Imperial Guard Stormtrooper

ablaine

Hey all, this is the character that I'm currently working on. I'm currently doing a detail sculpting pass, in the hopes of including it in my reel when it's finished. I still have to go through and detail the boots, helmet, backpack, and the grenade/pouches (which will be cloned around the body on the low poly). Any feedback is welcome, thanks!




Oh, and my reference for it can be found here:
http://kofler.dot.at/40k/units/Imperial_Guard_Storm_Troopers.gif

Mark Dygert

That's pretty rockin, nice work!

Crits:
- Straps on the legs don't appear to be cutting in. The wrinkles in the pants look floaty, almost like his pants are stuffed with something like newspaper.The arms suffer from the same treatment to a much smaller degree.
- The cod piece is a little high and flat. Normally that kind of armor curves under a bit, to prevent people and projectiles from getting under it easily. Could be a design flaw in the original idea, but one you might want to modify?
- The head seems kind of small for being layered with a helmet and a mask. Could be the thickness of the arms/legs that are making it appear that way?
- Some chunks look sculpted from a single form? Might be easier to handle some of this as sub tools or separate pieces.

Keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing more stuff from you

Cojax

One major mistake I see people make when they model Warhammer stuff, is they use the miniatures as reference. Where this can be great to take inspiration from, what you have to realize is that the mini's proportions are built to look good at 1 inch in height. Subsequently just about anything that is made to resemble the mini that's not a mini falls short and looks bad...imo. Work from concept art made for this guy and use anatomy reference's. Get those proportions correct before going all out with your detail...

ablaine

Thanks for the replies!

Cojax, I actually built up the mesh based on the rig for the UT_male, as my intention was(and is) to bring it into the unreal engine. So the proportions are based on those of the unreal characters and not on the minis. I'll post another pic of the full body as soon as I've got the boot detailed and maybe you can show me where the proportions look off? I would definitely appreciate it.

And thank you, Vig! I agree with the straps and the pants in general. I originally planned on doing some smaller hard leather straps, and I think I may go back to those (and they would fit the style of the holster/pouch a bit better imo).

I also agree on the codpiece, I'll put it down a bit more and round it out and adjust the wrinkles in that area. I'll also do another pass over the arms and legs to try to get those wrinkles to look more natural and less floaty (and yes that may be why the head looks too small.

The character is split into quite a few subtools actually.. head, helmet, mask, collar, vest, shoulderpads, upperarms, lowerarms, hand, belt, pants, boot, right holster, left pouch, small pouch, and grenade. Off the top of my head.

Thanks again guys! And back to work for me.

ablaine

Some recent updates:
- Worked a bit on the wrinkles on the sleeves/pants
- Lowered the codpiece and rounded it out a bit
- Removed the third belt (the top one) as it just looked really awkward sitting so high on the torso. It was also a part of the torso subtool and not the belt subtool so it was kind of a pain to work with. I want to keep the two remaining belts, though if anyone has some suggestions on how to make them look slightly different from one another I would appreciate it. Right now I'm considering just moving the buckle area a little bit in different directions. Maybe masking off the different belts and rotating them around or something.
- I also pulled the torso down a bit to cover the area where the belt was. I'll probably need to add some slight tugging at the edges of the vest where it's tucked into the belt. Or I might pull it up a bit and add some sort of detail to the bottom of the vest. Suggestions?
- Got rid of the metallic-band looking straps for the holster/pouch and went back to the hardened leather straps. I still need to detail them with the accessories.

Still left to do:
- I need to redo the boots. I absolutely hate them. I'm going to slim them down in a more modern combat boot style, and redo the shin guards in a similar style.
- Still need to detail the helmet, boots, accessories, and backpack.

Here's a few images of where I'm currently at (first three are without mask, backpack, and shoulders -- haven't even started sculpting the face and probably won't.. until after I finish everything else. Not really planning on showing the char without the mask):


Comments/crits appreciated! Thanks and sorry about all of the images.