The Hazardous Course Character: Samus Aran - Zero Suit Version.
Howdy,
Welcome to my side of the Hazardous Course Character Class ::]
So, yay, I was one of the lucky people who was selected for Haz's make a female character course. I will be documenting what I'll be doing for this course. The Character will be Samus Aran Zero Suit.
The rest of the class:
Hazardous
YBourykina
Funky Bunnies
almighty_gir
BRIGGS
Phase 001: Character Selection
First things first, picking the ref that oi was going to base my model on. At first it was about the glitz, glamor and complex details in the concept that took to my interests, things I felt would push me as an artist; but in order to maintain focus on what this course is about, I picked someone very simple. Since Metroids Samus Aran is basically a naked lady in a latex outfit; I can focus on the body, face and hair and she is also easily identifiable. These will be my challenges because I tend to bite off more than I can chew. So, to combat that, I will narrow down my form to just those character aspects above, and will not be distracted with complex outfits. I would really like to step up my game creating females and focusing on these few things is best for future female characters that are more complicated; I have been a big fan of Samus and would like to finish at least one for my portfolio.
Phase 002: Ref Sheet
Finding ref is one of my favorite things to do because I have as much fun looking at art as I do making it. When I look for ref, Google and art peers are my best resources in finding cool reference that I may naturally seek out on my own. Wanting to originally do something complex and sexy, I started to realize that my time is limited and so will be my attention to detail. I didn’t want to miss a good chance to focus on making a well done default-ish female that I can build from later. Another problem was, would anyone even know what character I am doing? I am always a fan of making your own characters and pushing yourself design wise, but sometimes it’s good to refresh by following a design. It’s one of the hardest things for me to not personalize art. So with all this filtering my decisions, I felt Samus Aran was the best choice. She’s simple and everyone knows her. She's simple, well known and has a ton of ref to pull from.
Although there are so many versions of Samus Aran, I went with the Max Factory figure version. This was one of the cleanest versions of her I've seen and it's as simple as simple can be (compared to my other choices). I also find a face that was very much like the Samus concepts.
Other choices I was thinking about doing were Zelda, Asuka Langley Soryu, Major Kusanagi and a deer girl.
Ref Sheet:
Phase 003: The Draw
I find that drawing helps me remember things a little better. When I draw, my brain does much better gathering more information about my character and it's details. It forces me to pay attention and it's a fun exercise that trains the brain. I tend to rely more on character details notes more than orthos or even finished pieces if I already have reference to work from. So I should have a couple full bodied images but more so I will have notes about the certain details about the character. Detail sheets will bring me back in from wanting to stray off and do my own thing getting further from the actual character and only leaving it’s essence behind. That’s not my focus for this course. It’s to maintain as much of the character in its entirety. Here are a couple 2D thoughts running through my brain.
Phase 004:
The Base Mesh:
I wanted to create a base that didn’t restrict my creativity, especially in the face area. I knew that if I kept the base very general without any feature topology erasing and restarting would be much easier. One annoyance that I found while working on the head were the poles on the top front that rendered weird as I sculpted. Another problem that arose, was when sculpting the body I made the mistake of not putting more subdivision in the face, which made it harder to sculpt in finer detail. This doesn't necessarily apply to video game models, but I wanted the end result to be cleaner; this will be handled later when I detach the head form the rest of the body to gain more topology resolution. Besides that it's always fun to take a base to a full on sculpt without anything getting in the way.
Base:
Phase 005:
Female Anatomy:
Oh anatomy, the infinite learning that can go into you. This is the core of what I'm hoping to learn the most during the course. One of the most difficult things for me is creating a great attractive female character. For me, making a male character or a monster is another ballgame control wise. I personally feel that it is much easier to sculpt a male's anatomy because I can add varying muscles, not really control my hard edges and it'll look fine in the end. When sculpting a monster, there is no real comparison that can be made, so most of the sculpting is left up to my discretion. When sculpting a female, any tiny mark can alter the look of the model dramatically. Therefore, I tend to make many more adjustments when sculpting females than males and monsters.
