Mad Scientist; 3D Character

wahtye

Hey,
just started a new project in order to improve myself as a Character Artist.

Planning to do a evil scientist kinda guy, the crazy villain doing dangerous experiments. This is what I'm planning to do, including some color as well as asset references:




This is my progress so far, basemesh of the head nearly complete. Just some minor tweaks needed. As he's currently looking very kind, I'm gonna adjust the eyebrows as well as the mouth during the sculpting phase.

Fingus

Get some evil eyebrow action in there and you'll be golden. A crazy bug eyed stare would help too. It's very unsettling to see someone seemingly calm and kindly brimming with insanity and mad energy underneath the surface.

wahtye

Here's how the basemesh is getting along. I'd call that finished unless theres something you guys feel is odd.
About to start working on the highpoly next.

For some reason the head seems off, but measuring the proportion it's got the right size. Can't really figure out what bothers me about it.




Gonna adjust what you've criticized in the highpoly. Might have to reduce the strength of the labial fold as well, as thats giving him his kind looks.

wahtye

Finally caught some time to work on this guy again.
Due to different projects I had to invest some time in he kinda hasn't received much love the last few weeks.

However, heres an update:






Also had some time to play around with the BPR renders in ZBrush:

wahtye

Update:

Ferg

wahtye wrote: »

Update:

Perfect. Ship it!

Mstankow

Beautiful.

Fingus

nyx702

I wish I was hung like him.

You might want to watch out how thin his lab coat is getting.

Rockley Bonner

make his dick bigger.

wahtye

Crazy people don't wear pants.
However, since it's getting cold outside, I'm working on shorts for him.

You might want to watch out how thin his lab coat is getting.

Yea, only been plane in that one, I agree.
Gave it some Thickness now.


Thanks for the Feedback guys. :P

wahtye

Caught some time to work on this dude again.
I dare to call the highpoly finished, and am now starting on the gameres model as well as the texture.

wright.tom85

I've spied a glaring error in your work here. In the latest render, his genitalia are no longer visible. How can he consider himself a mad scientist if he's not forcing others to awkwardly avoid looking below his waistline?
Or maybe I'm confusing "mad scientist" with "drunk uncle Dave".

No, serious answer now. It looks pretty awesome. The only thing that feels off to me is his hands. I don't feel like the palm has a natural ( curve to it. It's most obvious in the last pantsless render you did.

Fomori

Can we see a closer shot of his face? That ones a bit too dramatic. What are you rendering in by the way?

wahtye

Thanks for the feedback,
I get what you mean with the feedback on the hand, the palm is sort of too flat.

The whole thing is rendered in Mentalray with a simple 3-light setup and some minor color adjustments in Photoshop.

Here are closeups on the face.
Overdid the pores a bit so they transfer better into the normal and are actually visible from far.

With clothes:
Highres


Without clothes:
Highres

Fomori

Looks pretty cool! Reminds me of the scientist from "Back to the Future". Where his tie goes into his collar looks wrong. Too thin. Also the edges of his coat collar aren't straight enough. That section in a coat is usually a bit stiff.

Bigjohn

Pretty cool piece. I like the concept of it.

If I had one crit on this, it would be that the "mad" part of "mad scientist" is not really coming across. I'd expect his backstory to be something like a researcher that got so obsessed with his work that he has completely devoted his life to it, abandoning everything else, while slowly losing his mind. You'd communicate that with a generally messy appearance. Unkempt hair, clothes, etc. Even something as simple as having the tie unfastened would hint towards that.

But right now it seems like he's wearing mint-condition clothes. He takes the time to fix-up his appearance each morning, seeing as how he wears a tie, gets a nice shave, has nice clothes, and goes to a barbershop to shave his head nicely.

I'm not saying you should go all the way to the other side and mess him up completely. But it would be nice to have some hint of his genius in the character's visual language.