ArenaNet Art Test - Female Norn
polycounter lvl 14
Final presentation shots: 
Hey all! I know I'm late to this party but I love this concept art so much I just had to give it a shot!
I just started working on it today, but here is where I'm currently at:
Any comments/critiques are welcome! I'm hoping to get more of the armor done tomorrow after work. I'm giving myself about 3 weeks to finish it.
Thanks in advance!
Hey all! I know I'm late to this party but I love this concept art so much I just had to give it a shot!
I just started working on it today, but here is where I'm currently at:
Any comments/critiques are welcome! I'm hoping to get more of the armor done tomorrow after work. I'm giving myself about 3 weeks to finish it.
Thanks in advance!
Replies
You've got a good base to work from. You just need to push it a bit further. The arms need a bit more meat on them as they are too thin as they are. Same goes for the hands. Since we are on the subject of the arms the shoulders need to be brought in a tad.
As for the head, the eye sockets and eyebrows need more work. Once they are done the face will start to fall into place. I would also narrow the upper head.
Plus give her some wilder hips.
All in all its coming along great. Just keep chipping away at it.
Here are some images of the WIP.. First is the current progress on the model, and the second image is showing the change from before and after the torso changes. Crits/suggestions welcome!
Thanks in advance for the critiques/suggestions!
On the to-do list: minor armor additions (wolf heads on the hand armor, engraving on the groin plate thing, engravings on belt, etc), boots, leather bits, cloth, hair (loose ponytail/eyebrows), and fur. Lots of fur. Two weeks to go... I'm hoping to finish the high poly in the next couple days so I have plenty of time to texture it.
Comments/critiques welcome! Thanks.
Really cool work on the hair!
How did you do the eyelashes and braids? They look great, I'd love to know how you went about doing it if possible.
Keep it up! Looking forward to seeing her done!
I agree about the slight masculinity of her form as the shoulders seem smaller int he concept.
Just please check out some female exaggerated forms from artists, one I would go to would be Paul Richards, in his private section for the hip ratio.
The concept does have a nice silhouette aside from all the gear she got on.
I had an idea of how the hair goes.
Does anyone else think the hair follows the arrows in the example image attached?
In regards to the shoulders and general proportions.. she does have beefier shoulders than the concept but I've been trying to keep it looking close to the in-game Norn females too. I've attached an image to demonstrate:
Obviously the pose and angle is a bit different but I've tried to keep it close. The shoulders and the neck slope could be raised a bit, maybe? And maybe brought in just a tad to lose a little bit of that masculinity. I'll play with it.
$!nz - I agree 100%. That's exactly how I picture the hair looking. I was going to pull all of the hair back and then combine it into a large braid or ponytail going back up toward the forehead and then wrap through the hair piece and come out the back again as a loose ponytail.
Stoop_kid - Thanks!! For the braids, I just googled "How to model a braid in max" and I believe it was the very first link that I used.
Thanks again everyone! Keep it coming!!
Looking over the post above I noticed the gif file of the in game female norn. If you are going down that path I'd suggest bring the waist out to help enforce that stocky, masculine look.
Di$array - Thank you! I'm glad you're liking the detail so far. The fur should be interrrresting once I get to it. I was considering sculpting it but I may use a variation on what Ravenslayer did with his or I may just end up sculpting it out. Whatever looks (and will bake) best.
And yeah.. I'm torn. I like the muscular in-game Norn look, but I also like the slim and sleek look of the concept art... I want to have my cake and eat it too. I think I'm just going to pull the shoulders in (and up) a little bit to improve that shoulder to hip ratio and the neck-to-shoulders slope, and try to keep her looking like the concept art.
Also, the leather straps on her legs are a bit high right now.. I'm going to redo those and move them down a bit so that the straps higher up on her legs are going to be visible below her fur/cloth.
The way I look at it is this in art, you always want the closest to first hand reference possible. So if you're sculpting an ultra realistic woman, than you should look at a real woman in real life, if that's not possible then photos of a real woman.
When working off a concept it becomes your closest thing to first hand reference of the artists vision, the in game models are not a good reference as they are lowest on the totem and are the end result. All you should use in game models for is to make sure that you are achieving the same stylization. Definitely not as anatomy reference.
