The Soul Keeper [WIP]

JustinK

hey polycounters,
started this character for my 2nd year university project. would love some feedback while i work on it. I only have 2 more weeks on it so unfortunately cant change anything drastic. still have to rig and animate and in to unity.
Progress so far...

Concept(Design has changed a bit from this):

Sculpt:

Texture 1:

Texture 2: (Still needs hair, major texture work, and maybe a item for the middle of the chest?)

Xelan101

I agree, something for his chest could be nice. Maybe a heavy necklace? Probably something made of silver or stone to keep within his color scheme. ( I dunno if there's a specific mythology you want him to fit into, if so find something there, otherwise I think a nice stylized skull would fit nicely)

It'd be nice to see texture flats and definitely wires, even though it's early into the project, it helps us understand how he's built a bit more.

I won't be much help on anatomy, not really a character guy, but color wise I'd try to work in a general gradient of light to dark and chose a light color and a shadow color and work those in as well. Right now it seems like your shadows (specifically those under the rib cage) are just black. It'd better to chose a cool shadow color ( in this case I'd maybe suggest a somewhat reddish purple and then working with a yellow-green light) and work that into your shadows. In addition to that general color variance would be good, but that's more of an end-game thing, at least in my work flow.

Also geo wise, it's hard to tell without wires but the lip of his ribcage looks really really sharp, I'd suggest adding some geo/champhering it a bit, to make it feel more organic and less low poly.

tldr: Try a necklace, pick and use a definite light and shadow color, don't use straight black, and soften the edge of the ribcage. Also where'd his little hip guards go?

DWalker

The junction between the ribs and the abdomen is too abrupt, looking like two separate pieces. The ribs are also far too deep, and the hip bones should be more prominent.

JustinK

@Xelan101, thanks for the advice, ill try and work something into the chest area for sure! ill get a texture flat and wires up after a bit more work and i really like the sound of adding reds into the shadow tone.
ill fix up the ribcage area to, as it's pretty low poly atm.

@DWalker, i try and fix the ribcage side so it doesn't look to separate. i can take the steepness out to but not to much, as a personal thing i like it, even know its not to realistic, thanks heaps for the advice though.

JustinK

mini update, haven't changed it much, just a stronger colour palette and rounding out some geo.

JustinK

did a little bit of work tonight, keen for some more critique and advice!

JustinK

GenericGoodGuy

I'm loving this model/textures..how do you get that sort of realistic/tf2 type style to it?

JustinK

@GenericGoodGuy, hey dude, thanks for the reply.
so far my method is taking the AO map and running a gradient map on it in photoshop, give you a good control of shadows colors. then over that i hand paint over details, within my color pallete.

i didnt want this guy to have a "realistic" look as he is quite stylised and has some crazy forms, so i kept everything handpainted and havnt used any photo overlays.

hope that helps a bit, any more questions feel free to ask and ill get back to you asap.

cheers

JustinK

JustinK

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JustinK

would love some feedback and critique.

Clark Coots

your texture sheet is very readable with everything aligned up but it feels like there is too much space wasted. The way you textured him he is very very very symmetrical, i can barely see a difference in a-symmetry on his chest, back, face, and arms. Since thats the case I would've recommended having overlapping UVs on those parts. I'm not sure if this would be better or worse, but the soft gradient you have on the dress, I am curious what it looks like reversed. The way I think of gradients on characters is (just my opinion) is the lighter portion of it is what you want to bring the viewers attention too aka the upper torso/face. So overall the gradient could be going dark to light from the bottom of his dress to mid torso. Kindof just like a spot light on the torso/head of the character that fades off. But as is it looks good, I'm just curious how it'd look the other way. The front flap on the dress I think toward the bottom you could start collapsing the edges, right now there are 5 edges at the bottom, could go down to 3 I think, and animation wise should be okay and geo wise be fine since you're using alpha there anyway (check for optimization on the other dress pieces). Personal preference I like wireframes in quads, just easier on the eyes and to read the topology. Just save out an image with black UVs from Maya snapshot over white and load that into diffuse in Marmoset. I like that you posed him and I like the overall presentation (asside from triangulated wireframe)

JustinK

@coots7 , thanks for the feedback man. yeah i agree that a lot of it was wasted, i planned a lot more but i ran out of time as this was a university project, and yeah i need to focus on texturing skills as its very symmetrical. very interesting about the gradient stuff, it makes heaps of sense yeah.
Next time ill use quads wire frame for sure.
thanks for the feedback though