Evil Ernie
Rating: 10
baseq2/players/ernie
Intro
Also known as the Master of Annihilation, Evil Ernie is one Psychotic, Undead teenager out to destroy all life...in search of megadeath! Ernie was abused as a kid, and Lady Death found him when he accidently entered her Endless Graveyard through his inner thoughts. Inspired by Lady Death, Evil Ernie found a partner in life...or should I say death.
a decent introduction to an outstanding model. Magarnigal entered this into the Chaos Comics PPM contest and won a new computer and 3DSMAX and a bunch of other stuff too. :) This one's been sitting about for a while while r13's been making a living (so we presume) so I held a knife to his throat and said "hey, chum, how about I try reviewing this ol' chap?" and he agreed. so here I am. ever since Wrath's popped in with his reviews I've felt bad about mine, so I'll try to be a bit more detailed about it than I normally would have been before. so here I go.
The Model
Yet another Mag model. The thing that really sets his models apart from the others is the lean sleekness of them all, and how he seems to carefully 'sculpt' the muscles out of the model. it's hard to explain what sets it different perfectly, but they're subtly distinctive. this model was constructed in Lightwave 3D and looks REALLY great. the joints are modeled well. the hair looks like real hair and the coat has certain parts that flap about. I've talked to Mag about this and he said that Ernie had over 100 bones in his skeleton. normal skeletons have 20 to 40 bones in them. part of the reason there are so many bones in the skeletons of the models he does is because he apparently experiments with something new in every model. he had bones for the hair and for his jacket, and animating secondary motion for those must have been INCREDIBLY hard. he said that it took him forever to animate them on his old p166 with 32mb ram. I can imagine; a 40-bone skeleton takes ages to animate on my p133 with 96mb. he's a brave man indeed.
the model is extremely stylized and has a mouth that can open and close as well, and the model was BUILT to animate well, all in under 600 polys. part of the low count is the fact that the the right arm is detached so that in the deaths his arm falls completely off since the other arm is in the visible weapons (FULL vweps!) which means that they had to be remapped and (I believe) reskinned. All in all, the model is top-quality. the only thing I don't like about it is the way the hair looks kind of girly, but what else can you do with an 800-poly limit? five stars .
Score: Ten
The Animations
WOW.
Evil Ernie's animations have got to be the best I've ever seen in a PPM. Magarnigal has once again COMPLETELY outdone himself and everyone else in one fell swoop. I haven't a damn clue why he doesn't have a game job yet, other than the fact that he's barely old enough to drink. The animations are filled with character, secondary motion, and realistic dynamics without the help of ANY third-party plugins. damned unbelievable quality work. here's what I have to say about all the animations:
Stand - it loops well, and shows secondary motion excellently. his jacket flaps about and his hair lags behind him somewhat realistically, and the movements are 'snappy' enough to be real-looking, even at 10FPS, which is a difficult task. masterful job here, Mag's always been good with these.
Run - great job here! very lively, very bouncy... this obviously took a VERY long time to complete because at close inspection, you see that his jacket, hair, and even the back of his jeans bounce up and down realistically, and his mouth hangs open, which just looks cool. there's a good sense of weight to it all, just a 'rightness' about it. he seems VERY loose and flexible. what's funny is, I talked to Mag about this once, and he was commenting on how he wish he could have made him 'less stiff'... ?!@#%$
Attack - this is probably my favorite sequence of the whole model. I love the way his entire body recoils with the gun flying back. Again, he's portrayed weight and secondary motion perfectly. as his head flies back and goes back down, the long parts of the hair lag behind again, very realistically. it's hard to imagine how much time it took to figure out how things moved realistically like that, and how long it took to tweak to look right. I bet he stood up from the computer and acted out the animations himself while bystanders skittered away nervously. really, it's the only way. :) just.. amazing work.
Pain1+2+3 - yet more realistic motion and movement put in here. You won't find any single-keyframe crap here, this is PAIN, baby.
Jump - now, how did he come up with the idea to put his gun between his legs while he jumped? we may never know, but it sure did work well. it looks perfect with the rocket launcher (which seems to look the baddest-assed on him). I love how his knife arm waggles about behind him. sometimes in some of these scenes I can't quite tell how it's realistic, but it just seems 'right'.
Flipoff - uhm.. ouch. the windup is exaggerated and perfect, naturally. as Mag's taught me, if you over-exaggerate all the movements in the editor, it'll look perfect ingame. after seeing this model, does anyone disagree? I don't. I really just love the character put into it.
Salute - another character-filled animation. his hair doesn't seem to flap down in these frames as in the others, but I see why. moving that one bone would make it necessary to move all the other ones in the hair to make it look right, and that would have taken way, way too long.
Taunt - yet another great sequence. I can't even tell how he does it so it looks more like he's acting something out in his own time, rather than working in the 17-frame limit... he has the proper exaggerated windup, the plunge, his mouth gaping open, it really just seems to yell at you, 'OW! gimme more, baby!' :) it's just so seamless, it's amazing.
Wave - this is my FAVORITE wave I've seen on any model, anywhere. it just looks like he's exaggerating all his movements again, overdoing it, but it looks so friggin cool! most people (including myself) would have just animated him stepping forward and waving his arm, but no, Mag had to innovate again and make it harder for the rest of us. ;) I love the way he hops in the air and changes directions, and just the 'expression' on his face. it's really quite stunning to look at. the movements are so REAL!
