Akira Kazama - Rival Schools WIP
polycounter lvl 15
So, when I was going to school there was a strong emphasis on us creating unique intellectual property in everything we were doing. Now that I've graduated and gotten my diploma and hidden it away so that they can't take it back it seems like a good time to do my first major piece of fan-art in 3d.
So, a while back it seemed like everybody was doing Street Fighter stuff. So instead of that I chose to focus on a lesser known but still badass Capcom fighter known as Rival Schools. While I'm at it why not choose one of the most badass character designs in the game.
So here's what I've blocked out so far.
Crits and comments are as always welcome.
:::---Edit---:::
This is where the latest image goes now that this thread is multiple pages long. I'll think of something more witty to write here later.
So, a while back it seemed like everybody was doing Street Fighter stuff. So instead of that I chose to focus on a lesser known but still badass Capcom fighter known as Rival Schools. While I'm at it why not choose one of the most badass character designs in the game.
So here's what I've blocked out so far.
Crits and comments are as always welcome.
:::---Edit---:::
This is where the latest image goes now that this thread is multiple pages long. I'll think of something more witty to write here later.
Replies
Also, new avatar.
Also I got distracted for a couple days. On an unrelated note they've started showing Spaced over at Hulu.
Anyway, this glove comes in at 860 tris and the whole body is at 6390 now.
@ Slipsius: So, would you say I should lean the upper body a bit more forward then?
Edit: Upon going back into side-view and checking the wireframe she was leaning back a bit much. I straightened it up. Thanks for the advice.
As for the face I plan on re-working it now that I've decided to go for a more realistic look instead of something like the style found in Street Fighter 4.
Speaking of re-working I'm thinking of making the knee more like this:
Seems to me it would deform more naturally than any other double or tripple-into-double edgeloop setup I've ever seen. Thoughts?
I loved playing as Akira in RS. But, I always played her without the gear on, just the helmet and shirt. Good times.
As for your progress, i'd say it coming along swimmingly.
The boot seems askew. It looks as if her heel is really high and her ankle as gone AFK.
http://www.ncgee.com/ProductImages/1440-Engineer-Boot_1122940055.jpg
See how that boot follows a great curve from leg to heel. I think you should try that with your boot. It needs moar heel.
This makes me want to model a Tiffany... maybe. maybe.
as the only clear reference for the boot anywhere on the internet. So I lowered and flattened the heel as seen here:
The helmet has been re-worked at least once since I posted those first few images of it. The Zbrush polypaint above is just to get the skull painted out. I'm going to use a beveled and subdivided version of the helmet for normals rather than trust my ability to accurately smooth things in Zbrush.
Do it. I'd love to see how you get around the issue of that outfit not making sense in so many ways.
Tiffany's outift is all about the armor class!
I know she's not showing her bewbs and she has on the biker armor, but you could give some indication that she's in fact, female. In the concept, they use the hips and waist to hint that there's a badass chica under there.
Push out those hips and give her a slghtly wider bust/smaller waist. She also needs some sign of a badonk.
I think that'll do the trick.
Also how you have built the crotch is like a bent tube
The tube-crotch probably comes from the body originally being blocked out with Zspheres.
but yeah from the side, it does look off balance.
Ok, in between applying for roughly one hojillion* jobs in the past couple days I managed to take everybody's input into consideration and make the minor changes that hopefully give her a more femine look.
@ d00kie : I slightly synched in her waist and widened her shoulders and rounded out the ass a bit.
@ Muzz : I tried pushing in a bit around where the legs meet up with the crotch and rounding out the pelvis as much as I could without it looking like a front-butt. This probably only reads at all from the 3/4ths view. I will continue working on making that look less like a bent tube.
@ Renaud Galand : Hey man, good to see that one of my favorite posters in the speed sculpt thread has taken interest in this thread. Ummm, I think you might have misread something before you dove into the liquifying process because you totally made her a dude in that paintover with the wide shoulders and tiny hips. Still, your re-shaping of the helmet is spot on. I also tried to smooth the forms down a bit like you did using oaRelaxVerts.
@ Alberto Rdrgz : I straightened out the legs so that it no longer looks so off-balance. In doing this I had to shift around the leg pads in a way that would have messed up the sculpt so I just made a sub-d version that looks a lot smoother. I might drop it into Zbrush later to add some scratches though.
Also, time permitting I might re-paint the skull on the helmet. I don't like how large it is right now compared to most of the concept images.
Well, I'm going to take this into Zbrush soon. Til then thanks for all the help and keep the crits coming. Later.
*six.
Just a quick update on where the sculpt's going. Going to try and find some decent refferences for the back later. Now it's back to trying to get xNormal to believe me about not having n-gons on my meshes...
So, I went back to resculpt the head, and it's coming along but no matter how much I smooth the area there still seems to be artifacting around the mouth.
Anybody ever encounter something like this?
The female form does have certain landmarks to be there for it to look good.
And with sculpting you have to know where to define the planes, right now everything is very tubelike, lacks form. Go open up some naked images of women and start sculpting using that. Being scared of screwing up will hold you back.
Thanks for the paintover Muzz. My biggest problem with sculpting tends to be softening up shapes to the point where they lose a bit of their form. Hopefully these before and after shots show improvement.
If it doesnt work, just go back to a previous save, no loss. Trust me its the best way.
I say that mostly because I actually used the same plane as I was working with in Maya to get the proportions matched up with the concept art.
As to why I didn't do that earlier...
...I have no idea.
Heres what i think you should do, dump the zbrush work youve done on her, it was good experience. Go BACK to your max model and fix the anatomy and proportions and not have her so blocky. That paintover by renauld is actually the way it should be
THEN bring her back into zbrush and start with working out the forms. Pay attention to what muzz has been saying the whole time. (esp. the seeing naked pictures part XD)
I would also change the topo youve got going on in the groin area, i dont think its going to be very friendly when your sculpting.
Good luck
Before everything was too tube-like...now it's too blocky? I can see some areas where it's maybe too flat or sharp but I'm not sure if that's what you mean by blocky.
You say renauld and Muzz's paintovers are to be taken into consideration, but renauld made her a dude and Muzz is pushing for femininity...
The proportions are also correct (7 1/2 heads tall, shin about as long as the thigh, hips a bit wider than the shoulders, etc. etc.) This is actually really surprsing as Capcom isn't exactly known for having realistic proportions on their fighting game characters. (Awesome Dan BTW).
I appreciate all the feedback but frankly I'm confused...
Seven years ago?
My liiiiiiiiiiife.
Ok, upon initial inspection the first things that strike me are that the anatomy is off and that this isn't how image planes are supposed to work. How was I allowed to graduate from anywhere with this knowledge? Upon closer inspection it turns out the entire suit is one piece, the pants, crotch pad and the jacket. What? How did I think this was a good idea? Oh man, is there a term for the opposite of hard surface modeling? Because that lumpy helmet is proof that I didn't know there were multiple smoothing modes in Zbrush other than holding down shift with the default settings. Speaking of sculpting techniques maybe I should have made the folds at a lower subdivision level and let it look more natural. Topology's another thing that's inconsistent here, some of it's super efficient and some of it just looks wonky. The only thing I can really say positively for this is that technology and the hardware I had at the time were way less powerful even for the time. That said I've seen people's SDKs in recent years that prove you can get far more out of even less.
I'm thinking of actually completing/re-doing this just to right these wrongs.