[WIP] Retrogasm 2018 - Jill of the Jungle

gibbon3000

Hey! I've picked Epic MegaGames's Jill of the Jungle character for Retrogasm 2018.



A memorable shareware DOS platformer I was lucky enough to play on XT and 286.

I'll be taking the lead from the in-game sprites and portrait.



This is, in part, because there are so many different box-art depictions of her...



I count at least 8. It did take me a while to figure out the Jungle Pinball character was also Jill. Compare and contrast it to the box-art above it! Both are Jill vs. bees...

There are a few other official depictions of her;

(Jazz Jackrabbit cameo, Jill trilogy menu, Jungle pinball, Epic's DOS catalogue and a mural in Epic's building)



As you can see her outfit isn't super consistent. Long sleeve, short sleeve, leotard, dress, pumps, elf-socks, boots, bare-foot... she appears to be an elf in the awesome mural.

So I'll mostly be going with what appears in the game - green leotard / swimsuit and stomping boots. I might do the colour-swap red and blue leotards of episodes 2 and 3 if there's time.

What is clear is that she has a strong blonde bomb-shell and big-hair vibe which would appear to be in line with Debbie Dutch and Doro Peschs' hair styles here:



I'll probably be making her iconic knife but if there's time I might consider her giant spinning-blade shuriken-thing. I always called it an "Arg" because you first find it in Arg's Dungeon...



I've started with a sketch, going for a graphic novel / stylised realism feel while trying to keep something of the in-game portrait to her face.



I liked how jagged and vicious her knife appeared in the ASCII DOS catalogue and the Spanish CD-ROM box-art so I mixed it in with the in-game knife. Also I figure that [spoilers] it's the prince's engagement ring around her neck?

So I've worked the sketch into a model sheet:



A quick colour version of the front:



In the game her knife is red and clearly magical but in other images she appears to have a more mundane-looking brass and steel stiletto knife. Perhaps in a sequel the regular knife would be a dumb-fire physics object that dropped where it fell whereas the red knife would maintain its magical owner-seeking behaviour...

Next I'll use the model-sheet to poly-model a base to take into Zbrush.

HarlequinWerewolf

Cool idea. I like the design and style you're going with. Looking forward to seeing how this comes together!

gibbon3000

Quick update - A bunch of poly-modelling to provide the bases which I'll be sculpting on.

It always starts the same way, getting the model sheet into the scene (I pull them out of the way along the relevant axis pretty quickly).



All the major parts base-meshes modelled - though I could refine more here, it will be quicker to do that while sculpting.



It's fun to to project the coloured front-view onto the base mesh to get a feel for how the character is developing.



Next up is exporting all the pieces and then beginning to sculpt them to take them to the next level!

gibbon3000

I've done a first pass over Jill's face and anatomy.



There's a tendency for lowish poly models to look like partially-inflated rubber gloves after a couple of subdivisions so I went over her main mesh adding in forms and landmarks.



She's still on a lowish subdivision level ~250k points.

Next I'll subdivide her and put in details I didn't have the points for ( ears, fingernails...) . I'll also be smoothing or reinforcing some of the anatomy landmarks as appropriate. After that I can move on to her clothing and gear.

I'm still undecided whether I keep her stylised thighs (remember she can jump something like 20x her own height in the game). It's something that can be changed once more of her is sculpted so I'll wait and see if they continue to suit the style of the rest of the character.

gibbon3000

Quick update on Jill's boots with where they started on the right:

BoonS

I can't say I've fully recognized your intentions while translating Jill to 3D, but regardless I don't think you're going to get away with those thighs. The face is stylized, almost in a Telltale art style, but it's grounded in conventional proportions, so I expected the rest of the features to follow the same thesis. But the lower body goes overboard in a way that doesn't depend on cartoon stylized textures, it's exaggerated in a way that aims to break conventional anatomical proportions, and so unfortunately it's kind of a sore thumb when used alongside that kind of head. Even if it makes it more mainstream/boring I'd suggest reworking the low poly mesh into having more conventional proportions, something that would complement the head better. Or restylize the head to match the proportions if you want to put in the extra effort.

gibbon3000

BoonS. Thanks for the feedback! It seems nobody was particularly fond of her thighs at this stage and I ended up doing some proportional readjustment.

I think they were a result of thinking "these legs have to be really strong" while working out the model sheet. Rather than them being just large, a bit more musculature and making them a little more sinewy made them look stronger after all - and made her look more balanced to boot.

gibbon3000

Working on some quick poly-paint before retopo and UVing.

Weighing up how much detail I go into here as sometimes photoshopping gives better control in the end and lets you use your layers for normal mapping and masking and so on. So for now her freckles and so on are awol.



I'm probably going to run her dagger to the end of the process whilst giving substance painter a shot. Depending on how that goes I'll make a call whether to stick with what I know in xnormal and photoshop or if I do the rest with the help of painter too.