Less is more:
Another big thing I learned is to erase. I tend to focus on small details and overlook the simple shapes and structures. The more detail that I add distracts from the overall silhouette and draws more attention elsewhere. Although the details may be more natural and correct, this project was from a stylize toy figure that retains it elegant lines through not overly detailed forms.
In the end after countless critiques and sculpt overs, draw overs and hitting the books I came to learn a ton more and I am much more comfortable controlling my level of detail and I have come to terms that with female character modeling, less is more.
Phase 006:
Retopopo:
Topology is one of those things that tend to be a fine balance of what looks good vs what works good. After studying topology, I came to the conclusion that it all depends on your rigger and animator. I was unsure what pose I wanted and tried to plan it out ahead of time. Of course when I was done, I soon realized what parts did not work well with her pose. Another problem arose when I started to see parts of her textures stretch. In an actual game, things are expected to stretch and it's fine due to it having movement but a still is held under so much more scrutiny so mistakes becomes more apparent. The biggest hurdle was trying to push the pose as much as I could with no regard to stretching the texture.*I used Graphite tools in Max to retopologize her over a Zbrush decimated version. I love Graphite new retopology tools.
Phase 007:
You & Vs:
This seemed to be an easy process at first until I started working on a couple things and noticed that I would run into unique situations. My first thought was she is pretty symmetrical so I can save so much space by splitting her UV shells in half. She had things like the symbol on one hand and not on the other and for her chest symbol that seemed problematic. She also has sculpted hair on her head that was symmetrical. I split what I could in half and did the symbols with floating geo that has the symbol alpha'd out. The head I kept as a whole due to the sculpted hair on her scalp. I shy'd away from the idea of full on hair cards due to my time restraints and figured it would blend better to her head. Besides that it was a pretty normal run of the mill Uvs.
Phase 008:
Painting!
This is another fun part for me after sculpting. I wanted to get a little crazy with the suit since I felt it was so plain. Trying to focus on her face then the torso and finally her legs, I felt it was necessary to build my textures to carry the eyes around her in that order. The textures weren't anything special except that I wanted to add a little more to her outfit than what was in the reference of the figure. After a little back and forth with ideas for something subtle, I rested on what is there now. The rest is pretty much just painting, a mix of polypainting to start, then using projection painting for the majority then Photoshop for the rest of her.
Phase 009:
Poser:
Posing characters is something I have great interest in. Working on bind poses for games for so long has made me envious of animators being the ones to add life to my characters. This pose for Samus wasn't as adventurous as i'd have liked to do due to it being primarily from the reference off of her figure. The only difference is I didn't add the gun so then came the challenge of what to do with her hand in the pose the figure was in. Besides that, it was a lot of skinning and Biped work in Max. For this project I didn't bother making a full on proper rig. This was not intended to be animated but for a single posed shot. So that meant that a little post work was done to help alleviate some troublesome areas such as where she had patterns, especially the symbol on her back. Biped, ugh.
Phase 010:
Presentation:
So the end is upon me and this project. Thinking about what to show her off in I decided to go with what Haz usually uses and that was the Xoliul shader*http://www.laurenscorijn.com/viewportshader. I have never used it but it was pretty intuitive to use. It was fun to break things out to get different effects on different materials. The customization is also great given me a lot of control without having to go into PS each time I want to make changes *here and there. Besides the actual view port rendering stuff the rest was coming up with cool text and a simple BG to compliment her with out it being too distracting. On a side note for PS gradients, my god the banding, how does one fix this!
Phase 000:
Final Thought:
This was an ultra mega blast. Working along side Jon Troy and the rest of the fantastic crew of goons was a treat. I never would I have thought that I would have been picked for something like this. Not only did I make new art friends (not Funky, we have worked together for years) I also, believe it or not, created first full on game character from beginning to end! Unfortunately, I did have a bunch of personal things come up in the mean time while working on Samus that prevented me from getting her done on time. Having a full time Cryptic job and teaching at AI didn't help either. BUT I DID IT! I am excited to keep this momentum up and now that I'm much more familiar with the character process from front to end, I will be pumping more out models much faster. I hope you guys enjoyed seeing me fumble around and get something done. Thanks Haz for your time and effort with all of us and thanks to Funky, Gir and Katia for your insight and many funny times.
