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Hey folks,
Some screens of a character I'm currently working on. An ancient, rugged Elven male character, imbued with some sort of corrupting power. I'm currently texturing, sitting at 20k tris. C&C always welcome
Rough concept
Sculpt
Texture progress
Replies
I'll try lightning the textures a little, although I do want to try and keep the coat as dark as I can - while it looks good on my monitor on marmoset, I realise my monitor could be much brighter than others/the standard.
Are there any tricks I can use to try and push out the fold detail while allowing for a dark base on the coat? I've tried looking into curvature maps, but apparently xNormal cannot properly render them.
@TigerGD, definately my next stop! I'll give this a whack before starting the hair I think!
I love this . do you have any tips for creating awesome concepts as i have trouble getting my ideas out?
@Aeranima He is currently sitting at 28k tris. I reckon I could reduce this by a little bit - I also work with very tight poly counts so I often get a bit excited when making things for myself. I just got so excited after the initial retopo that I just had to start texturing straight away! I'll run an optimisation pass soon.
@This_Is_Icarus - I can try!
Start by sketching small thumbnails and establishing a strong silhouette for your character. Before you start to design, think about the who, why, and what. Who is your character, what is their occupation, where do they live, what are their dreams, etc. All of these points are incredibly important when designing a character, as it shapes their appearance greatly.
Once you have something that you think you like, start to flesh it out. Try different shapes and patterns. Look at visual motifs you might want to borrow from real life to incorporate into your design. If you were wanting to create a race or army of fascist soldiers, then you may want to look at Nazi imagery to provoke a certain response (IE, the Hellghast from Killzone borrow heavily from Nazi visual cues) or if you were making a religious alien figure, you would want to borrow from real world garments such as decorative robes to suggest a pious faith (An obvious paradigm of this would be the Jedi, for example)
The best advice I can offer is, when designing a characer, if it doesn't look right, then fix it. Don't start a character until you are happy with the design or else you may end up unhappy with the results.
This advice isn't anything new or interesting, or anything that hasn't been said before by better/smarter men than I. If you'd like some more help hit me up with a PM and I can try and find some articles that may be of use to you Hope that helps.
Next up, swords and daggers!
P.S. why the hell would someone quote whole OP with all pictures? Beyond me.
Thanks for your feedback guys! I've incorporated quite a lot of it in, especially the elbowpads - I think that they really add to the design. Thanks for pointing that out guys.
I've had some freelance projects the past 6 weeks, so I haven't been able to work on this as much as I'd liked. Finally got the chance to work on the sword and some extra details! I've further defined some of the textures too. I think I am almost done, I just need to work on the eyes a bit more, I think just having a green emissive iris or something, then a plinth, then beauty shots!
I'd love to hear any more C&C you guys might have.
Would have enjoyed it if he was a bit, "brighter" as he is really really dark, but I'm sure that was intentional
I'm using Samsung displays at home and at work, so the images seem to be ok for me, but I can understand that my displays could easily be too bright, and that what I'm creating could be far too dark for other displays, which is important as I want to be able to present my work to the best possible degree. I'm going to have to brighten it up somehow I think - gonna spend a bit more time on this.
[edit] Or don't pose him at all if its not your thing. He looks good in his working pose and people generally won't hold it against you if a character is left un-posed.
your rocks are really metal-ish with the hard highlights and the high reflection,
and that orange reflection on the rocks dosnt fit in with the rest.
Also I would write the website name under the character name for spacings sake
Is not one but TWO 2048 maps acceptable in this day in age? Y'know, not for MMOs or mobile games or anything but for AAA?
pf