Wow Fan Art For Lunch!

BradMyers82

LATEST:


video turntable: https://vimeo.com/61412746#







So I’m a real big fan of FirstKeeper’s “Windrunner” http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76301

I have been wanting to make a wow character like this for some time now. My plan is to use the same texture types as FirstKeeper’s to achieve a similar look. So Diffuse and Specular only, NO normal maps.

Here is the concept I am using found on google image search:


And here are the small modifications I made to it for my purposes:


My workflow however is most likely different from FirstKeeper’s in that I want to create a high poly even though it won’t be used for normal map baking. I’ll probably use it for some simple lighting baking, but the main goal with the high poly is to really nail the proportions.

The proportions don’t have to necessarily be the same as the concept, I just want it to look really cool in the end.

I’ve been making this during lunch at work and here is where I am so far…
I made a base mesh and have done some rough sculpting on it refining forms and such. Not looking to make a master piece as the high poly won’t really be used far beyond building the low poly.

almighty_gir

looking at the concept, the shoulder armour is what should make up the additional "broadness" in her upper body. with that in mind you should really think about going back to basics on her body, get that right, and then move on to the armour.

BradMyers82

Thanks for the feedback almighty_gir.

I wasn't 100 percent sure what you were talking about with the shoulder area, but I refined the proportions some more and added more details for the hell of it.

I think those first sets of images were with perspective off, so that probably wasn't helping much with judging proportions.

Unless anyone has any major issues they notice, I think I'll move on to the low poly.

BradMyers82

Here is the Low Poly and uvs.

As you can see, she sits just under 7,000 tri's. I'm planning on adding alpha planes for hair and I figure that gives me 1,000 tri's of wiggle room. (8,000 tri's would be acceptable for a character like this I think.)

I don't have a ton of experience with making the alpha hairs so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears. Also, I left some empty space in the uv's for the painted hair, but now that I look at it, I'm wondering if its enough space at 1k resolution.

Not a big deal if I have to change the uv's at any point here, I can always use that texture transfer trick in max since I'm not using a normal map.

Oh yea, and I made a basic ao bake off that high poly which you can see here. It will only serve as a guide for general lighting as I will be painting over everything.

AlexKola

I like what you've got going on here, the hands and feet lool good. The concept is pretty cool too. Ears are a little bit much for my taste but I understand that's kind of a niche fantasy thing. Can't wait for the paint job.

I noticed you baked in the chain but not other details like the scales.
Seems kind of strange.

Keep it up.

BradMyers82

AlexKola: Ha ha, yea I don't like the ears either. I'm following the concept there as I figure its a wow elf thing. If you look carefully at the concept, she also has these really long eyebrows. I chose not to make those. :P

The main purpose of the highpoly was for me to figure out the proportions. The proportions are still not set in stone yet, but I think they are close enough that if I make small changes from here, it won't totally stretch out the texture and make it look terrible. I do in fact intend on modifying the lowpoly a bit more still once I get some paint on there, and tweaking stuff as I progress.

So to answer your question, I didn't bake other details like the scales because I didn't bother making those in the high poly. They should be simple enough to just paint, the chains however can be a little more tricky so its nice to have a good starting place with those (baking that in initially). Thanks for the feedback.

BradMyers82

Nothing too exciting yet just blocking in colors and working on base skin tones. Got a lot of work to do, but I'm definitely having fun with this.

Btw, 100% self illuminated here.

almighty_gir

looking good so far man. i'd use the AO map you baked to create a gradient map with some nice tones for the skin.

also, you need to alter the angle of the jaw line, rotate it up toward the ear to soften the face a little, it's really square right now.

BradMyers82

Thanks again almight_gir! You were spot on with the jaw rotating, and when I get back to texturing here I will def. play around with the ao more and see if I can get better hues going there.

Here's a small update. I adjusted the proportions of the head quite a bit and widened the hips just a tad. I think its definitely a step in the right direction but not totally satisfied with it just yet. I'll get some more painting in first though before I mess with proportions any more. As you will notice I also started the lp hair.

Btw, the hair solution I'm going with is Bogdanbl4 solution with his Barbarian female. (I'm sure you have all seen it in the polycount showcase). I think that would be a perfect look for this and since he was so kind as to share his construction sheets with the model I'm confident I can pull it off.

butt_sahib

Hey Brad!