Love,
Jonah “Mr.Skullface”
Welcome to my side of the Hazardous Course Character Class ::]
So, yay, I was one of the lucky people who was selected for Haz's make a female character course. I will be documenting what I'll be doing for this course. The Character will be Samus Aran Zero Suit.
The rest of the class:
Hazardous
YBourykina
Funky Bunnies
almighty_gir
BRIGGS
Phase 001: Character Selection
First things first, picking the ref that oi was going to base my model on. At first it was about the glitz, glamor and complex details in the concept that took to my interests, things I felt would push me as an artist; but in order to maintain focus on what this course is about, I picked someone very simple. Since Metroids Samus Aran is basically a naked lady in a latex outfit; I can focus on the body, face and hair and she is also easily identifiable. These will be my challenges because I tend to bite off more than I can chew. So, to combat that, I will narrow down my form to just those character aspects above, and will not be distracted with complex outfits. I would really like to step up my game creating females and focusing on these few things is best for future female characters that are more complicated; I have been a big fan of Samus and would like to finish at least one for my portfolio.
Phase 002: Ref Sheet
Finding ref is one of my favorite things to do because I have as much fun looking at art as I do making it. When I look for ref, Google and art peers are my best resources in finding cool reference that I may naturally seek out on my own. Wanting to originally do something complex and sexy, I started to realize that my time is limited and so will be my attention to detail. I didn’t want to miss a good chance to focus on making a well done default-ish female that I can build from later. Another problem was, would anyone even know what character I am doing? I am always a fan of making your own characters and pushing yourself design wise, but sometimes it’s good to refresh by following a design. It’s one of the hardest things for me to not personalize art. So with all this filtering my decisions, I felt Samus Aran was the best choice. She’s simple and everyone knows her. She's simple, well known and has a ton of ref to pull from.
Although there are so many versions of Samus Aran, I went with the Max Factory figure version. This was one of the cleanest versions of her I've seen and it's as simple as simple can be (compared to my other choices). I also find a face that was very much like the Samus concepts.
Other choices I was thinking about doing were Zelda, Asuka Langley Soryu, Major Kusanagi and a deer girl.
Ref Sheet:
Phase 003: The Draw
I find that drawing helps me remember things a little better. When I draw, my brain does much better gathering more information about my character and it's details. It forces me to pay attention and it's a fun exercise that trains the brain. I tend to rely more on character details notes more than orthos or even finished pieces if I already have reference to work from. So I should have a couple full bodied images but more so I will have notes about the certain details about the character. Detail sheets will bring me back in from wanting to stray off and do my own thing getting further from the actual character and only leaving it’s essence behind. That’s not my focus for this course. It’s to maintain as much of the character in its entirety. Here are a couple 2D thoughts running through my brain.
Phase 004:
The Base Mesh:
I wanted to create a base that didn’t restrict my creativity, especially in the face area. I knew that if I kept the base very general without any feature topology erasing and restarting would be much easier. One annoyance that I found while working on the head were the poles on the top front that rendered weird as I sculpted. Another problem that arose, was when sculpting the body I made the mistake of not putting more subdivision in the face, which made it harder to sculpt in finer detail. This doesn't necessarily apply to video game models, but I wanted the end result to be cleaner; this will be handled later when I detach the head form the rest of the body to gain more topology resolution. Besides that it's always fun to take a base to a full on sculpt without anything getting in the way.
