Snow Turret

crazyfingers

Got some time to kill before the unearthly challenge, so i figured I'd keep myself occupied with a mini piece.

Came up with the idea of a "snow turret", an object that combines the grunge of extreme heat with extreme cold, and everything in between. Should be fun adding in freeze grunge on top of extreme burning, bubbly paint and all that. I might even add daisy's poking out of the ground where the heat emanating from the turret has actually allowed a small amount of plant growth, combined with some flowers singed to a crisp of course.


Going for a dragon vibe but i think i might have gone too far in that direction, icicles may form teeth, probably going to push for a less organic shape in the future. I'll be balancing it as i go.

crazyfingers

Got most of the bare bones modeling done today. Just a base mesh totally smoothed out for future zbrushing (haven't touched zbrush in a year so we'll see how this goes, haha). The bottem wasn't too defined in the concept, but i decided to try some round propane tanks, and from there i decided to give 'em an egg feel. So it's like a flamethrower tower that looks like a dragon protecting its nest.

This is certainly still in the preview phase, but workin' my ass off to get it into the pimpin' catagory by next weds for GDC.

If you guys have any suggestions now's the time! thanks in advance.

Edit: Inspiration struck, decided to add some coils at the base to flush out the bottem, give it a sinister snake like feel. Little pricey on the polys, but sitting at about 20k right now, not too terrible considering the size.

crazyfingers

Whew... loong night/day, of art.

Knockin' the rust off my zbrush so I just went crazy. None of the shapes really make any sense, they're just there, I'll probably go back later an add actual "stuff" like grates, pipes, the usual. Too burned out to really care right now.

beartraps

looks cool. i cant tell whats goin on in that texture tho, its really blurry

crazyfingers

I'll spare you guys a snakes on a plane joke and just post the update.



Feedback appreciated

Edit: Side view

crazyfingers

No time for snow, just a snake turret now:

bounchfx

no offense man, I like the concept and dig the shapes and what you got so far but it's a bit difficult to read, or tell what is really going on there.

crazyfingers

I see where you're coming from, there's too much going on, it's a big mess of high contrast that i've been wrestling with from the start. Was hoping simple propane tanks would help clean it up a bit. I think i need to come up with "meatier" assets in the future that aren't such a headeache.

Oh well, always the next model, but i'm kicking my self for not cranking out a good center portfolio piece for GDC.

Racer445

A better lighting setup and a solid dark background should help the presentation quite a bit. Right now a lot of stuff looks too dark because it's contrasting with the background and is making it hard to look at. A solid dark background will make the object stand out more.

Mark Dygert

A mechanical snake like monster guarding its offspring?

Taylor Hood

Far to hard too see. But I like the idea mate.

Autocon

Hey Jeff you have some nice details in there and the concept had some nice aspects to it but overall I just dont really get this as a turret. There are no common elements that this shares with a turret, for the most part I cant understand most of the forms going on here.

Like Vig said it looks more like a snake guarding its eggs than a turret. Even from the concept I never got "turret" from it.

Maybe you can change it into a metal mother snake statue instead.

crazyfingers

Thanks for the input guys, I appreciate it. I think you're right Anthony, trying to force this to be a turret is a bad idea. I knew that i'd have this issue from the start (even said it in my first post) and i still went forward. Totally nut punched myself! I think in the future i just may turn this into a statue snake thing, we'll see how it goes... Ah who am i kidding the unearthly challenge is coming up!

Took some shortcuts that was my biggest mistake. I'm so fixated on getting my portfolio ready NOW that i don't put in the time to make it worth putting in a portfolio. But i'm going to forgive myself this time because with GDC in a few days I had a good excuse for trying to rush things !

Alright, another model goes down in flames, but yet again I learned a few things, technical and otherwise. We'll see how the next one goes