But that's really just my opinion, best of luck
Current:
Thank you all so much for your suggestions... I think these changes have definitely improved the overall look of it. But let me know what you guys think! I've included *.gifs to show the changes:
That's all I have time for tonight unfortunately.
Still to do: add the rest of the fur and the leather/cloth pieces, throw in some placeholder hair so I have an idea where I want to build my alpha'd hair, better define the forms in the fingers and add rings/fingernails, earrings, the pattern on the belt, and then do a detail pass over the leather/straps to add folds/wrinkles, etc.
Any suggestions/critiques would be great! Thanks.
Threw in some quick hair to give myself some sort of idea of what I want it to look like. Still have some work to do on some of the fur before I move onto the leather/cloth bits. Also need to add eyebrows. Here's the current version:
Excellent progress and so glad you listened to a bunch of critic and made sure It was the right thing for your design before going ahead with It, keep going! she's looking great.
Noob question: what software are you using? Thanks
However the fur is too noisy to me. The hair chunks should be about twice the current size. You should test bake them asap to see if they work well.
Also the calves are bent too much to the sides. Feet should be moved closer to the center basically. And overall you might wanna bulk up the legs a bit.
I'll definitely try a test bake on the fur soon, AimBiZ! I'll see about addressing the issues with the legs as well. Thank you!
Good luck and can't wait to see your final entry!
Started texturing -- hair needs a lot of work, most other textures are mainly base layers and need to be pushed further. Painted the eyes and eye makeup tonight.. still a few more things to do to it. She's sitting just over 6500 tris right now... should be able to get in just under budget after reworking the hair. Comments/crits welcome!
Other than that, awesome work!
The eyes look a little bugged. Is it too late to put in a small shadow gradient strip over her eye?
chrisradsby & Aga22: I plan on fixing the leg position tonight, and while I do that I'll see if I can't thicken the ankles/lower legs a bit. Thank you both for the kind words!
toolpaddz: I'm glad you like the fur!
AlexKola: Thank you!!
And thank you, Makkon! It's definitely not too late. I may have to paint it into her eye texture, but I'll work on fixing them up tonight. Too much highlight on the upper cornea?
Fixed her stance, beefed up her boots a bit, and redid the fur on the boots. I think it's looking better, but let me know what you think!
I just noticed one thing that actually still bothers me a lot: the transition from the upper body (belly) to the fur of the clothes. It looks like she's got a really weird body deformation there due to the skin color of the texture. You would want to change that into some darker shade of brown. Otherwise, great! I wish you the best of luck for getting the internship!
Still not happy with the ponytail.. it looks too boring right now, and I want it to better match the concept. Gonna try to build a new ponytail tomorrow and then re-paint the hair.
Texturing's looking quite nice. Dunno how far gone you're with the skin but it's a bit too clean on some places. Some additional gradual shading would be nice, do push the forms more.
I think the biggest drawback on this model at the moment is the face. At the risk of sounding harsh, I would trash it and redo it, in an attempt to bring it up to the level of the rest of the model.
I think Hyojin's concept while defined, is super smooth and rounded, lots of nice rolling forms, which are lacking in this current head. Really go back to the concept and study those forms.
Also on your version she is almost scowling and pissed off, instead of looking pleasant or sultry and attractive like the concept - None of the female faces in GW2 have this angry / unappealing look and I think its in your best interest to emulate what they do.
Its a nice model man, but I think another pass on that face will propell you to victory!
AimBiZ - Thanks for the suggestions! I'll adjust the thighs. And I'll continue working on the skin texture to add more skin color variation.
Haz - Ouch! I was so proud of the head too. haha. But looking at the concept now, she definitely should be more sultry and soft looking, and less angry. I'll revisit the head sculpt tomorrow and try to get more of those smooth rounded forms in her face. Re-sculpting the head, adjusting the low poly (and possibly adding some geo in order to make the face smoother), and re-baking shouldn't take too long. Bottom line: if Hazardous tells you to redo your female head.. you redo it.
And I appreciate the kind words, Sugus!
I spent the last few days re-working the face. I'm still working on finishing up the textures and making sure the new face textures blend well with everything else.. and there's still some weird shading going on under the jawline.. but here we are so far. Comments/crits welcome!