Nice to see some crazy looking awesome aweosome from you

just wanted to drop by and say that Good luck!!!! looking forward to the final result!

BradMyers82

Hey butt_sahib!

Man, its been a long time, thanks for the kind words and watching as always!

Sorry not too much of an update here, just didn't want to let this go without updates for too long. Every time I start to get into this during lunch before I know it, its over! But still getting a little done here and there.


Here is where I am currently, and def. not nearly done with anything yet. I'm planning on roughing this all in, then adding more subtle details, unifying lighting more, adding subtle color (especially to the skin tones) and basic specular highlights to describe the materials better.

My current workflow is just screen capturing in mudbox, painting in photoshop, and project back, then erasing projection errors and clean up with painting in mudbox and repeat.



The leather scaly thing in front of her robe is reading really bad currently, I'll work on that some more when I rough the rest of this in. I have to rough in the side dress bits, the gauntlets and the shoulder pads yet.

BradMyers82

Finally, here is an update...

Got the main texturing done. Its not finished by any means but its ready for a final pass.

Worked on the hair a lot recently, and I am starting to make the sword now.

maximumsproductions

This is one of the few female warrior-isk models that I find kind of cool...Maybe the big shoulder pad helps that as well but I really enjoy this.

BradMyers82

maximumsproductions: Thanks a lot for the kind words.

Here is the swords texture...

BradMyers82

I'll probably make some minor adjustments to the textures still (levels and stuff) but they are all painted and done I think.

My co-worker who is an animator said he will help me make some nice idol animations so I can make a turn table. So still not finished yet! I'll probably make a pedestal as well.

BradMyers82

Actually, I was just studying firstkeepers textures and render and I think I'm going to make further changes to the textures.

Looks like the spec she has is handling more than I though, so I should dial down the painted in spec in the diffuse.

Also she has a black outline on the silhouette in her render, She unified the texture with that effect by adding black lines in the diffuse. So I'm going to go ahead and give this a try.

Saiainoshi

Don't paint with black.

carlobarley

firstkeeper's sylvannas has quite an elongated form~

BradMyers82

Here is my progress with the changes. I think its starting to come together how I wanted. I'm only about 20 percent done with the changes I mentioned I wanted to make.

So let me know what you guys think about this vs. the other direction...

Brian "Panda" Choi

As a style critique, the right shoulderpad seem way to removed from the style of the rest of the character to me. Maybe because of the vents. If you don't want to change it, that's absolutely cool as well.

Feel like the eyes could definitely use heavier upper eyeshadows / eyeline.

But overall, I like it! Wish I was just as good.

BradMyers82

Yea, I totally agree with you about the shoulder pad. I have felt the same way pretty much the whole time, but when I made the concept, I just decided to go with it. At this point I don't want to change it, even though I know the design could be better.

I agree about the eyes as well, and I'll def. give it another pass.

Thanks for the kind words and great advice!

BradMyers82

ok, think I'm calling the textures done, working on a base now for her to stand on, and need to get her posed.

Mark Dygert

Awesome work Brad, love it!

If I had to crit anything I would have to bring up the lack of long crazy eyebrows and that the hair could use some more variation, some low-lights and highlights painted into the diffuse would help it along I think. Right now its coming off a bit too yellow like straw and probably needs to be closer to "straw-berry blond" to fit into the whole blood elf color scheme of red AND yellow.

crappy quickie paint over


TLDR:
- Put some more berry in strawberry blonde.
- Add crazy long eyebrows.

BradMyers82

Hey Vig, Thanks for the kind words!

Yea, I'll def. play with the hair color, I've been looking at this so long now I totally didn't notice the hair being so off. Probably won't make the eye brows though sorry. lol. I think it looks way too weird. haha.

jmt

This is looking great so far, though the textures don't quite look done to me. I think they could be improved a lot without major changes, just more tweaking an polishing. Mostly I think that the face could use work. The illustration has a lot of subtle, sleek touches that the model currently lacks: the lines around the eyes, the variations of color in the skin tones of the lips and nose, the size of the eyeballs, the size of the nostrils. Also, the painting looks a bit more buff than your model. The metal and cloth could use a little more dirtying up, to make it match the concept and to add some more realism and texture.