Point - this is the standard-but-not-quite point frame. he kind of hops and switches his feet then points with his knife and slowly raises his head.. I love the effect of it. it must be somewhat scary ingame, because it looks like he's saying (to me) 'you're next to die.' simply stunning, yet again.
Crouch stand - this one really does the job well. I like how he looks around and his gun arm and knife arm cross, that's just a really nice effect. The knife passes through some of the vweps, but it's not really noticeable. his hair bouncing around seems a bit over-exaggerated, but it's not too bad, it's just a lot more bouncy here than it looks in the other frames. his jacket also flaps around well too. it doesn't seem random how he does it, it seems natural. you can usually tell when someone just cheesed something like that. great job here. he looks really alert, and aware of what's going on around him. I like it.
Crouch walk - yet another innovation. NO ONE has done this before in quite this way. he tucks his gun under his arm and uses his knife arm to hop along.. how did he think of that? I don't know, but I love it, it seems VERY in-character. I'm glad Mag decided to do what he wanted with these animations rather than spending unnecessary hours studying the comic book character.
Crouch attack - this one is just as good as the normal attack, except I don't quite see how he stays on balance after shooting the gun, it just seems like he doesn't fall over when he should. it may have to do with him throwing his body forward to counter the kickback, to stay up, but I'm not sure. all in all, nice, but I still don't get that.
Crouch pain - he's crouched, and he's in pain. you won't see a single keyframe here, oh no. nice job.
Crouch death - ah! the deaths! the most fun parts to see in a model! in this one his arm falls off and he's painfully tossed up then back down. I love how he ends up lying on the ground, it just looks dead, and not cheap like some PPMs, where they fall straight over backwards or forwards. nice job.
Death 1 - OUCH! I love Mag's deaths, he always adds a special 'spice' to them. it just looks so damn painful... it's so beautiful.
Death 2 - This one is nice, a bit plain in a way, and he ends up in sort of the same position as he was in crouch death.
Death 3 - I love this one. He sort of wavers a bit, then falls over. it has a really, really nice effect ingame. magical.
Five stars, no doubt! I'd give it six if I could, but r13 wouldn't like that, and Mag would think I was sucking up more than usual. :)
Score: Ten
The Skin
The skin was another great point of the model. I was lucky enough to be able to talk to Ogro_FiX about the skins as I was reviewing this, so here's what he had to say:
'kod shord'hogak kar ughd gok gok zofdagroll, uguruk go shofodh. gozodor kof shakadosh grobaash!'
then I asked him what the hell what meant, and he translated:
'the actual leather err.. "suit" ?? wasn't the first I did. the first one was brown, and when I saw the pics of the real ernie, I realized it was black leather with smileys. :)'
he did a DAMN good job with the leather. the stretch marks look gorgeous. no cheapass flat black colors here, it's all good. I imagine it was hard to skin in all the details with the coat that flaps around everywhere to make it look right. great job on the coat.
'the hardest was the quake2 palette. not enough "pale" colors for the dead skin of the face, and not enough greens for the the glowing intestines.'
I hadn't noticed that those were intestines before. I just thought it was a radioactive t-shirt, or something. I can really understand how the q2 palette screwed him over though. I've had trouble with it myself. still, he pulled it off VERY well. yet another admirable job by the great OgrO_FiX. the next thing he had to say:
'I had a lot of trouble with the hair too. It's hard to animate, and it's hard to skin.'
I can see why. hair is NOT fun to skin. all things considered, he did a very good job of skinnign it, and the green glow on the inside of the hair was done realy well. it looks like it was very, very difficult to do on the skin. great job here. :) next section:
the vwep was a hell!! I hate doing weapons, and I had to reskin them all because the arm is in the mapping. no retro mapping, just copy/paste/deform original ones, and alter them...was really boring.'
ouch. yes, the arms were built into the weapons so that took a good, long time to do. they look pretty much like hte id weapons and you can't tell much\any difference between them, quality-wise, so good job there. :)
all in all, it's a nice skin, and the skin mapping had 11% wasted space (!) which is exceptional. the skin looks like it was a bit rushed, somewhat choppy in places, but you'd really have to be looking at the skin itself to notice. I can't really find anything wrong with them, so another five stars. great job!
Score: Ten
Sounds
The sounds were okay. they sound a bit different than what I'd pictured Ernie to be but they still fit the character. None are too long, none are too short, they're not really annoying, but they are somewhat loud. Nothing spectacular here, just what you'd expect... four and a half stars.
Score: Eight
Visible Weapons Support
Ernie's vweps were pretty damn well done. Ernie's arm was in each vwep which means that the vweps had to be completely remapped and have the skin adjusted to fit it, which OgrO said was a COMPLETE pain in the ass. I can imagine! There are very few frames where the weapon goes through the arms\legs\whatever, which is good, considering the closeness of his weapon in some of the frames. all in all, great job, and well worth the effort. 5 stars. Score: Ten
Pack Inclusion
I don't think the model will make the cut, there are just too many other, better models out there, and this one will be lost in the fray.... HAH! are you kidding? of course he'll be in the next pack! still, don't wait, download him now anyway. :)
review by shine
website Shattered Art
author name Magarnigal
tris.md2
Vertices 296
Mapping Vertices 379
Polygons 557
Skin size 256x256
Skin Wasted Space 11%
weapon.md2
Vertices 114
Mapping Vertices 234
Polygons 196
Skin size 256x128
Skin Wasted Space ?
relevant links
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