Handpainted WoW-Style Weapons

Xelan101

Haven't posted in a while, I've been working on a departure from my previous portfolio to emphasize on handpainted pieces and my own designs to strengthen my design sense and my ability to paint

here's what I've got so far and some concepts for where the next one is headed

arranged chronologically, any crits welcome, but crits on the new stuff preferred










so many images!

Littlenorwegians

I've been studying the hand-painted style a lot recently (I wanna attempt it myself) and I find this consistent with that work.

The improvments I have in minds as I view these are either minor or simply alternatives. The thoughy I have is that there could be an ever so slight more amount of detail. Runes in the blade. Signs that its worn. Engravings. That sorta thing. I think you Grunt's Axe is sorta the best example, as I find it the most interesting shape, color and texture-wise.

I envy your skill and you're doing all sorts of good so just keep refining.

Torch

Hey, they're really nice but I think you could push the levels/saturation a bit more, a lot of WoW weapons tend to be really saturated and light to make the details pop more. Cool stuff

Cibo

The Grunts Axe looks fantastic.
The staff looks okay but the skull looks to funny comic style for me.
The two swords are too muddy with weak shadows and cant compete with the axe.

AbKI

These look great! Agree with the saturation point, you could really make these look disgustingly gaudy and they'd really pop!

Xelan101

Some explorations for something more fitting with the Iron Horde stuff they've released

Not very colorful I know but they're quicker sketches focused more on getting the overall feel right, I'll definitely pump up the color and saturation as suggested as I move into working on some more in-depth

Xelan101

I keep bouncing between projects, but anyways I'm updating some of the existing weapons to be ready for GDC, along with working on my Environment piece http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=119098

So I've worked on the axe, added more color variance, some rust, and repainted most of the handle to bring it in line with the quality of the axe head

Hoshi

It's better like this imho Nice work overall, I just feel like you could use more of your texture space, with smaller padding, better packing, or just adding more stuff on your weapons so you dont waste texels. At work we have a sweat plugin for 3dsmax that tells which percentage of our UV space we are using. We aim for a 85%+ coverage. I don't know if something like this exists over the Internet, but I'm pretty sure you can find one, or ask in the technical talk if someone has an idea about that.

D4V1DC

Nice work!

BradMyers82

Great work overall dude, and I really like the latest update. The biggest issue I see is inconsistency with the painted lighting. You need to imagine a light source and then apply it over the entire texture.
In the axe for example there are clear areas where it appears the light is coming from the upper left hand corner, but then other areas that contradict this. Also it appears that the axe's blade is lit way more than the lower parts of metal. In general the lighting is the hardest part to master. Keep it up tho dude, I really like the overall brush work and detailing! Nicely done!

Squals

Hey man! Nice work, but as a few others have mentioned. Needs more saturation / edge highlights / light sources to match more the wow style. Keep it up and I'm sure it'll turn out awesome.