Hey Folks,
I'm happy to announce to you the great collaboration of me and a couple of colleagues - internally known as "The Viking Game"! [rumbling thunder]
...it's a WIP name, by the way.
The rough gameconcept has been in our heads for quite a while now, but now finally I started sculpting the first character!
...meanwhile, our concept artist, the great Markus Lenz, did this:
...Yeah, I know what you think.. what a lazy duche! But he also did lots of other stuff on the side - for this and for other projects - best you have a look at his personal sketchbook over here:
http://oni.cghub.com/
Well, and more pics, here some WIPs of the first character I started in Zbrush (its my first dive into Zbrush, so be kind) - its the lefthand character on the picture above:
Well, thats it for now. Expect to see more stuff soon!
As always, comments and critique is VERY welcome!
Have a great and productive weekend!
Thilo
Replies
The concept art is wicked too proper getting the picture already and it looks to be epic!
The sculpt is coming on really nicely too you got some really nice muscular forms coming on.
A few pointers which all depend on how closely your sticking to the concept art.
The creature that your modelling looks to be a blend of the two different characters on the last concept sheet. Like as said don't exactly know if that's your aim but if not then maybe make the sculpt more distinct to one.
The sculpt so far shows stubby legs like the creature on the left
A more rounded belly like the creature on the right.
A really wide latissimus dorsi like the creature on the left
A slimmer arm arm thickness like the creature on the right.
Otherwise the muscle placement and detail that you've sculpted so far is spot on particularly loving the legs and the arms.
At the moment it's early days with your sculpt but I just thought I'd mention as your starting to put your forms in. It's definitely coming on so keep it up and will be following as this looks awesome!
Its true, I struggel quite a bit to catch the overall character and silhouette of the left guy. He works quite good in 2D, but try to imagine his back and where the latissimus and the trapezius link to.. 0o
Still it will probably help a lot if I widen his hip (and belly - it's definitely to firm!) and widen his stance..
Overall, he's still pretty ripped, but thats more for me getting the anatomy right - I will later add a lot of body fat to get his physique right.
To be honest I think the hips are fine the hips look wide on the concept but I think 1: that's because the concepts on a 3/4 angle and 2: they're kind of covered by the loin cloth they would link back to his crotch anyway as opposed to him having a really wide crotch.
The belly add some fat around the sides and your sweet bro.
I think you've captured it really well btw they where only a few minor tweaks.
Anytime man I think the whole thing is awesome so looking forward to the seeing the whole project take shape dude. Keep it up.
As your concentrating on form and silhouette at this stage, i'd go down a few subdiv levels, youll have an easier time doing it that way. That high a subdivision is left for detailing.
For tips in how to achieve the look your going for, i'd say have a look at how and where fat deposits itself on the body, and how to place the skin over the top of it. At the moment, your guy looks like a bodybuilder with a gut. Your muscle placements are quite close to being correct, which is what you want for a start. Next up is just placing that fat.
Have a look at the worlds strongest man competition, those guys have almost barrel shapes to them.
I'm actually trying to tackle a very similar thing [eerily similar actually]. I'm in the process of sculpting Odin with an older bodybuilder body type. [its on polycount somewhere, if you would like a look ]
What helped with mine was doing a few torso/body part studies[sculpts] of the type I want to achieve. It means you dont look at the arms or legs etc, and get to concentrate on one thing.
Keep up the work dude, subscribing. Looking forward to the updates
Cheers
I'am one of the mentioned colleagues whos going to contribute to this. Will propbably make some 3d at some point for now though contributing some scribbles as you can't have enough of them. Want to improve on environment concepts, composition, lighting and the like so will focus on that.
But couldn't help to draw some ladys for a start. =D
I couldn't help but put some tiny bit of detail on. Also tried to incorporate you're critique, let me know what you think!
