Amon - The Legend of Korra [Character]
interpolator
LATEST UPDATE
As a big fan of "The Last Airbender" and "The Legend of Korra" I decided to make one of the main characters.
So here's what I've sculpted so far of Amon!
And here's my main ref (sorry for the low res but that's all I could find that wasn't stretched):
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I finished Noatak's face and Amon's mask. For the face it was really hard to get the right sculpting style that would give the same feeling as the anime. I was very inspired by Hazardous' Space marine, so big thanks to him!
Noatak
Amon
Your progress so far is great but I'd address a few design points now such as the coat tails and shoulder pads now so it doesnt affect your sculpting in the future. By splitting the coat tails into two pieces you can than understand where your creases and folds need to go. As for the shoulders I'd move them out a bit (especially the tips) so its breaks the line on the shoulder up and it reads better as a separate piece of fabric.
As for the shoulders I would make some suggestion but the hood will cover that area up so you can get away with it. The head is pretty solid so far but I'd like to make a suggestion of moving the brow down as you can tell from the ref image below he has a heavy set brow.
So I pulled out the shoulders, brought down his eyebrows, split the coat tail and sculpted his hair and hood pulled back.
Next step, retopology!
8.5k triangles so far but I haven't optimized anything yet.
I tried to replicate the texturing workflow described in the DotA 2 texturing guide as I wanted to bake a lot of lighting information in the texture. But the "point light map" was quite disappointing so I got most of my lighting info from the green channel of a world space normal map and a cavity map generated from the normal.
C&C welcome
Somehow I wish the features of the mask were a little more crisp/menacing. This is pretty accurate, but a little too friendly. I think the eye holes should be wider/thinner, and flatter on the top, overall more angular. I think the cheeks of the mask should be more gaunt and angular. There's never any linework indicating this, but if you look at how it is shaded in the show you might get an idea of it.
Made the changes to the eyes to get this menacing look. Looks way better
I've taken a couple of seconds to do a quick paint over of the mask as I think a couple of small tweaks will really push the piece further.
If you cannot read my handwriting (don't blame ya) I'll run you through it. I think by making the eye slits wider you'll get a more sinister looking mask, You could go even go one step further and add a black plane behind the eyes of the mask so you cannot see his eyes until you want to for a close up or what have you.
I think the nose could have a bit more of a point to it as it smooths out into the rest of the mask around the alar fibrofatty tissue area.
I've also sugguested to widen the mask to hide the hair and ears.
Lastly I though it would be best to break up the symmetry by altering the shape of the hood so it bags down on one side.
Hope they suggestion may help but either way its a cool piece and you should be happy with the progress.
Otherwise, keep up the awesome work!
Spikings : Thanks for the kind words!
And here are the flats
I'm currently working on a good pose for the beauty shot. I've been kinda slow these days because I switched to Blender from Maya & Max. Had to learn how to rig and skin again ^^
Love your work dude
I did an Avatar fanart piece and it remains my favourite project to date. How does this rate for you?
Here's the beauty shot with Amon unmasked. Still struggling to find a good composition for the masked version.
For a masked composition I have 2 suggestions.
The most common being - http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Amon_5948.jpg
Or, one I really like
Hope this is helpful at least a little bit :P
Good luck!
I had been thinking about creating this dude as well.. But never really had the time to start it. So much projects going on.. Wish i could freeze time.
=P
Anyway Maybe try using a cell shaded look, like the cartoon? might be interesting to see how it holds up.
bb0x : Thanks for the kind works! Haha, I wish I could freeze time too and have the time to create every character from The Legend of Korra in 3D =D
It was rendered in Marmoset, where it's not possible to make a cell shaded look, there's already a black outline which to me is enough to give this cartoon look. And I'm not planning to bring this into UDK to play with the shaders as I don't really like it (that's the main reason I make my renders in Marmoset ^^).