Star Wars Jedi: Survivor | Princess Leia Work In Progress

Well, this was an unexpected project I started! As stated in a previous post, I have been wanting to get more into Unreal Engine modding and developing so I decided Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was a good place to get more familiar as there is a ton of resources and active support going on for the game.

Over the past few weeks I've done a lot of learning, and it's been really fun even if challenging at times (man the hair materials/shaders in particular drove me CRAZY!) and I just wanted to showcase something I have been working on: Princess Leia, aka the late great Carrie Fisher! It was completely unintended, I mainly just wanted to get some assets into the game to start playing around with. The outfit is something that I created years ago (which is why it looks a little dated) based off of Leia's heavily modified outfit from Battlefront 2 and a hairstyle I had modded for the game. Of course, once I got the hair and the outfit into the game I couldn't not complete the look... So I have created a new face mesh! I must say, I love the ways you can use Unreal Engine to make the skin look great.

This kind of feels a little full circle for me as I have always been such a huge Carrie Fisher fan. Ever since I was a kid I always looked up to her and have deeply loved a lot of her work, in particular her books (Postcards From The Edge being my favourite!). In fact, the first ever model I created when I was 12 years old was Leia so it's really nice this unexpected development happened and has made me feel nostalgic in a lot of ways. I have previously stated that I have somewhat fallen out of love with Star Wars in the past few years, and because I've never been a huge fan of playing as a Jedi (what can I say, I'm a sucker for a Princess with a blaster rifle) I never gave the Star Wars Jedi games much thought.

However, I am super glad to have taken a chance on the game when it was recently on sale because it's so FUN! I always thought it was just a hack-and-slasher and never realised how in-depth the game was in terms of exploration, platforming and even puzzles. It's been a while where puzzles in a game have stumped me, so big kudos to the developers for not making everything feel so casual and easy. As someone who doesn't love melee-centric gameplay, I've even really been enjoying the combat.

Along with Leia, I have also implemented female walking, jogging, running, sprinting, idling and all the transition animations in between as well as a couple of sound changes. My thought process on this mod was 'What if Leia was always a jedi?' which I think is an interesting concept to explore. Anyway, I feel like this is something that I will work on for a little while since the customisation potential is absolutely insane. What do you think?

But don't worry, if Star Wars isn't your thing it's certainly not the only project I've got going on and I can't wait to share more with you guys soon! Hope you're all doing well <3