[DOTA2] - Chen - Heavy Cavalry
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I've being going back and forth on a lot of elements. Reading through the art guide again helped a lot. I actually removed some of the details, b/c the design was getting too noisy, the silhouette too messy, things were not working.
The lion/beast ears turned into horns. I took out the spikes I had in the gauntlets even tho those for a long time were the only thing I liked. They didn't work with the horns. The helmet face guard is now cleaner.
This is the first look at the staff. Its not there yet, but the idea is close to fleshed out. Trying to figure out how to end or connect the bottom of the horns.
added a pad under the mount armor, otherwise pretty close to good to go.
I've being going back and forth on a lot of elements. Reading through the art guide again helped a lot. I actually removed some of the details, b/c the design was getting too noisy, the silhouette too messy, things were not working.
The lion/beast ears turned into horns. I took out the spikes I had in the gauntlets even tho those for a long time were the only thing I liked. They didn't work with the horns. The helmet face guard is now cleaner.
This is the first look at the staff. Its not there yet, but the idea is close to fleshed out. Trying to figure out how to end or connect the bottom of the horns.
added a pad under the mount armor, otherwise pretty close to good to go.
Replies
And here's my initial concept blocked in:
I think first thing is to do some rigging tests to see if this idea (big heavy armor) is even doable with the character animation in game.
and for those who don't know here's his referenced picture (thanks pseudoBug)
keep going man, i will be following the work =]
http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Chen_responses
You really should do research. Some of the hero's lore can be found in the responses so do familiarize yourself with them.
I watched some youtube of Chen that helped. I'll read more on the wiki and watch more. Thanks.
Anyway I had this awesome idea. spent hours today painting it up, then realized Fock! There's no belt or body slot!!!! AAARGH! Only shoulders arms and head! Anyway here's that drawing...
Aaanyway So I skip back to 3d and mess around with silhouette and came up with this.
Its rough-ish. I like the armor, and there's not a whole lot of poly's left to do stuff with. Infact I'll have to reduce this if I want to keep the tassels (which I'm not THAT attached to) I think the most work at this point is on the mount armor. That's probably the most prominent item in game. Anyway, Its been rough, I was hoping a vision of something would hit me but no, its been sketching and re-re-reworking back to sketching... thinking anyway here's where its at as of now.
Edit which I liked until I woke up this morning feeling this is fine but uninspired. I have all these cool ideas for Chen and this is basically a weak implementation on almost none of them. I'll have an update soon I'm honing in on something.
The idea I got from this is mix the smooth shapes of Chens default armor with beasts, sort of polished and wild mix.
the gauntlets seems a tad simple right now, after I texture them if they still feel that way I'll need to re-address them.
My favorite part of the mount armor is the blade like spike on the front. Seems neat like you don't want to get in his way, ahah.
Well its been going slowly, but every step I continue to refine my understanding of the process. I've been sloppy by comparison to the ideal way to work. I'm continuing to learn how and why to work the way you read about. I was bouncing between LOD0(in game hi) and LOD1(in game lo) THEN trying to make a baking high rez mesh. Thats a slow way to work, with a lot of tweaking that gets redone over and over. Here's the high rez mesh for the helmet, now I'll make the other levels of detail from this (duh) hah.
Though if I thought about this more technically when the face guard drops he probably wouldn't see much of anything but, still I love the way it looks and that really doesn't matter in the end.
The cross also doesn't make complete sense as its a christian symbol and while he's basically a paladin he's in no way a christian. I didn't care about that either, LOL. I needed a better shape than a slit.
Chen doesn't have much designy symbolism things he's pretty simple in some ways. There is the staff head as sorta a symbol but I don't want to put a fanned out shape there. The cross was not so much a symbol as I wanted a strong shape that wasn't just a slit.
Since I like the cross aesthetically maybe I make it more X equal length sides, I have to alternate versions tho, lets see what people think.
edit "Mirrored Sides" isn't really an option I want to break up the mirroring of the helmet with the visor.
The sets looking really nice and I reckon it will be awesome when its done ^^
The 3 downward spikes plus the 5 holes looks the best of the bunch. My second pick would go for all holes.
The lion/beast ears turned into horns. I took out the spikes I had in the gauntlets even tho those for a long time were the only thing I liked. They didn't work with the horns. The helmet face guard is now cleaner.
This is the first look at the staff. Its not there yet, but the idea is close to fleshed out. Trying to figure out how to end or connect the bottom of the horns.
added a pad under the mount armor, otherwise pretty close to good to go.