Need Advice Character Concept

valdimer

Need some advice on the character concept i'm currently working on. I heavily referenced WoW and Allods online. I don't have a full character turnaround yet, I wanted to wait and see what people had to say. Any critiques would be greatly welcomed!

Pangahas

I think you need to unify the armor design,I mean the spiked shoulder pad, the skull, te crystal.It looks to me as if they came from different armor sets mashed together.It would be best if you stick with one theme that way the overall design would look cohesive.Hope that helps.

valdimer

You think so? I was wondering about that. Something just seems off about the design, and I think that'll be a great help! I'll start working on it! Anything else don't hesitate to post!

Texelion

Yeah you should add more crystals and remove the skulls imo, and put some gold on the boots. And I think she can hardly walk with that stuff on the hips. Try to imagine how she will be animated, how she will move. Could she brandish a sword with these pauldrons ? I don't think so. Could she bend her torso ? The pointy parts of the chestplate will pierce her stomach.

Beware with this loincloth too, generally they make look the legs shorter than they are and the proportions look wrong even if they aren't.

valdimer

Awesome! Thanks Tex, i actually just started designing over the crystal:poly124:. That's okay though I will work with it. I wanted to inquire about your one statement " Try to imagine how she will be animated, how she will move. Could she brandish a sword with these pauldrons ? I don't think so. Could she bend her torso ?" I totally understand and get what your saying. I wanted her armor to be big and bulky however, so I was wondering if you or anyone else had a suggestion for how to do that, but retain some mobility and realism? Thanks you guys very much for the critiques so far. Keep em coming! I'd like to get it to a point where I can get some thumbs up:poly122:

valdimer

Alright, I did a quick quick paintover using some of the suggestions posted so far. I omitted the crystals because, well, once I started adding the gold I didn't really mind not having the crystals. I'm still figuring out what to do with the skull to replace it. Also I removed one of the lower plates along the lower torso. Let me know what you think so far.

Texelion

Maybe you could look at games with dynamic and bulky characters like Darksiders. Well generally we don't really see the armor stretching or interpenetrations because the action is fast, but I remember for exemple in Dragon Age, when some characters talked, their head were just going through the armor and it really sucks, because the heavy armor design was not calculated for a character which can turn the head...

You can also draw the character in some poses to see if the armor can follow the move. But personnally, I prefer to adapt the armor directly in 3D. The hard part is to understand how the armor works. Here your pauldrons are in 3 parts, so they can rotate separately, like scales one under the other, if there is enough space between the parts.

As it's easier to see and test that in 3D maybe you should not care about it in the concept. Not too much at least.

Pangahas

And also it could probably do away with the cleavage showing,doesn't really make sense why one of the most vulnerable part of the body isn't fully protected,again might have something to do with the norm of how women are depicted in games.Ok I get the whole sexy appeal thing but doesn't the navel showing serves that purpose already.

You could also try to make up a backgroundstory for her,(Is she a knight?a rouge?doesshe have any powers?does she belong to a faction? maybe a simple sentence or two describing the character so you could add elements based off of that.

valdimer

Gotcha. She has a story. She's a heroine who started a revolution against two warring factions on her land. The two warring factions are normally superior to humans in every way but she managed to bridge the gaps in power. So when I concepted her, my idea, was to make her appear strong, empirical, and rebellious. Also I should've said this earlier but I normally concept in some program like zbrush or something but I wanted to do the more classic way. Plus I was feeling my 2d skills were lacking.