Dystopian Brick-Slinging Character (WIP)

slkisor

As our final project for class, we're creating a game character over the next five weeks. This is going to be my second character model ever, and as always-- any feedback is adored and appreciated.

Right now I have the concept and model sheet hammered out, and I'll be finishing up the base mesh soon.



Tiffany is a rough-and-tumble bad girl with an affinity for decking her foes with bricks. (Hey, ammo is expensive.) While she may seem vicious and unruly, she actually has a big heart. Raised by a group of bandits, her ideals and morals were ultimately shaped by their pillaging and life on the fringes of society. As she grows older, Tiffany begins to question the raider lifestyle and seeks justice. After an incident where she disobeyed orders, she was forced to kill her group leader in self-defense. Now, Tiffany leads her rag-tag team of raiders that follow her newly-budding views of righteousness.

vincentvangeel

Interesting concept that you got there, I really like the idea.

In the modelsheet her legs do look a bit thick, but that's just a minor detail.
In the painting, what bothers me is the red dot ribbon around her wrist. It doesn't fit with her style, with all the black and spikes. Maybe you can change it into a bloodspilled bandage. The rest of it is really nice, good work.
Looking forward to seeing your progress.

slkisor

Thanks so much for the feedback! I am totally in love with your idea. I'm going to run with that one I think. Those tie things were definitely a last minute" uuh something needs to hold this here..." kind of thing.

And her legs are a tad thick--I wanted to make her somewhat muscular but they can definitely be trimmed down a bit.

With that I also have the base mesh here.

slkisor

I touched up the concept and model sheet based off of some peer critique I received. I made some solid decisions about what some of the components of her armor were, instead of ambiguous little forms (like the original spikes) to strive towards a pieced-together look. I also spread that deep red in her shorts around in the design, and hopefully made more sense of the ties that hold her armor together. (Which are now bungee cords) Lastly I dirtied her up a bit to fit her in her dystopian environment a little more.

slkisor

Sculpted most of my high poly. Because of some time constraints I didn't get all of her accessories in there, but I'm hoping if I have time after retopping her I can throw those bits in later. I also left most of her hair--I'm hoping to tackle that with planar geometry.

slkisor

Made some more progress on Tiffany. I went back and added in some of her more important accessories that were missing before. I left out the bandana around her wrist, her necklace and the holster--but I don't think its too obvious she's lacking something. Any and all feedback is absolutely appreciated and adored.

slkisor

UV layouts just about done.
Our technical limits were set at 4096, so I divided up the maps as follows:

512 Hair
1536 Face
2048 Body

I need to touch up the hair one a bit more to be more efficient, but other than that I think I'm alright. I left room for the currently missing gum/teeth geometry on the head uv layout, as well as alphas for her eyelashes.

Some things look pretty gnarly because they're back pieces that are stacked on top of each other, but I'll be sure to offset them before I bake anything.

BradMyers82

Looks really cool so far, and I like the idea of "brick throwing"! The main issue with the model is the face imo. The low poly doesn't look too bad but the highpoly is far off in a bunch of areas. She looks very unattractive to the point of a mutant or something. I think if you look at it closely from the 3quarters view a lot of depth is missing (very flat face in areas) and that many of the shapes to follow the underlying bone structure are off. Also really nailing smaller details like proper eyelids, and the corners of the mouth go a long way.
To make a successful female character the face is sooo, important, I suggest you go back and spend a lot of time working on it until you nail it. Believe me it will be well worth it. Nice work so far!

slkisor

Hey Brad,

Thanks so much for taking the time to look Tiffany over. I can definitely see where she needs major improvements on her eyelids and the corners of her mouth on the HP. I'm still very much an amateur, so I think I'm having some difficulties seeing where the bone structure might be off for her, or where some of her face is too flattened out. Could you point out a place or two for me?

Thanks again, I really appreciate the feedback.

slkisor

Tiffany is wrapped up for turn in. I really wouldn't consider her finished, though. She needs another pass on texturing for dirt/wear and a tear, and I want to take another crack at higher frequency details like cracks and scratches on her armor pieces. This project was tough--definitely a lesson in over-scoping. There are still a few more accessories she's missing as well. Final poly count right around 20k.







All in all, for my second character model I'm feeling alright about her. But I'm definitely going to work her over later. For now I have other finals to attend. x.x Any feedback is more than welcome, and greatly appreciated.

BradMyers82

I don't know if this will really help you much because I literally just made this face up as I painted, (I used no references, so she looks nothing like your concept)...

But I mainly tried to change the proportions of her face so she looked more attractive. One thing that you need to pay special attention to is the fact that in 3d you won't change the shading of the face without paying careful attention to the changes you are making in 3d.

Simply put, if you have really bulbous cheeks or something, you will have heavy shadows underneath. The goal with making a female face should be adding shape, but smoothing out the face as much as possible, so no harsh shadows except around the nose mouth and eyes.

When developing the shapes get reference from real people from all angles and make sure that you match the basic landmarks. So from 3 quarters get a reference, place your model there, and make sure that the forehead, cheek, mouth area and chin all show similar shapes.

Hopefully this makes sense and does help in some way... I just don't know what other advice to give without actually being in person.


[edit] sorry I'm way late with the reply... maybe this will help for next time.

slkisor

Brad: No worries! I really appreciate the effort you took to show me. That makes a lot of sense, and I will definitely be more careful next time. Thanks so much!