The Legendary "MOP"

The "Mop" Story

In the early days of Tiberium development (2005ish) there was a lot of pressure from executive leadership to develop horrifying and intelligent aliens that were different than anything anyone had ever seen before...

One of the first models to come across my desk was this less than horrifying "alien space plant" from then production designer Steve Burg. He explained that is was metallic sea life from space that floated around the air and shocked anything it touched... he explained that I should rig it so it's willow like branches slowly floated like it was under water, yet were made of alien steel...

Needless to say the challenge was on. I began to figure a way to make this concept please both the art directors and the executives...

Animate a horrifying space sea plant...

I Started by creating a bone system light enough to run in a game engine and still move the many details of the space plant. I gave it a center point where the branches came together and fashioned an unorthodox rig to manipulate the skeleton. I then began trying to pose with standard character pose problem solving.

Find poses that show what the character is thinking and feeling.
Find believable physics related posture for locomotion and idle behaviors.
Find dynamic ways of showing differences between both physical and emotional states.
(Bring space plant to life. Give it personality)

In a short period of time I had a breakthrough...
With some unconventional lines of thought I began to twist the character around itself into poses that looked nothing like the original plant. It was starting to work... but it needed something to ground the shapes and make it seem intelligent. I added the single glowing eye near the center rotation point. ...Then it was alive! I was very excited to come back the next day with this rough video of how it might exist.

Watch the original transforming space plant movie.Click Here or on the picture below.

Little did I know... Some of the game designers and executive leadership had seen Steve Burg's space plant snap shot and had already been making fun of it. The quote from then game design director was "There is no way that mop is getting in this game" ...it was there the "Mop" name was given to this character.
A name given on the day it came to life... The name that killed it...

I was excited and ready with the renders and the movie you see on this page. I had stayed up late modeling, lighting, texturing, and rendering both the space plant and a set. I really wanted to sell the potential of what I believed was truly an original life form from space... a creature worthy of legendary sci-fi.

It was no use... They stayed true to their word... there was no way this mop was getting in their game. (ha ha)

...Sure... This is a common development story. Great ideas get filtered out from projects because only so many ideas can actually go in... that's just how it goes... but to me... this one was special. This mop was beautiful...

Though mop was talked about on and off for the next three years... it was never resurrected.
However... Mop lives here now... on his own web page.

Enjoy! ...And learn what you can from him :)