Intro
For the uninitiated, Johnny is the main character in a comic by the same name. Having suffering years of mental abuse, Johnny has taken up the profession of Homicidal Maniac. Johnny tends to torment living things around him (such as the boy Squee - thus continuing the cycle of madness), while being tormented by non-living things (such as the dismembered head of a bunny that Johnny nailed to a wall - aka Nailbunny). Due to his aversion to things as happy as the sun, Johnn'y skin is a sickly greenish color. For clothes, he tends to wear anything - so long as it is black and has lots of straps and buckles.
The Model
The mesh itself is the best aspect of this model. Pestilence has achieved the difficult feat of taking a highly stylized two-dimensional comic character and extending it into the third dimension while retaining the original look. The mesh is a loyal recreation of Johnny's slender limbs and oversized extremities. Even though the model is very spindly, it has been posed in such a way that each pose makes an interesting shape that also fills the volume of the bounding box. As for polygon usage, Pestilence has done an excellent job. Rather than an even level of detail over the whole model, there is a lower concentration of triangles in some areas (such as the limbs and torso) and a higher concentration of triangles in areas that needed either more flexability (such as the joints) or more detail (such as the hair). One nice exaple of this is in the hands. The right hand, which holds the gun, is modelled in a very blocky fashion; where the left hand has a thumb and fingers - but only the two fingers that need to be animated. One might argue that details such as hair and fingers are unneccesary wastes of polys, however Pestilence has created a mesh that has such details, is quite animatable, has an accessory floating bunny head, and still falls well within the bounds of polygon usage for both the Quake 2 engine and Polycount.
The Animations
The animations are well done overall, but with a few flaws. The standing and crouching cycles portray Johnny's paranoia well. The flip, taunt, and wave and point are all well animated and in character. All of the animations make for interesting and dynamic body shapes in the model. Pestilence has paid extra attention to fine tuning the animation of the hands, fingers, and head in key places. There are a few points on which it seems that the author has missed the forest for the trees. Most of the foot motion has a slightly 'slidy' look to it - the model does not pick his foot up very far when he moves it. Also, the attack is animated in such a way that, if a player is firing a rapid-fire weapon, it will appear as if Johnny is holding the gun up in the air (this stems from a premature recoil animation). Aside from these small points, the animation is very good.
Included with the model are five skins, including Johnny in his standard garb, Johnny in black-and-white, Johnny with a massive headwound, and red and blue CTF skins. Despite the overall darkness of Johnny's attire, his light arms and head, and light spots on his chest and toes increase the skins' visilbility. Artistically, the skins are very good, with highlighting, underlighting, and sharp details, although there is not much variety across the skins. The skin mapping is well laid-out, with larger sections of the skin alocated to the surfaces of the model that need more detail. And at GL-friendly 256x256, the skin size is just right.
Zounds! No sounds.
Visible Weapons Support
Mmm hmm. Full VWEP support using the standard id weapons is included. It would be nice to see a custom set of knives though ... :)
Pack Inclusion
Mmm hmm. Johnny may be an outcast in the comic world, but he's welcome here at Polycount.
review by
Paolo Piselli
|
|
