Comicon Challenge - choosing a character
polycounter lvl 8
Hey guys !
So this year I'll try to do the comicon challenge, but, as usual, I can't choose what to do. Honestly, as far as I love comic books, I don't really like classic super heroes like Superman, Captain America or Spiderman, I find them ridiculous, with their flashy costumes and their underwear on top of their pants... I started reading comics years ago, like Witchblade, the Darkness and the like ( Top Cow and Dark Horse comics mostly ), and I always feel like they are not as popular as Marvel and DC. Of course I also love stuff like Spawn, Sam and Twitch, Deadpool and many others.
I've got several ideas so far :
Vampirella, Vampire Knight : for the "stand" theme of the challenge, I thought about creating a new Vampirella, with some badass vampire armor instead of the red bikini. I don't really like female characters wandering with almost nothing on them, but it should stay sexy AND badass.
Vampi : she's like a "manga" version of Vampirella, with a futuristic setting. And generally she wears nice tight outfits, but less revealing than Vampirella :
The Crow, metal voodoo style : here the idea would be to mix the classical Crow design with voodoo magic elements, like if the hero would have been on a pilgrimage in a voodoo tribe, to better understand his powers and communicate with the spirits. ( "stand" theme )
Aphrodite IX : she is a cyborg, so I thought I could go for the "last" theme ( the character is almost dead and will do a last attack to kill his ennemy ), with broken mechanical parts, maybe hanging some big ass weapon, ready to fire her last powerful shot...
Medieval Witchblade : as I say I don't like almost naked characters, so I thought it could be cool to take the medieval witchblade look, and add some armor in the same style. Medieval Witchblade already exists, so I would just need to enhance her a bit.
I don't have a lot of idea for male characters. The Darkness would kick asses though, and I think I never saw him in the older challenges.
So, Watcha think ? My favorites ideas are Vampirella Knight and Aphrodite IX so far...
So this year I'll try to do the comicon challenge, but, as usual, I can't choose what to do. Honestly, as far as I love comic books, I don't really like classic super heroes like Superman, Captain America or Spiderman, I find them ridiculous, with their flashy costumes and their underwear on top of their pants... I started reading comics years ago, like Witchblade, the Darkness and the like ( Top Cow and Dark Horse comics mostly ), and I always feel like they are not as popular as Marvel and DC. Of course I also love stuff like Spawn, Sam and Twitch, Deadpool and many others.
I've got several ideas so far :
Vampirella, Vampire Knight : for the "stand" theme of the challenge, I thought about creating a new Vampirella, with some badass vampire armor instead of the red bikini. I don't really like female characters wandering with almost nothing on them, but it should stay sexy AND badass.
Vampi : she's like a "manga" version of Vampirella, with a futuristic setting. And generally she wears nice tight outfits, but less revealing than Vampirella :
The Crow, metal voodoo style : here the idea would be to mix the classical Crow design with voodoo magic elements, like if the hero would have been on a pilgrimage in a voodoo tribe, to better understand his powers and communicate with the spirits. ( "stand" theme )
Aphrodite IX : she is a cyborg, so I thought I could go for the "last" theme ( the character is almost dead and will do a last attack to kill his ennemy ), with broken mechanical parts, maybe hanging some big ass weapon, ready to fire her last powerful shot...
Medieval Witchblade : as I say I don't like almost naked characters, so I thought it could be cool to take the medieval witchblade look, and add some armor in the same style. Medieval Witchblade already exists, so I would just need to enhance her a bit.
I don't have a lot of idea for male characters. The Darkness would kick asses though, and I think I never saw him in the older challenges.
So, Watcha think ? My favorites ideas are Vampirella Knight and Aphrodite IX so far...
Replies
Here are two other characters I really love, Aspen and Kiani from Fathom ( Turner ftw ! ). Designing this kind of armor ( and maybe weapon ) would be awesome ( and I never saw this in the challenge.
I'll mostly post wips here for feedbacks, keeping the blah blah blah for GA and those concerned by the challenge.
Joker, I think we can't change the title of a thread, only the title of a post, or I didn't find how...
Anyway, I did a model sheet and blocked the proportions, she's slightly wider to compensate the stretching in height ( I know it's Turner's style, but I wanted to try something more "realistic" ).
cant wait for more
Will you make a weapon for her?That must be more awesome for this character.
Started to put some armor on the bust :
Not final at all.
Starting to look really good Tex. Keep at it.
The matcap was uploaded by Orb if I remember well. Can't find where to download it, I've put it on Dropbox here :
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/171740199/MAHstudio%20Soft%20Modeling%20Clay.zip
Note that I did NOT create it ^^.
I just redesigned the back to put the "wings"... fins ? Yeah let's say "fins" ^^.
Now I'm going to work on the arms and the weapon. So, there are two types of weapons in Fathom : guns and blades. Aspen generally uses her power over water to fight, and sometimes a gun. Blades are mostly used by one character, Kiani, but I thought that it could be cool to mix both : a big "gun" attached to her right arm, with a water blader coming out of it. Watcha think ? Here are some refs for the weapons ( not that the blades are made of water, only the handle is "solid", they can manipulate water and even change the "density" to create shields and blades ) :
Plase halp ?
( yes she looks muscular, I want her to look like that as I said. I toned the muscles down though. )
What's throwing me off, and it's been this way all along, is her feet are angled down as if she's wearing heels but she's barefoot in all your ref. When you did that model sheet you didn't really account for the fact that she's taking a step in that pic so the front foot is raised and drawn in perspective.
The pose kind of looks like you've done it that way for rigging? If so then it won't look right until you rig her. But if you plan to give her heels then I don't think the legs are curving the right way for someone wearing them. It's hard to find the right example (and you don't want to see me in heels) but here's a couple from a google search:
example 1
example 2
example 3
You've got yours fairly convex the whole way down when they should be more concave for balance and posture. They also look a bit too wide at the ankle from the back view. Especially since the toes aren't flat to the ground plane.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/171740199/Fathom/FATHOM-VOLUME-TWO-BEGINNINGS-COVER-B.jpg
I don't know if I have to make the feet like if she was standing on the ground, and then pose them with the rig, or I could directly make them already "posed" so I could sculpt details specific to the pose.
Anyway the current feet are like that because of the basemesh I made ( always using the same ), more designed for high heels you're right. But they are not really sculpted yet, I don't like hands and feet so I always sculpt they at the end ^^.
If you're only using the 1 pose then it's probably not necessary to change the foot angle as you'd really just be undoing something you'll have to redo later. Same with the base mesh; as long as you remember to correct it in the finals it's fine (though i did notice in your portfolio that all your girls except Abbey Chase still have a little bit too much leg-curve for their poses).
As for the knees, it's a common feature in Turner's style but I guess you're right, they don't need to be pushed in that far ^^.
Scudz : err no my older characters don't use this basemesh in fact, my bad, I was talking about the new ones ( silly manga females and some realistic char I didn't finish for another client ). I was always starting from scratch in dynamesh before, but now I use a quad basemesh I did. I find feet hard to sculpt that's why they always look wrong I guess ^^.