Working on a new character design for my portfolio, she's a motorcycle racer on an over-sized bike that runs on clean energy, setting is the future. I will be modeling both the character and the bike. The bike is longer than a typical motorcycle with a front heavy chassis to counterbalance the extreme speeds. Tires are treaded to deal with outdoor terrain, races occur on salt flats / canyons etc, fairly flat environment.
Here's the concept I designed, next update will be some zbrush sculpting.
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It's an aesthetically pleasing design, but I think you need to take another look at it and work out how it's actually going to work. You've obviously got a little freedom through suspension of disbelief as it's a fantastical design, but I think as it is now, it's going to look a bit wrong once you get the mounting her on the bike.
In short, it looks cool, but this bike would suck to ride
Her ass needs to be more up in the air, mosre towards lying than sitting. All imo of course.....
If you fancy a redesign, have a look at racers posture, and where their centre of gravity is. While you have some creative leeway with it being a futuristic design, I think understanding how bikes work will hlp to create something more convincing....
I actually spent a lot of time researching bikes so I do know how they work. However my goal was not to design a bike that you could see in the store down the street. It was a conscious decision to design something different. If I lifted the seat up and did what you're talking about the design would fall apart, it would become segmented evenly, splitting the weight down the middle rather than pushed to one side. The reason it looks good atm is because it's designed using the principles of the golden rectangle. While I appreciate your feedback your current suggestion would break that principle. Also I'm not really concerned with how comfortable it would be to ride, (look at tron lightcycles, they are about as uncomfortable as you can get).
There are some elements that have to stay (this is for an indie game not just my portfolio so I'm working with other artists).
Those elements are this:
Over-sized, long design
Large back tire
Weight pushed to front
Racer posture
If you have suggestions that don't break those elements I'm open to hearing them. For instance I can play with her posture, lay her down more and reduce the amount of weight that's towards the front. I'll do some quick experimenting and throw some changes up soon.
That!
I think I would be cool to have something from the design of the bike that would be reflected on some way onto the design of the character without going overkill-mirror-style, just a little subtility.
Nice drawing skills btw.
Here's a turn around gif of the character currently and a shot of the bike.
and Bike
So to reiterate I am not finished with the diffuse, feedback welcome on ways I can improve diffuse / spec as that's where I'm at atm.
I'm a bit late to the party here, but from your early 2D work it seems she can hardly see the road ahead of her due to the big hump in front of her. Did you try posing the character on the bike?
Can we get another angle of the bike? How does the handlebar turn? Is there room enough for it to turn?
I'm still working out the spec maps and no normals have been applied yet so I totally agree I need to work on the material definition quite a bit still.
I really appreciate the feedback guys.