Intro
Fox McCloud, the hero of the Classic Super Nintendo game StarFox and the Nintendo 64 Remake, has traded in his Arwing and joined the fight against Stroggos it seems.
This is FoX's second Quake 2 Project, with another PPM in the works (Peppy, another charecter from the same game) and has shaped up to be a pretty valid Player model it seems =) .
Originality
Being from another video game, points would not be scored for originality. FoX Spent some time creating the model from the ground up from Magazine articles and pictures of the charecter. The Model
Well, where to start.. The model follows almost exactly to the original model used by nintendo, with mild differences in object construction and other things. This isnt all good, as the original didnt look all that great to begin with. I've always been bugged by the proportions of Starfox, ever since the remake came out. The large head and relativly small body remind us the charecter was designed as a cartoon with kids in mind. In fact, the proportions look very much like a child. The author stayed true to the proportions, as well he should I suppose, though it may have been nice if he had decided to take his own spin on the charecter.
Parts of the model, I felt, were poorly constructed. Looking somewhat blocky almost everywhere, with most joints being highly and obviously sectionalized, the model comes off looking somewhat "second best." The exception to this opinion is most definitly the head, which looks just plain awesome in its closeness to the original model. However, some problems in my mind exist. While these may not be errors, they just seem not to look right in my mind. For one, the front of StarFox's boots have points sticking way forward of his pant legs, making for a slightly odd sight. The forearms, a rectangular cube, hardly seem to be connected at the model by any visible point. These, in turn, are connected to hands and gloves that Remind me a lot like lollypop wrappers wrapped around a spherical candy. These hands could have used more polygons, I feel, and more detail/different dimentions. The shoulder pads grossly stick out and move through connected parts of the model at a whim. The tail has a strange bulbous formation above the tip, making it look quite odd. The bottom of the boots do not connect with the feet in many frames. Etc.
Whew. Long list. However, polygon management seemed well done for this model. I suppose this owes a lot to the author being trained in 3d Video game Art =). Some hidden polygons exist, not at a terribly dangerous level, but could have easily been swept away. The bevelled edges at the bottom of SF's feet puzzle me in not looking to have any other apparent use than taking up extra polygons. The extra bevels at the top could have been shaved down to one, I feel, without losing the general shape.
In terms of all around quality, I feel that this is an average (maybe slightly below) model. Nothing revolutionary here. But generally keeps with the spirit of StarFox =)
The Animations
The animations were of generally good quality. All were smoothe and lifelike, giving Starfox a touch of charecter and class. The taunt sequence was quite good, with SF throwing his weapon behind him and quickly giving it the boot back into his hand. The flip, salute, and wave animations were also well done.
Most diamonds inevitably have a few flaws, of course. Though I'd imagine with no neck, head movement would be rather difficult, however some would be nice. It seems largely frozen in one position through much of the animations. Solid objects, mostly around the shoulders, seemed to freely move through each other, subtracting a little from some of the animation cycles. Some of the animations start and/or end nowhere near the normal position, sometimes giving the model a "jerky" quality.
A class act in my book, but with some minor irks that could be ironed out.. =)
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Wow, hey.. The skins here are a great and well payed off effort in its entirety. While basically, theres just one skin, with slightly altered siblings for the manditory CTF stuff, its a great work that follows almost to the letter the original model (Though the eyes are slightly different.) Its nicely shaded, with few flaws. The one thing I didnt like much about it though, was the shading of the "white" parts. It seems to me that the author used too much variety of hues for the shading, going from a off white to nearly black. And the positioning of the shading make it appear more like stripes.
The mechanics of the skin arent as trouble free as the actual skin however. Weighing in at the gl-friendly 256x256, the skin has around 50% wasted space. Some of the skin objects, such as the legs and feet, have actually been transposed over each other, which limits the possibilities somewhat for uniquely textured skins. The mapping has been well done, and no visible anomolies exist.. The skin does well to hide some of the shortcomings of the model.. =)
Sounds
None.. Though it would always be nice if some were added. =) Visible Weapons Support
Vwep: Not quite yet, though the zip includes the same weapon duplicated in the respective vwep files, to fix a problem with some mods. The author invites any and all to come out with some though =) Pack Inclusion I myself feel that this model would make the pack.. Its eligable enough, and is just plain fun to play =)
review by
Scotty
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