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[Dota2] – Crystal Maiden – Queen of Winter

polycounter lvl 12
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Nikola polycounter lvl 12
Hello guys, first sketches of CM set. I am going for a look based on a rose.

cmconcept.jpg

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  • Rik
    The rose idea is unique, and the shape looks good from the front view but a little weak from the sides. Maybe exaggerate how far out the petals stick from the body. And perhaps do a paint over with the dominant color being purple with blue accents? It might vary too much from her current color balance but it may look good. Same color scheme, different proportions. You're on the right track! Push it!

    What is the basis for your tapered cape and the thickness at the bottom? I think that is hurting the overall rose design because the further down you go, the less it resembles a flower.
  • Zinus
    Hello there, I'm a co-artist on this project (well kinda, i can't model to save my life but i help my pal with ideas and overall design so i guess that's enough :D ).

    Thanks for the feedback!

    The side view is indeed a bit weak at the moment, the general idea is to have a tilted rose as the main body of the shoulder piece. We kind of ran out of time so we decided to post it as is, without fixing the width from the side view (imagining these rose petal things and then drawing them proportionally proved to be a pain of "special" proportions >.<... also you can see we didn't draw everything yet, so on the next concept pic we will fix the shoulders).

    About the color, it is an interesting idea. We tinted the base of the petals with purple so it would fit with her skin chest piece (that purple wrapped thingy). The idea was to bleed the purple of her default skin into the blue petals, and outline it with white so her default skin would be the center of the flower.
    Now changing the whole shoulder piece to dominant purple with bluish edges crowned with white can actually be pretty good, we will definitely try it out!

    The cape was really a problem for us, we had several ideas, but nothing really "fitted" the rose design. In the end we had this idea for the top piece of the cape being a petal (so it finishes the rose the shoulders create). Now the problem was, what do we do with the lower part of the cape?
    It is not drawn on this image (ran out of time...), but the idea is to make a rose (thorny) vine texture pattern, that goes from the top and then makes a entangled mess on the bottom (kind of surrounding her with thorny vines when she stands still). So it should look like a vine has risen from below to create a beautiful rose at the top... at least that's the idea behind it...

    I hope my ramble helped a bit xD


    edit: messed things up while registering for forums :3
  • Nikola
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    Nikola polycounter lvl 12
    Changed cloak a bit, but still not sure about it. I will play a bit with colors, will try dominant purple with blue accents. Also, need to design stuff.

    var1.jpg

    I started modeling shoulders to help myself to get clear picture of how they actually look.

    shoulders.jpg

    Comments are welcome. :)
  • Spudnik
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    Spudnik polycounter lvl 11
    Great idea with the petal shoulders, definitely very clever! That said, the cloak is the only thing that seems a bit arbitrary still, it doesn't "fit" with the rest of the set yet and I'm having a hard time pinpointing why... Great progress though, looks very solid in 3D !
  • Anuxinamoon
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    Anuxinamoon polycounter lvl 14
    Cool idea with the shoulders, it has a really interesting silhouette! That cap is a bit lackluster in comparison. Imagine looking through the store at the cape.. would you buy that just as is?

    Try playing with the depth of the cape and see how it goes. You have the layered look for the shoulders, why not try the same for the cape?
  • Nikola
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    Nikola polycounter lvl 12
    Thanks for the comments. :)
    I'm gonna play a bit more with a cloak. I will try layered look for sure, thought i don't want too much petals.
    @Anuxinamoon You are right, without the shoulders, cloak looks pretty dull.
  • Zinus
    Alright, here are the new concept images :3

    First off we had this idea for the cloak. Nice thing about it is that it kind of fits both the default shoulders and ours.

    cape.jpg

    Here is the whole thing. We also worked on the bracers and staff.
    The idea with the weapon is that the (frozen) rose vine creep up the royal staff and blossomed on top. There are some spare bones, so maybe we will attach the roses to them :D
    We also stylized the bracers a bit so they look less massive.
    The vines should look like they are made of ice crystals, the idea is to keep them as thin as possible but still distinguishable in game.

    1.jpg

    And cm with weapon in hand

    qiueenofwinter.jpg


    Staff is not set in stone, but it will surely be about creeping rose vine...
    As for the head piece, if we make one it will be something light, maybe a crystal rose in hair or something like that.

    Well tell us what you think :3
  • Spudnik
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    Spudnik polycounter lvl 11
    I think the cape looks a bit too flimsy, too light.

    And I think instead of having the ice flower attached to the head of the staff it should BE the head of the staff. Otherwise it looks too flimsy as well.
  • Nikola
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    Nikola polycounter lvl 12
    So here is some progress. Shoulders are almost done, thought i have problem with properly skinning and animating shoulders. Some tips are welcome. :)

    shoulders.jpg

    Also, here is reworked weapon concept. Crystal shaped rose should be the head of a staff. Bottom part should resemble the end of a rose branch, and the top part should look like back part of a rose flower.

    staffconcept.jpg
  • Zinus
    Alright the shoulders are finally 99% done! All that is left to do here is a little bit tweaking of the masks and skinning.

    screens.jpg

    We have been playing around with the concepts a bit, mostly for the bracers and cloak. We have the feeling that the asymmetrical approach will fit better with the shoulders (as they kinda are the keystone of the set). So here is a rough quick prototype concept of the current iteration for the cloak.

    cloackconceptnew.jpg


    P.S. I have the feeling that the "Queen of Winter" isn't quite fitting for this set at the moment, my initial idea went out of the window quite early but we forgot to change the name... now I'm thinking of something... i dunno... Winter Rose?
  • anotherdotaplayer
    This is a fantastic idea!
    Your last version of the cape is excellent and fits the theme perfectly.
    My favourite piece would have to be the staff!

    A few words I could think of for a new name were "bloom, blossom, glacial, frost/ed, chill/ed, arctic" and of course winter and rose as you said above.
    The best sounding things I could think of were "the Winter's Blossom set" and "the Frosted Rose set".

    I wish you all the best for the competition! I will be watching this thread over the next couple of weeks.
  • anotherdotaplayer
    This is a fantastic idea!
    Your last version of the cape is excellent and fits the theme perfectly.
    My favourite piece would have to be the staff!

    A few words I could think of for a new name were "bloom, blossom, glacial, frost/ed, chill/ed, arctic" and of course winter and rose as you said above.
    The best sounding things I could think of were "the Winter's Blossom set" and "the Frosted Rose set".

    I wish you all the best for the competition! I will be watching this thread over the next couple of weeks.
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