Base:
Phase 005:
Female Anatomy:
Oh anatomy, the infinite learning that can go into you. This is the core of what I'm hoping to learn the most during the course. One of the most difficult things for me is creating a great attractive female character. For me, making a male character or a monster is another ballgame control wise. I personally feel that it is much easier to sculpt a male's anatomy because I can add varying muscles, not really control my hard edges and it'll look fine in the end. When sculpting a monster, there is no real comparison that can be made, so most of the sculpting is left up to my discretion. When sculpting a female, any tiny mark can alter the look of the model dramatically. Therefore, I tend to make many more adjustments when sculpting females than males and monsters.
Less is more:
Another big thing I learned is to erase. I tend to focus on small details and overlook the simple shapes and structures. The more detail that I add distracts from the overall silhouette and draws more attention elsewhere. Although the details may be more natural and correct, this project was from a stylize toy figure that retains it elegant lines through not overly detailed forms.
In the end after countless critiques and sculpt overs, draw overs and hitting the books I came to learn a ton more and I am much more comfortable controlling my level of detail and I have come to terms that with female character modeling, less is more.
Phase 006:
Retopopo:
Topology is one of those things that tend to be a fine balance of what looks good vs what works good. After studying topology, I came to the conclusion that it all depends on your rigger and animator. I was unsure what pose I wanted and tried to plan it out ahead of time. Of course when I was done, I soon realized what parts did not work well with her pose. Another problem arose when I started to see parts of her textures stretch. In an actual game, things are expected to stretch and it's fine due to it having movement but a still is held under so much more scrutiny so mistakes becomes more apparent. The biggest hurdle was trying to push the pose as much as I could with no regard to stretching the texture.*I used Graphite tools in Max to retopologize her over a Zbrush decimated version. I love Graphite new retopology tools.
Phase 007:
You & Vs:
This seemed to be an easy process at first until I started working on a couple things and noticed that I would run into unique situations. My first thought was she is pretty symmetrical so I can save so much space by splitting her UV shells in half. She had things like the symbol on one hand and not on the other and for her chest symbol that seemed problematic. She also has sculpted hair on her head that was symmetrical. I split what I could in half and did the symbols with floating geo that has the symbol alpha'd out. The head I kept as a whole due to the sculpted hair on her scalp. I shy'd away from the idea of full on hair cards due to my time restraints and figured it would blend better to her head. Besides that it was a pretty normal run of the mill Uvs.
Phase 008:
Painting!
This is another fun part for me after sculpting. I wanted to get a little crazy with the suit since I felt it was so plain. Trying to focus on her face then the torso and finally her legs, I felt it was necessary to build my textures to carry the eyes around her in that order. The textures weren't anything special except that I wanted to add a little more to her outfit than what was in the reference of the figure. After a little back and forth with ideas for something subtle, I rested on what is there now. The rest is pretty much just painting, a mix of polypainting to start, then using projection painting for the majority then Photoshop for the rest of her.
Phase 009:
Poser:
Posing characters is something I have great interest in. Working on bind poses for games for so long has made me envious of animators being the ones to add life to my characters. This pose for Samus wasn't as adventurous as i'd have liked to do due to it being primarily from the reference off of her figure. The only difference is I didn't add the gun so then came the challenge of what to do with her hand in the pose the figure was in. Besides that, it was a lot of skinning and Biped work in Max. For this project I didn't bother making a full on proper rig. This was not intended to be animated but for a single posed shot. So that meant that a little post work was done to help alleviate some troublesome areas such as where she had patterns, especially the symbol on her back. Biped, ugh.
Phase 010:
Presentation:
So the end is upon me and this project. Thinking about what to show her off in I decided to go with what Haz usually uses and that was the Xoliul shader*http://www.laurenscorijn.com/viewportshader. I have never used it but it was pretty intuitive to use. It was fun to break things out to get different effects on different materials. The customization is also great given me a lot of control without having to go into PS each time I want to make changes *here and there. Besides the actual view port rendering stuff the rest was coming up with cool text and a simple BG to compliment her with out it being too distracting. On a side note for PS gradients, my god the banding, how does one fix this!
