Character - Mean Machine (Judge Dredd/ 2000AD)
polycounter lvl 18
So... I've been working on a Mean Machine from the Judge Dredd/ 2000AD universe redux in my spare time for a little while now and thought he's about ready to show.
The idea is based around the Angel family living in the deserts outside of Mega City One, eeking out an existance as rough shod miners, mercenaries and general vagrants, using Mean Machine Angel and his cybernetic arm as free slave mining labour and a general human bashing device. Think the spawn of an inbred redneck and a deep shaft mining device in a dystopian future and your on the right track.
Most of the forms are now blocked in (apart from the boots), before breaking the subtools up and pushing a fine detail pass on a higher subdivision...if my computer can handle it!
And here's a quick paintover/ concept I worked up when first starting the character to try and explore ideas and see where I would like it to end up. It's quick and nasty I know, but it really helped to see the bigger picture before jumping too far into modelling or sculpting.
The idea is based around the Angel family living in the deserts outside of Mega City One, eeking out an existance as rough shod miners, mercenaries and general vagrants, using Mean Machine Angel and his cybernetic arm as free slave mining labour and a general human bashing device. Think the spawn of an inbred redneck and a deep shaft mining device in a dystopian future and your on the right track.
Most of the forms are now blocked in (apart from the boots), before breaking the subtools up and pushing a fine detail pass on a higher subdivision...if my computer can handle it!
And here's a quick paintover/ concept I worked up when first starting the character to try and explore ideas and see where I would like it to end up. It's quick and nasty I know, but it really helped to see the bigger picture before jumping too far into modelling or sculpting.
Replies
I love some of the details in your paint over, like the robo arm branding from whatever it used to be..
this isn't a crit per se, but he has an interesting expression that's hard to pin down- almost forlorn or put-upon- that fits pretty well with your slave labour back story though, but it does make him seam a little less 'mean'
anyway, can't wait to see where this goes!
@Rooster - yeah I was going for a more "realistic" take on Mean Machine so the one-dimensional "mean" is replaced with a kind of slow, slightly backwards brute, manipulated by the rest of the family to their own ends, which hopefully comes across in the expression. I'll take a final pass over it at the end and try and pin the expression down a bit more, or maybe even do another version where the dial is cranked up to MAX and the true mean-machine comes into play. Great Mean Machine costume you had in the Halloween thread BTW - I'd have loved ot see that walking around Newcastle!
@TeriakiStyle - Yeah - the hand is the one bit that I am still toying with and I agree it doesn't look the most menacing - I will probably rework it to look closer to some of my reference before baking. The actual arm is a mish-mash of a few different robotic/ minig arms - the nachi robotic arm stuff in particular which seem to have have similar mix of hydraulic and mechanical mechanisms...I'm no mechanical engineer though so went for looks over complete real world workings I've got to admit! The fact that it's hanging off a cybernetic mutant hopefully helps suspend the disbeleief enough for me to get away with it slightly
Lowpoly finished, UV'd and baked...
...sitting at a whopping 25K and I still need to add the planes for hair on the face. I've cut in a lot more detail than usual as I want the skin to have a custom skin shader as well as the metals, cloth and hair all using their own shaders.
I've also had some time to get a load of texture work on the arm which has been really fun so far. The colour scheme is still work in progress until I get further on with the guy himself, so the paint colour and the red glowy bits are all still undecided...but for now this is how it looks...Wasteland Redneck...
(Wow - the colours look much lighter here at home compared to my calibrated screens at work...need to invest in a Spyder or something ASAP!)
funnily enough, im sculpting up a mean machine angel myself, but im going more for the old comic style so not as cool as this
keep it up dude!
The first thing that popped into my mind is that the muscles on the right part of the body would be a bit stronger and more worn out than the left part. He needs to lift and carry that huge mechanical arm all the time. You do have some destruction detail on the right part but I would think of adding something more. But that's only my idea
The mechanical arm parts texture could also use some more color variation, because at the moment for me it's a bit too flat.. in terms of colors. More contrast would give it more life.
These are my tips, and GREAT work so far
@JonnyRaptor - Post your version of Mean Machine up - I'd love to see your take on it. I've obviously gone in a different direction with my re-design but you can never beat the bad-assness of the original!
@Elod.H - Thanks for the crits. The right side or his body is/ was made more muscular and gnarled with the traps and upper back muscles being especially exagerated, but maybe it's not as apparent now that it's all posed - I'll see if I can push the forms in teh lowpoly anymore without going overboard. The final colour scheme will probably end up more muted than even this shot though...sorry! I'm thinking of going with a pretty monochromatic look with accents of red, like the original highpoly/ concept shots, but we'll see how it all looks once I'm further on with the texture of the body.
@MM - Thanks Mashru
...I've got a new job starting in a few weeks and a house move in between then, but hopefully I don't leave it as long between updates next time.
So - after losing a load of this work due to snapping my USB pen drive that I was storing the files on I put this on the back burner (after crying myself to sleep for a few weeks). Two studios, FIVE years and 3 jobs later I decided I'd pick it back up to test out Substance Painter and Marmoset Toolbag 3, and here we are!
I'll post up some tech specs in a later post but you should be able to get a good guess of polycount by looking at the wireframe at least. He uses 3 x 4K texture sets which REALLY stressed my computer out in Substance Painter- but it just about soldiered on to let me finish him at least.
I ended up putting in a few easter eggs for fans of Rare, 2000AD and obscure metal bands, so see if you can spot any
Anyway... enough of the waffle - on with the pictures!
Lowpoly - Body Turnaround
I've still got to do the final "render" and get everything ready so I can upload the Marmoset Viewer scene so you can all poke about and laugh at how unorganized my scenes are. Hopefully should have that done...soon.
Lowpoly - No Diffuse
Lowpoly - Wireframes
I ended up putting a few Easter eggs in to this one- see if you can spot them all, especially if you're a fan of Rare's games!