Return of the MAC

For a personal project of mine I thought I’d pay homage to a friend of mine that became quite the star after he retired from the SAS. John Thomas “Mac” McAleese MM (25 April 1949 – 26 August 2011) was a British Army soldier who led an SAS team which stormed the Iranian embassy in London in May 1980 to end the Iranian Embassy siege (Operation Nimrod). He became known for retelling his story on TV and for taking part in the reality show SAS: Are You Tough Enough?.

McAleese was born in Stirling and grew up in Laurieston, Stirlingshire. He joined 59 Independent Commando, Royal Engineers, in 1969, aged 20. He moved to Hereford in 1975 after being accepted by the SAS. He was a lance corporal in 1980, serving in Pagoda Troop, B Squadron, 22 SAS Regiment, when he was famously seen with members of his team – Blue Team – on live television placing an explosive charge on the front first floor balcony of the Iranian Embassy prior to the assault on 5 May 1980.

McAleese later took part in the Falklands War in 1982, and was awarded the Military Medal in 1988 for service in Northern Ireland. He also served as a bodyguard for three British prime ministers. He was honourably discharged from the British Army on 8 February 1992 in the rank of staff sergeant. After that, he worked as a security consultant in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was also an airsoft instructor.

For this project I aim to create a new character for the very popular game team fortress 2, their are several classes in the game and I thought having known MAC personally what better than to place him into a his very own class within the game. He will be called the SPECIAL…ie in reference to the SAS.
I will collaborating on this project with Megan who is CG Artist from my year. She will be responsible for the modelling of MAC and when this is finished I will begin to rig, skin then animate various game animations.

I started my research by investigating what the SAS were all about, my personal memory and first time I can remember even hearing of the SAS was back in  April 1980 from 30th April to 5th May. These black figures appeared from nowhere as the public watched live on tv.

Above is John from various programs he featured in on TV. These are good purely for reference material for when getting the similarity needed in the sketch. However I’m not looking to make him entirely the same, more of a stylised version of him.

Obviously if I’m to get things entirely accurate then besides studying the man we need to look at the equipment and gear the SAS are renowned for using. Above are various SAS soldiers in slight variations in gear. I’ve forwarded some of this information to Meg as she will be needing it for modelling purposes.

Here we see the various weapons the SAS use, starting from the top left we see flash-bangs, grenades, MP5 Sub Machine Gun, The C8 Carbine, Sig Sauer P226 Pistol. All these and more are things that Meg and I will have to consider.

Here is a little bit of info on the game our MAC character would feature. Team Fortress 2 like its predecessors,  is focused around two opposing teams, Reliable Excavation & Demolition (RED) and Builders League United (BLU) competing for a combat-based principal objective. Players can choose to play as one of nine character classes in these teams, each with his own unique strengths, weaknesses, and weapons. Although the abilities of a number of classes have changed from earlier Team Fortress incarnations, the basic elements of each class have remained, that being one primary weapon, one secondary weapon, and one melee weapon. The game was released with six official maps, although 44 extra maps, 9 arena maps, 8 king of the hill maps, and various other map types have been included in subsequent updates. In addition, a number of community assembled maps have been released. When players join a level for the first time, an introductory video shows how to complete its objectives. Here’s a video for those who have not heard of TF2, this is an example of the Heavy Character.

So now the concepting had started and getting a likeness was my main objective but with a style about it. Starting off with realistic proportions then exaggerating the jaw could possibly be an interesting approach.

Looking at body shape was also a little tricky, especially as this character had to fit in the world of TF2. So proportions had to match and style. I noticed almost all the characters within the game have quite large hands, so this was something I needed to include. Also although the characters looked detailed in the game at closer inspection their isn’t that much detail at all. So not over complicating it was key also.

As the above comment explain on the design sheet, not entirely happy with the look but will do my best to adjust it to similar style.

Some possible faces our Mac might pull, however depending on time, rigging the face might be left out as this project is mainly body mechanics for a game, so see how time figures.

Finally here are some poses we will likely see MAC perform, I plan to have a walk cycle, shooting various weapons, throwing grenades, and possibly a death or being shot scene.