Quickly we all agreed they were too similar. Our Creative Director had the amazing idea of mooshing the arms of the Kakamora spin-offs with the helmet and body idea.  Thus Jeremi V1.0 was born!

Originally Jeremi was going to be throwing a spear. This was before we ran out of ideas on what our melee version of Jeremi was going to hit you with...  Then inspiration struck! We  took a completely different point of view on 'coconut related'. Coconut pirate crabs. Me personally, I was super excited about this idea as I thought it would be  funny fighting off ankle bitters. The rest of the team disagreed very quickly... (Sneak peak at our tank coconut concept)

Reverting back to our original idea, I began gathering more references, that hardly existed... But I ended up coming across that cat meme, you know the one thats like 

And finally Jeremi came to be. The rock throwing odd ball we've grown to love.

The best part about Jeremi's concepting phase was all it took was one meme. 

(walk and throw concept)

Jeremi then moved onto our 3D character artist (Elmin)!

The modelling process didn't take too long as I used the melee coconut as a template and just altered the shape and silhouette. Went onto fixing the UV'S for the model and getting it ready for texturing.

Then went onto texturing, I was able to use the Melee coconut template and fix the textures for some parts so it would match with the model. Instead of painting the fibres by hand, I used a simulated liquid stream to achieve the effect and only touched up little bit here and there. I then submitted it for approval by our Creative Director.

After the character had been modelled and textured it was then sent off to our 3D character animator (Derek)!

The rigging and skin weighting of Jeremi didn't take too long as he had a humanoid shape. This allowed me to utilise mayas quick rig and re-adjust the bones and skin weights so that they lined up correct with Jeremis body structure.

(Jeremi Range Attack Animation)

(Jeremi Walk Cycle)

(Idle Jeremi)

(Dead Jeremi)

And that's all, thanks for your  interest in Jeremi.

Catch Jeremi in Sigil now!