I don't try to be mean, trust me. This is just an observation, but a game must be recognizable and the aesthetics are very important. In your project everything looks a little bit... generic. Try to fix that asap because I can see talent here
I totaly agree, this would never be a main character. The Main Characters are the vikings (though THE protagonist of the game is not yet concepted), those characters are supposed to be some kind of cave tribe, living in hot, hazardous caves inside of a volcano.
Thats btw why I tried to make his limbs burned and leathery. I'm gonna take this much further with the coloring, as visible in the concept.
...I'll still try to make him more distinguishable, especially through his props.
The detailing on the skin is a good start.
i like that your considering the creatures environment and what effect that has on the creature physiology that's a great way to model and conceptualize standard.
As your in the early stages of detailing not much to crit but some straight on images of the creature would be good to see what the proportions are like but so far great job avagoyamug.
audi100 your concepts are wicked man but i don't one hundred percent get the design.
Look at the beasts those women are up against, the beasts would knock the snot out of your female character mainly because she has a toothpick for armor.
Even if she managed to beat one of those beasts what would she do if she had to face a crowd minus the crowd what if she's a viking and has to deal with european weather conditions?
Reverse the situation if you were in a battle and you had the choice of wearing armor or wearing a cotton skirt against a big brute that eats building's for a living which one would you pick - (and be honest ;p)?
Balance sexuality which is what I assume your going for with a realistic design.
Your form on your female characters kicks ass they look bigger stronger and able to handle some weight but at the same time able to move that is really nice use that with a realistic armor design and i think your definitely onto a winner there man.
..not too much of a change though, have been buisy with dayjob and freelancing lately. I'll get on it soon again!
The stomach to tie in with the reference would need to be wider at the very front if you look closely there's a contour around the stomach and that you need to extend near enough all the way to the edge of the silhouette shown in the reference.
The characters belly is very wide and bulky and sits on the edge of his battle kilt or whatever it's called ;P
Keep the details though but once you've moved the stomach smooth out the contour around the belly as his belly is really bulky in the reference there's no definition around the it to seperate his belly from his flank if you get what I mean.
One more thing there is a kind of streak going across his back would again pay some attention to that and smooth that out.
Everything else looks great sweet I like where it's going dude.
just some small updates on the props this morning:
@Melonman: Thanks, I see what you mean with his belly - I'll gonna give it a final workover soon...
Also changed the feet a bit more towards the concept, to catch the hoove-like character.
But looking great so far
Here's his kilt - put together from scavenged armor of his enemies.
Here is another concept involving the creature Avagoyamug is working on and basically shows the scene when our character reaches the end of the enemy lair and faces it's guard.
Cool stuff! She looks a whole lot like Swedish songer Robyn! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn
@ Melonman: Thanks for your crit. Yeah you're probably right she would not stand a chance without any armor against the big dude but as hes going to appear as an endboss at the end of a chapter she should be able to have found some protection by then. Don't want to spoil much of the (very rough) story we got but basically she has been stripped of any armor at the beginning.
Nice going audi! I like 11 a lot!
I had some housing ideas for our cave faction
Damn guys, really nice work so far!!
I have a small update on the first bake:
And I'm really liking vulcano thumb number 5, maybe with some addition to the foreground and overall some intresting details. But I love that path you did there!
The bake looks good, but the face feels just a little blurred to me right now, but maybe it's just me...
I'm looking forward to more progress on this project.
Thanks! I see what you mean, I think the face IS actually blurred in the screenshot, but thats just due to compression, I think.
I will however remodel the face and some other parts for animation, anyway. Seperate the eyes and open the mouth etc.
I'm still very new to character retopo and I just talked to our animator about some areas that I will rework.
[VEROLD]52433f7e68cb53020000022d[/VEROLD]
edit: These guys from Verold are just awesome - they got in touch with me immediately and fixed a bug that seemed to cause trouble with the normals. I can only recommend this tool to fellow 3d Artists!
avagoyamug - awesome job, my only crit is that the severed heads are very high poly, you could probably halv the coutn and maintain the same detail.
Can't wait to see more. good luck!