Comicon Challenge: Cyborg Psylocke - Almighty_gir
ngon master
initial brief:
After reading through both briefs, i decided to go with "stand". While i don't mind the idea of doing a beaten and battered superhero, i dislike the idea of doing a superhero on their final attack, i particularly disliked the "intro story" to the competition depicting superman as dying... he literally cannot die, and there are many similar super heroes and villains who share the same affliction.
So i decided to go with "stand", because i liked the idea of trying to find a way to "improve" on a hero or villain. to take any flaws they have and remove or augment them.
so, here's my own story fluff!
Here's my initial moodboard, lots of japanese influence in the character, i'll be gathering more images, filtering some of these out, and putting up another moodboard soon.
Stand - Create a hero or villain who is returning after being gone for a long period of time, or who is rising for the first time, all shiny and new (optional: new costume?), to face an epic battle. For better or for worse, this new or returning hero/villain is set to change the world!
After reading through both briefs, i decided to go with "stand". While i don't mind the idea of doing a beaten and battered superhero, i dislike the idea of doing a superhero on their final attack, i particularly disliked the "intro story" to the competition depicting superman as dying... he literally cannot die, and there are many similar super heroes and villains who share the same affliction.
So i decided to go with "stand", because i liked the idea of trying to find a way to "improve" on a hero or villain. to take any flaws they have and remove or augment them.
so, here's my own story fluff!
Psylocke needed to do this, there wasn't any choice anymore. As a model she'd always hated the idea of surgery, she'd hated the idea that someone could improve upon their physical appearance through cosmetic enhancement.
But this wasn't cosmetic... The enhancements she needed were a matter of life or death, not just for her but for all of humanity. As a human she had become the perfect assassin, her psionic abilities formidable and her physical prowess unmatched. But this new threat wasn't human, her abilities paled, her limits reached. She needed to improve, she needed to be the one to end this threat before all of humanity fell...
...It meant sacrificing her own human body to do it. She stepped into the laboratory and looked back sadly, She laid on the table surrounded by robotic equipment, the equipment that would be used to change her. She allowed the surgeons to inject her with sedatives, her mind would be preserved, her humanity "intact", but in order for that to happen her mind would need to be awake through the procedure. she would feel everything.
She would feel the death of each part of her human body as it is carefully removed, and as her new cybernetics are implanted she will feel each one come to life through a synaptic link to her brain.
She would feel everything.
And when she awoke, she no longer felt human pain. She could interpret electronic signals from her new body registering damage, but it no longer hurt. She could already tell her body had surpassed her previous limitations, she could move faster, quieter... She could throw further and hit harder. She was finally everything she needed to be in order to save humanity.
But had she enough humanity left to do it?
Here's my initial moodboard, lots of japanese influence in the character, i'll be gathering more images, filtering some of these out, and putting up another moodboard soon.
Replies
I still need to figure out what I wanna do
you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find reference of cybernetic body parts, particularly ones that seem functional haha! I'll move on to sketching over and drawing up concepts over the weekend.
Where i kinda see this going, is the places where her costume exists now, would instead be artificial looking. her skin would still be "intact" although what's underneath is still cybernetic, and at the points where her clothing and skin meet would be "seams" where for example, an arm could be removed and you could see the circuitry or connective joints. One thing i do want to keep is her face/head as being human. A key part to my idea is that she keeps her own brain, and her own thoughts, and also her psyonic abilities (after all, removing those would destroy her character). Although i might go with a matrix style "input" valve at the base of her spine... still thinking on that one. i'd quite like her chest to be able to open up to reveal some kind of power source (maybe some stark-tech?).
I like your idea. Maybe you could avoid too much symmetry by letting a human arm instead of changing both ? Well I guess you're already brainstorming about stuff like that ^^.
Having some mechanism to hold the katanas could be nice too. You know, like, the arms or legs can be opened and contain the handles of the katanas, and then the blades pop out of the handles ( laser blades maybe ? or psychic blades powered by the stark-tech in the torso linked to her brain ? ^^ ).
