[RIOT CREATIVE CONTEST 2017] Character Art - Pirate Ekko
polycounter lvl 11
Hi everyone, wish i had participate the last Riot Contest years ago and i'm really happy that its happening again and now i have the chance to show my skills.
I'm not a LOL player but i am deeply in love with the artstyle, the handpainted textures and so on. Actually i'm more used to do realistic renders/textures but i want to challange myself and do this style that i love so much.
I choose the character Ekko, have done some brainstorm, wrote down some themes, dig up the common themes in LOL and ended up choosing : Pirate.
The first impression i didnt know if hes going to be more captain or a low tier type of pirate but since Ekko's lore its a street kid, i thought that would be cool if he a simple pirate bandit, something that ressemble monkey island's main character designs.
So, here's my refplate. I'm not good in 2D Concepting so my aproach will be creating basemesh and then doing some blockout + photoshop paintovers. Will be back in a few days to show my progress, goodluck every1.
I'm not a LOL player but i am deeply in love with the artstyle, the handpainted textures and so on. Actually i'm more used to do realistic renders/textures but i want to challange myself and do this style that i love so much.
I choose the character Ekko, have done some brainstorm, wrote down some themes, dig up the common themes in LOL and ended up choosing : Pirate.
The first impression i didnt know if hes going to be more captain or a low tier type of pirate but since Ekko's lore its a street kid, i thought that would be cool if he a simple pirate bandit, something that ressemble monkey island's main character designs.
So, here's my refplate. I'm not good in 2D Concepting so my aproach will be creating basemesh and then doing some blockout + photoshop paintovers. Will be back in a few days to show my progress, goodluck every1.
Replies
So here's my first update. Made a little breakdown of how i started the project and hows looking right now. Although i'm not going for the original hair design, decided to blockout just to have a look of the character and if it was resembling him.
- So at this stage i blocked everything to 3D and tested some colors. Afterall i decided going for D hair since i liked the design and i'm already thinking about the topology optimization which i read its 9k - 12k per character, and i still want to do single hair tubes for the loose hair.
- With that in mind i also excluded the idea of doing the chains in his chest cause that would cost a lot of topology. Any thoughts about that ?
- Also i'm focusing the assymetry to the area of focus the upper body, i removed the idea of the wooden legs and that would also save more uvs space.
The idea of the treasure chest i'm not sure yet, wanted to create a hourglass inside the treasure chest but will spend sometime on that.
Critique and Feedback always welcome.
And indeed, the rasta hair hold like thats it resembling too much of a female character, will try maybe to work on silhouette of the hair, do some breakups perhaps and maybe turn the backtail of the hair less round and more pointy.
Havent tried the B hair yet.
Gonna end the year doing retopo and uvs.
Also, more tests of the character "ingame"
Any thoughts about this stage? Should add more contrast to some parts or even add an gradient light/dark like the one used in Dota2 ?
Next stage : Testing colors scheme ( Even even though im using one since highpoly stage but i added just to test how it would look )
I'm testing the colors now and not quite sure where to go from here. Actually i have few ideas but The reason of the colors i choose is due to original Ekko's color skin. So thats why the red and green.
I'm still not happy with the blockout colors so i might decide one and work more on the colors and from that start painting for real. For now my favourite its "C" but i know it ll need tweaks on pants and leather shirt mainly.
Critique and Sugestions always welcome.
Looking at some of Ekko's original costumes, his saggy pants are part of the important design keys. The stripes would be a good touch.
So in the end decided to explore A and enhance that. Gonna do a breakdown post really soon
Just noticed on my greyscale that the top part of the character its too bright comparing with ingame greyscale texture. So im gonna tone it down
Fixs :
- Painted hair AO with green to match better the color scheme
- Gave another pass to Gold adding more shadow
- Painted sword
- Darked pant straps
- Blended the chest with the body adding AO, and painting the belt
- Worked on chest colors.
Right now i'm jumping to pose the character to actual game poses and see if some areas in the texture need tweaks.
I would say tune down the pants and boots more to elevate the attention of the upper body. There is the value difference, but it could be stronger in my opinion.
Keep going!
Thanks mate, i will definitely revise that. Doing some poses now but i will make a final fix/review before wrapping everything