Figured it was time to start a thread for this. The theme is a sci-fi female is a sorta nearish future, think neuromancer level technology, but not so bleak. She actually goes with my last piece, 'mech suit alien',
thread for him here:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121436&page=2
Right now I'm working on getting everything concepted together. I started with this old model which I never did a project with, made some alterations, and am concepting out clothing and technology. She won't be naked in the end.
I have no clue how to do the hair, so I'm testing some solutions.
Replies
Hair looks amazing so far no problems there! What process did you go through?
I think you could do with changing the shape of the philtral column, it seems to be unnaturally wide and over exaggerated at the moment.
Also I was wondering what matcap you are using for the skin, it has some spec on it
Like Dave Jr, I'd love to know about your process for laying the hair planes. It has a very nice flow.
The hair was done similar to Crazyfools IMM hair brush, except that I only used it to draw about 5 or six curves, which I then scaled and rotated, and used the move tool on to fit in place. All basically manual moving, but with the IMM brush it went way quicker than other methods I've tried. I had a picture up, but instead of trying to match the image, I just sorta looked for how the curves flowed, and mimicked that.
Barnsey the skin shader is a modified version of Zbro's skin shader. He has some awesome ones on his blog.
Quick update, trying to figure out the jacket material definition, also seems like the actual shader is going to be hard too. Jacket was inspired by two pieces of concept art I found on CGHub:
Looking forward to see this develop and what you will do with the clothing.
As for the clothes, I tend to use clay buildup and the move tool, and then for the wrinkles I use the slash brush with the focal shift set to zero.
Here were some quick concepts I did tonight for the clothes. I like B, C and F the most, but input would be greatly appreciated.
Close up:
psyched to see how the hair turns out in engine
as for the cloth i think i would keep it simple and go with F
Yeah I'll pick F too, with some stuff to break the symmetry on the body.
regarding your clothing options, it's hard to know what exactly you're trying to go for with the blue sci-fi esque part, i think you need to concept that up more first. regarding her character, what are you trying to go for? if you're trying to go for a kind of normal person in a sci-fi neuromancer type universe then you need to think of some cool bit of clothing to make her look sci fi, so good luck with that!
Have you tried putting the armour over her top/jacket? With a different layout maybe, with spinal protection or something like that.
I really like those shoes
Yeah, I can understand that POV. It's hard for me too because I see what I have now, and I don't really want to disturb it by adding extra elements, but at the same time the universe that she is supposed to exist in is a bit more 'cartoon sci-fi' than 'realistic sci-fi', right now we're trying to find a balance between the two.
The girl is also supposed to have a bit more of a 'hacker' sensibility, rather than a fashion sensibility, so it would make sense with her that she is proud of the hardware element of her getup. Not sure how I'm going to handle that.
One thing I've learned is that when I come up against a difficult problem like that, if I put enough time and effort into finding the best solution, if the solution is good enough, it becomes the best part of the design. I'm hoping that's how this goes.
I've also met this reaction at most stages. The first round a couple people told me 'keep her bare-chested', rather than clothing because the 'anatomy is so nice', which obviously doesn't work. And now in the second round she has clothes, and I've heard from several people and now yourself, 'don't add the tech', because the outfit is so simple.
But I do get your POV, and hopefully I can come up with something that fits her design better.
Ha. If I ever do a sci-fi street walker I am going to do that. Actually one of my refs has something very similar.
This is a concept by Maciej on CGHUB:
http://cghub.com/images/view/697869/
This I assume was his inspiration, from blade runner:
http://www.alicia-logic.com/capsimages/br_020JoannaCassidy.jpg
I originally did the short jacket you see at the beginning of this thread, with the shoulder pads puffed out and the collar. Then I found this concept which merged the shoulders with the arms much better, so I used that idea to seperate them out. Like the fish-net you posted, he found a really cool way (from blade-runner) to continue the short design of the jacket in a pretty explicit, but well designed way. He's an amazing artist.
Now that I look at it though I feel a bit insecure that I took too much from the concept. I had already picked out the rest of the design and material, but with the shoulders they are very similar. Would like to know how others feel, I don't really want to encroach on anyone.
Thanks Mr. Ace. Yeah finding a good balance is the challenge right now. I loved neuromancer, and I've been following that 'aesthetic' in my mind, thinking about the mix of tech and fashion etc. She's not really a Molly type of character, much more warm than that, but something in that universe would be great.
I like her high boots the most I think. You could give them some more sci-fi-ish look to go with the rest. I really like the simplicity of just a top on her chest, but F works really well too. I still personally think she needs some shirt/tank/cloth sitting under the chest piece.
Lee, I mistook you. I thought you meant the fishnet over bare skin. Having it over the metal stuff would actually be pretty cool. Although with Endomi's comments, I might be looking for a way to simplify those bits now. Appreciate your feedback.
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A boot. Done today and yesterday. In Marmoset2, my first real project for it. I did nothing for the beta, which I felt horrible about, but I had other stuff going on. It's this girls boots (or a test of them).
It's strange but I feel like in all the TB2 screens I see, everything looks a bit plastic, no matter the material : skin, leather, metal, etc... well maybe it's just because people are not still used to it.
Hope you don't mind but I did a quick paintover idea for the top. I was thinking that since the jacket was very open there was nothing at the front and everything on the sides, so did the opposite for the shirt part. Just an idea.
Mongrel I like it.
Tex, I think at least for me that's because I haven't figured out the best setting for gloss/spec. Some differentiation there would probably help me. Thanks for pointing it out.
Good work, also the boots look top quality.
EDIT: I'm just going to edit in the picture here since I only made minimal changes.
Hey man! This looks so awesome, I've been seeing it on the lunchcrunch group a lot as well and she's super badass. The boots are kind of looking like a strange choice at the moment, they stray away from her futuristic hip hop diva and go towards country. I think the hi tops you were going for looked more fitting for her overall style. Something like the kicks that Jeremy Scott does is what I see her in. But of course this all goes back to you
A few ref pics for Jeremy Scott