Oh I see on wikipedia that she already has bionic eyes too, because she was blinded by Slaymaster...
Woah lots of ideas, good luck with this I'm sure it'll be fantastic. My only suggestion would be not making it too noisy design wise.
Like your mood boards already. Well... I mean, of course with a mood board full of attractive Asian women. But the robots stuff will be cool to see you do too.
Good luck.
If you're looking for some nice clean, functional looking cybernetics reference, this is always one one of my favourites
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Doing a Google search for Cyberpunk will get you some nice things too.
Nice idea's so far Gir, looking forward to more
Here's my third (and final) moodboard, i'll sketch out a more full concept next.
focus points:
1. Started to get a feel for body types and poses, sketching from some of the other body images and seeing what i liked. Decided to go with a more realistic interpretation, yes i want her to be sexy, yes i want her to look good, but i also didn't want to push it as far as some interpretations (see below).
2. Started looking into different ways to segment the body to achieve what i'm after. Ideally, her head, upper arms, and upper legs will have skin and look human for the most part, except maybe at specific parts which i may introduce into the design in the next phase.
3. Again, looking into body shapes that i liked, took a look at some of the segmentations i could do, also made my decision which face i preferred of the models i was referencing.
4. I ended up on Meisa Kuroki for the facial reference, as i feel with some very minor tweaking (possibly even just correct posing) i can give her the fierce and determined look of Psylocke.
5. As mentioned in number 1, i reviewed a lot of art for Psylocke, including comic book reference and statues, while she is quite widely depicted as quite a wide hipped wonder of a woman, there are examples where it was pushed way too far and just reads wrong in my opinion, so i'm pulling that in a bit.
6. I absolutely love this pose! but much like the point in number 5, the face is way too anime styled, it completely kills the seriousness of the character for me. this pose is definitely something i'll be considering for my beauty renders though.
7. For the visible cybernetic parts, i really love the smoothness of this reference. I love the clean lines and i feel it gives a really feminine vibe, as opposed to some reference out there which shows muscle lines cut into the armour, or created from cabling, this feels really subtle and sexy. I'll be trying to emulate the "feel" of this as much as possible in my design.
8. I desperately want to incorporate some form of interior design for Psylockes chest. If possible i want to show some form of stark-tech powering her prosthetics, and possibly even enhancing her psyonic abilities. This will mean that if i segment the chest properly, we'll be able to take a peek inside, if not in the final beauty renders, then at least just for fun!
woooooo finally found some time to do some actual sculpting/modeling. finding it a real challenge nailing some of the asian facial features.
Nice start by the way. She's looking a little Afro-American at this point though, if that makes sense? Maybe I'm seeing it wrong.
I think you should do a really subtle face, like on your refs, and find the right skin color ( could be good with a really pale skin, like a geisha ? ). The body is not really stylised, I don't know if you're going for a realistic style ? Could be odd for a comicon challenge imo.
And check the ass on the 3/4 view, the shape is really strange and flat here.
Oh, and a friend gave me this awesome link too :
http://www.pinterest.com/einaryoris/anatomy-references-for-artists/?fb_action_ids=803054936378253&fb_action_types=pinterestapp%3Afollow&fb_ref=566820440509523747%3A49baa322e4fdbaeb998fc4f9bd1a405d6af75924&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B1491863011039162%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22pinterestapp%3Afollow%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22566820440509523747%3A49baa322e4fdbaeb998fc4f9bd1a405d6af75924%22
You can find some good refs for comics style body and asian eyes and stuff.
Thanks for the link Texelion!
I would suggest to put temporary hair, eyelashes and make-up to, it really changes the way we see the character. If you take a girl, remove her hair, eyebrows and make-up, it's not the same at all...
I think the brows are your biggest problem at the moment. The eyes are too deep set and brow ridge needs to be significantly gentler and smoother. I think once you've tweaked that, you'll get much closer to the East-Asian appearance you're after.
This might be handy