Phase 000:
Final Thought:
This was an ultra mega blast. Working along side Jon Troy and the rest of the fantastic crew of goons was a treat. I never would I have thought that I would have been picked for something like this. Not only did I make new art friends (not Funky, we have worked together for years) I also, believe it or not, created first full on game character from beginning to end! Unfortunately, I did have a bunch of personal things come up in the mean time while working on Samus that prevented me from getting her done on time. Having a full time Cryptic job and teaching at AI didn't help either. BUT I DID IT! I am excited to keep this momentum up and now that I'm much more familiar with the character process from front to end, I will be pumping more out models much faster. I hope you guys enjoyed seeing me fumble around and get something done. Thanks Haz for your time and effort with all of us and thanks to Funky, Gir and Katia for your insight and many funny times.
Love,
Jonah “Mr.Skullface”
Replies
I was waiting for this thread!!
Your concept is beautiful and you didnt go overboard with the boobs
Nicely done concept. Looking forward to it evolving.
cant wait to see more :E
So here is another drawing of the front, just for more fun before I post up some sculpts and the base.
This course hat you guys are doing is so incredible! I can't wait to see the finished results from all of you.
Di$array: yes I will but then they vary from some zero suits.
UPDATE!!!!!
PLEASE C&C
Phase 004:
The Base Mesh:
I wanted to create a base that didnt restrict my creativity, especially in the face area. I knew that if I kept the base very general without any feature topology erasing and restarting would be much easier. One annoyance that I found while working on the head were the poles on the top front that rendered weird as I sculpted. Another problem that arose, was when sculpting the body I made the mistake of not putting more subdivision in the face, which made it harder to sculpt in finer detail. This doesn't necessarily apply to video game models, but I wanted the end result to be cleaner; this will be handled later when I detach the head form the rest of the body to gain more topology resolution. Besides that it's always fun to take a base to a full on sculpt without anything getting in the way.
Base:
Phase 005:
Female Anatomy:
Oh anatomy, the infinite learning that can go into you. This is the core of what I'm hoping to learn the most during the course. One of the most difficult things for me is creating a great attractive female character. For me, making a male character or a monster is another ballgame control wise. I personally feel that it is much easier to sculpt a male's anatomy because I can add varying muscles, not really control my hard edges and it'll look fine in the end. When sculpting a monster, there is no real comparison that can be made, so most of the sculpting is left up to my discretion. When sculpting a female, any tiny mark can alter the look of the model dramatically. Therefore, I tend to make many more adjustments when sculpting females than males and monsters.
Less is more:
Another big thing I learned is to erase. I tend to focus on small details and overlook the simple shapes and structures. The more detail that I add distracts from the overall silhouette and draws more attention elsewhere. Although the details may be more natural and correct, this project was from a stylize toy figure that retains it elegant lines through not overly detailed forms.
In the end after countless critiques and sculpt overs, draw overs and hitting the books I came to learn a ton more and I am much more comfortable controlling my level of detail and I have come to terms that with female character modeling, less is more.
NEXT UP RETOPOPO!
I notice there's a little bit of extra 'white' on the outer sides of each eye, making her a little cross-eyed.
An Animator might kill you, but consider rotating the eyeballs out a little.
^_^
Why would an animator kill you? Our eyes are angled at about 4 degrees outward I believe. So wouldn't it be "correct" to do so?
reminding me of those danger girl comics
Love the lips and hands. Nice sculpting.
JacqueChoi:fixed!
LRoy & Fomori: thanks a ton! I love comics and anime so I've always tried to combine the 2 in my own style. Always sad that anime didn't have lips ::[
That's good to know.. I've rotated them out in the past because it didn't look right to leave them pointed forward.. I felt guilty about it doing it though!
And that samus is looking great! My only suggestion would be to give the suit a little bit of a layered look or something so it just doesn't look like its painted on the skin. Keep up the great work.
Couple things: the bridge of the nose seems a bit too fragile/thin. Also, you say you tend to get lost in details, but I wonder if adding a few larger folds/wrinkles in her suit would make her suit look a little more believable (right now it looks absolutely skin-tight). Looking forward to the updates :]
http://www.cgfeedback.com/cgfeedback/attachment.php?attachmentid=1331&d=1271546295
So where were we.