Mark Dygert

BradMyers82 wrote: »

Hey Vig, Thanks for the kind words!

Yea, I'll def. play with the hair color, I've been looking at this so long now I totally didn't notice the hair being so off. Probably won't make the eye brows though sorry. lol. I think it looks way too weird. haha.

Yea I agree with the eyebrows, it's like gorilla hairy armpits or hobbit feet on a hot chick. Just be prepared for the fanboi's to crap themselves, they can be worse than gun nuts complaining about rivet size on an AR-15. I suggest coming up with a few comebacks, something like:
"any self respecting blood elf wouldn't let a fire hazard like that get so long"
"sadly she lost those in a training accident..."
"she was a spy that infiltrated the highest level of human society and assassinated the archbishop of Yourshire" "What? You never heard of either? She's that good... wiped him and the town clean off the servers"

BradMyers82

jmt: Thanks for the crits! Yea I agree with you on everything. I went ahead and added a grundge pass to the textures, and worked more color variation into the skin. One thing I notice is that the lights are muting a lot of the color variation I already had there. I'm playing around with them currently trying to fix that issue.

Vig: Seriously made me lol. Good ones, haha!


Here are the textures re-worked again, lighting changed a bit, and a base for her to stand on. Going to have her holding a fireball most likely when I get her posed and do the final renders.

Might push the hair color more red, and do some other minor tweaking still.

BradMyers82

Finally finished this one up, hope you guys like it.

Here are the results:

video turntable: https://vimeo.com/61412746#

LOad

hey BradMyers. really cool character! those hair seems really soft, i will surely take inspiration from it next time i need to create some female heads.

BradMyers82

LOad: Thanks dude! Yea, I photoshoped the hair slightly in the above renders, that's why I wrote beauty renders there. So its not quite as good as it appears here honestly, but close.
However, if you checkout the video turntable in hd you can see exactly what it looks like on the model as it is pretty much impossible for me to photoshop the 1,000+ images used to make that video. So what you see in that video is 100% what the model looks like real time (minus the fireball effect I rendered)

Nina I.

Heya, nice to see you have been working more on this Blood Elf, Brad!

The diffuse texture looks nice with a painterly style to it - much like in the original reference picture, good job on that!

You've obviously put much time into this and it's time to present the work in the best possible light. I think that for presentation the character's posture could be tweaked still a little more to make her seem more powerful and in control of the situation. Her torso has a nice twist but I feel her feet position is a little dull. To make her posture more dynamic and in tune with the less static upper body, I'd suggest moving her left foot a bit further away from the other. I hope you don't mind that I made a quick overpaint to demonstrate what I mean.



I think it would also make the character more in control of the platform space. Also, I think the cracks in the ground texture could be a bit more subtle because it looks like her feet are standing on a flat surface. I think them being more subtle would also push more attention to the character instead of strong and busy contrast values in the platform.

Ps. also, have you considered of adding some Blood Elven patterns running along the platform side? Just an idea!

Keep up the good work, I like her armor and clothing very much!

BradMyers82

Nina: Thanks a lot for the critique and paintover! Yea, I wrestled a lot when I was posing her whether or not to go with a stance like you demonstrated or with the current stance I have. I ultimately decided that its best to go with the current stance because I wanted her to look more feminine and not too manly. Not sure if that makes any sense, but my thoughts were that its more "lady like" to have your legs close together rather than standing wide. I especially felt this was relevant since she has a dress on. I really like the paintover though so maybe in the future I would go with a stance like this, and I definitely would do the stance you demonstrated if she had tight fitting pants on or something.

I was also afraid the base was too busy and might draw from the character, so maybe it wasn't the best choice. And I especially like your idea of the patterns along the side!

But I'll probably just take that advice future projects and move on to something else. The rendering for this took a really long time, I spent a whole day rendering shit for that turn table for example. Its been a really good learning process for me since I have never even used after effects before, and a lot of the stuff I did with presentation here is also new to me. I used fume fx for the fireball too, which was a first for me also. It's been a lot of fun, but happy to call this one done now.