[WIP]Dragon Wing Frost Bow

ddoan88

Hey Polycounters,

This is a personal project I have been working on. It's a Dragon Wing Frost Bow. Currently I am trying to finish up the model but before I even start calling it a "finished" design I want to get some feedback and critiques from the community. I won't be able to touch this project until another 3-4 days so this will allow the project to marinate in the forums for awhile. I just started to hand paint and texture but I figured I should stop because I am sure there's going to be some wicked suggestions on how to improve the design.

Here are some screenshots and sketchfab viewer.

[SKETCHFAB]85580ba819784ce69cf0b344d9c0ea1c[/SKETCHFAB]

My history for people who are curious, I am currently a 3D Art Lead for Utherverse Digital Inc. which is a small studio of about 40 people which includes customer support and business sectors. I have been working at this company for 5 years and continuing. After some reflection time over the past couple of weeks I realised I might have been a product of moving up to fast and too soon. I was a 3D Environment Artist for the company for about 2 years and then promoted to my current 3D Art Lead position. Becoming a 3D Art Lead I started to take on responsibilities such as project management, meetings, documentation and attending conventions. What this meant was less time doing Art and more time running a team, giving feedback and being the bridge between my 3D department and multiple departments within the company.

Then comes my mistake, I got comfortable and stopped working on personal side projects and with new technology and new talent my skills in the 3D field were not being mastered. I have become a great leader (I hope my team and company agrees), project manager and communicator but because I did not 3D model as much anymore and because of our old outdated graphics engine my skills faded. Now I am more determined then ever to get back to my personal projects and improve my 3D skills. I look forward to being more active on this forums giving/receiving feedback and critiques! If you guys have any questions feel free to ask me via private message or through this thread.

Dallas

ddoan88

Alright so I made a big boo boo here. I realized there are a few parts of my model that wasn't mirrored so I have gone back and mirrored all of my geometry that were going to be symmetrical. After doing this obviously I have tons of UV space now being unused so I will be going back and Re-UVing the model and starting the texture again from scratch. Lesson learned and because my workflow with Sculptris is more fluent I should be able to get back to this stage relatively quick.

Dallas

ddoan88

Getting closer and closer to finishing this bow. Made adjustments to the model and now just finishing up some texture work. Going touch up on some rough areas on the Diffuse map then once that is complete I will be creating a Normal, Spec and Glow map. Once that is complete the bow is finished and onto the environment it will be inhabiting. Check out the sketchfab previewer in the first post to see what the bow looks like currently.

almighty_gir

my only real criticism is in the design, it looks like all that stuff would get in the way of a clean bow action.

in terms of your texture, all of those black lines are really killing the natural feeling.

ddoan88

almighty_gir wrote: »

my only real criticism is in the design, it looks like all that stuff would get in the way of a clean bow action.

in terms of your texture, all of those black lines are really killing the natural feeling.

Your correct. The bow design itself is not very functional. This bow's design is more for fantasy games such as Final Fantasy, Dota 2 or League of Legends. It's more for flash then for functionality. The wings would probably poke you in the eye and the dragon skull in the middle is just way to bulky. As for the black lines I will see how it looks with the normal maps and reevaluate from there if they fit in or not.

Thank you for the feedback.