Phase 006:
Retopopo:
Topology is one of those things that tend to be a fine balance of what looks good vs what works good. After studying topology, I came to the conclusion that it all depends on your rigger and animator. I was unsure what pose I wanted and tried to plan it out ahead of time. Of course when I was done, I soon realized what parts did not work well with her pose. Another problem arose when I started to see parts of her textures stretch. In an actual game, things are expected to stretch and it's fine due to it having movement but a still is held under so much more scrutiny so mistakes becomes more apparent. The biggest hurdle was trying to push the pose as much as I could with no regard to stretching the texture.*I used Graphite tools in Max to retopologize her over a Zbrush decimated version. I love Graphite new retopology tools.
Phase 007:
You & Vs:
This seemed to be an easy process at first until I started working on a couple things and noticed that I would run into unique situations. My first thought was she is pretty symmetrical so I can save so much space by splitting her UV shells in half. She had things like the symbol on one hand and not on the other and for her chest symbol that seemed problematic. She also has sculpted hair on her head that was symmetrical. I split what I could in half and did the symbols with floating geo that has the symbol alpha'd out. The head I kept as a whole due to the sculpted hair on her scalp. I shy'd away from the idea of full on hair cards due to my time restraints and figured it would blend better to her head. Besides that it was a pretty normal run of the mill Uvs.
Phase 008:
Painting!
This is another fun part for me after sculpting. I wanted to get a little crazy with the suit since I felt it was so plain. Trying to focus on her face then the torso and finally her legs, I felt it was necessary to build my textures to carry the eyes around her in that order. The textures weren't anything special except that I wanted to add a little more to her outfit than what was in the reference of the figure. After a little back and forth with ideas for something subtle, I rested on what is there now. The rest is pretty much just painting, a mix of polypainting to start, then using projection painting for the majority then Photoshop for the rest of her.
Phase 009:
Poser:
Posing characters is something I have great interest in. Working on bind poses for games for so long has made me envious of animators being the ones to add life to my characters. This pose for Samus wasn't as adventurous as i'd have liked to do due to it being primarily from the reference off of her figure. The only difference is I didn't add the gun so then came the challenge of what to do with her hand in the pose the figure was in. Besides that, it was a lot of skinning and Biped work in Max. For this project I didn't bother making a full on proper rig. This was not intended to be animated but for a single posed shot. So that meant that a little post work was done to help alleviate some troublesome areas such as where she had patterns, especially the symbol on her back. Biped, ugh.
Phase 010:
Presentation:
So the end is upon me and this project. Thinking about what to show her off in I decided to go with what Haz usually uses and that was the Xoliul shader*http://www.laurenscorijn.com/viewportshader. I have never used it but it was pretty intuitive to use. It was fun to break things out to get different effects on different materials. The customization is also great given me a lot of control without having to go into PS each time I want to make changes *here and there. Besides the actual view port rendering stuff the rest was coming up with cool text and a simple BG to compliment her with out it being too distracting. On a side note for PS gradients, my god the banding, how does one fix this!
Phase 000:
Final Thought:
This was an ultra mega blast. Working along side Jon Troy and the rest of the fantastic crew of goons was a treat. I never would I have thought that I would have been picked for something like this. Not only did I make new art friends (not Funky, we have worked together for years) I also, believe it or not, created first full on game character from beginning to end! Unfortunately, I did have a bunch of personal things come up in the mean time while working on Samus that prevented me from getting her done on time. Having a full time Cryptic job and teaching at AI didn't help either. BUT I DID IT! I am excited to keep this momentum up and now that I'm much more familiar with the character process from front to end, I will be pumping more out models much faster. I hope you guys enjoyed seeing me fumble around and get something done. Thanks Haz for your time and effort with all of us and thanks to Funky, Gir and Katia for your insight and many funny times.
Love,
Jonah Mr.Skullface
Other than that I love your model