[Dota 2] - Shadow Shaman - TBD

UglyMuffin · Oct 2012

Latest Updates:

Hey all, I just found about this contest a few days ago so I thought I'd take a crack. Also, I can't believe how much this thread has exploded in the past couple of days.

First tried working on a Necrolyte and I didn't love anything I was doing, it all felt a little cliche:

I thought the shadow shaman looked cool so I decided to settle on him. My only fear is, I don't know if I'm adding enough to the original design. As such, I might be looking into doing a Chen at some point, as there seems to be plenty of room for modifying with Chen.

Head, shoulder and weapon shots - The weapons don't exactly match up with the head and shoulder designs.

Belt designs - I still would like to concept up a few more, but I ran out of ideas for today.

I'm also planning on making some custom totem/ward model for him, so I'll try to get some of the concepts up in the next couple of days. I'd love to get some crits and what design you think looks the strongest

bounchfx · Oct 2012

great start man!
Of the first image, I like 5 and 8 a lot in terms of the helms, 8 and 2 for shoulders, 5 and 8 for weapon. So I guess I like 8 the best? haha. The belts look great too, I'm diggin all of them honestly. 1 is cool, I like the back spikes of 3, and 4 would just look really cool.

UglyMuffin · Oct 2012

Hey all, long time no update.

bounchfx - Thanks man, glad you like the work so far

. I think I'm going to go with weapon idea 8 as I though it looked the strongest personally.

Before I deciding on a concept, I wanted to see what some of the ideas I had been noodling out looked like from an in-game distance, so I painted over the base item set with some concepts to see which would look best from a distance.

Here's the distant shot paintovers along with their close-up counterparts.

I think they're all pretty cool concepts and I'd feel comfortable going forward with any of them. I'm leaning to set 1 or 2 right now. I think the head-piece for the third set might look a little too similar to Juggernaut or Sven at a distance. I'm also concerned that if I do idea 1, I won't have the polys to model the shawl and the arm/shoulder piece. If I go with it, I might have to add the shawl to the belt and not the arms.

I know I haven't updated as early as I would have liked and that I only have three weeks left, but I feel confident that I can finish this up in time.

Naso · Oct 2012

Set ones head and scarf, set twos shoulder, and for the back, the large bones from set two, but the misc from set three.

Just my opinion but to each his own, any one of them would be nice, or better yet, make all of them and enter them all separately! ( each it's own thread or w/e the rules need )

Hope anything I said helped, good luck!

UglyMuffin · Nov 2012

Updates:
Base Models:

I had a dilemma with the head. I originally liked the second idea, but after the modeling the first idea and seeing it in-game, I think I like it more.
Heads In-game:

Sculpting bits for the arms
Arm Piece High Poly:

I'm also going to sculpt out some rough Totem/Ward stuff soon. I'm thinking basilisk, hydra and cockatrice stuff, we'll see.

Naso - Thanks for the reply

. I only just saw your response today, so I need to keep a better eye on my thread. I was thinking the same think for the arm piece. The shoulder from idea two and the scarf from idea one, but I couldn't get it to look right under the (low) 250 tri limit. I'm going to have another crack at it tomorrow. As for the belt, I think combining the bones from two and the misc. stuff from three would look cool (I want the chicken), so I'm going to give that a shot tomorrow too.

UglyMuffin · Nov 2012

Updates:
I couldn't get the shawl under budget for the arms so I decided to stick it with the head instead:

I finished the arms as well:

I also updated the belt to the tusks from idea 2 and misc. stuff from idea 3. I also changed the chicken cage, it seemed a little too refined (too much knowledge of metal working) in the concept:

I hope to have head piece and weapon sculpts tomorrow or Saturday.

UglyMuffin · Nov 2012

Hi all,
Here are some updates on the helmet/head and the weapon.

I have some questions though and maybe someone on polycount can help. Does anyone know how to preview multiple items simultaneously? Also does anyone know how to move and/or enlarge the visual effects for the weapon. I was hoping to move the weapon a bit further up and the orb is a bit larger on my weapon, so I was hoping to scale the visual effect up a bit too.

Thanks for looking,
Mick

Lotto · Nov 2012

Oh my god. I love all of these concepts. Shadow Shaman's one of my favorite heroes in this game. He looks a bit odd but that makes him so much more interesting and most of these concepts look ace for his character/design. Keep up the great work, set is coming together nicely.

UglyMuffin · Nov 2012

Lotto: Thanks, maybe I'll have enough time to work on another set with the extended deadline.

Finished belt:

I'll try to get a quick video of the shaman animated with all the cool little secondary animation. I did some skinning trickery to try and get the hanging coins to sway while he runs, etc. I also hope to have a cool render of everything in 3ds Max tomorrow and then I'll submit it. :poly122:

Thanks for looking