Daew's Rat - Blizzard Student Art Contest

Daew

Heya Polycount,
I've recently decided to make an entry for the blizzard student art contest, but before i start I'm going to drop some disclaimers lol

I am not very familiar with WOW apart from reading some lore and drooling over the art.
I don't live in the United States or Canada so I'll just be doing my own thing for fun and of course learning purposes.
And I'm still very new to modeling

With that said any feedback is most welcomed

Requirements:
Character or creature with some clothing/armour.
6000 polys
1024x1024 texture
contest can be found here:
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/university-relations/contest.html

My character is a an escaped lab rat. Due to experimentation he has grown to an abnormal size and gained increased physical attributes. He has a mutated ear that he cut off from his body and uses as a light source. He catches rats for money but unbeknownst to his employers he tames his brethren and keeps them on his person.


UPDATE





And long post go!






Wireframe:



And Questions!

Trying to understand deformation and triangles.

- Triangles/vertices and edges are added to keep the form as parts move?
In my case a middle loop is used to retain the elbow as the limb bends, the triangle with the two edges stops inward collapsing?
I'm guessing this is for low poly situations where I cant add anymore quads.
I found the triangle direction varies in different models even if the limbs bend the same way.



Sorry for the long post! i'll try reduce em in the future

Torch

Its a cool model but, I don't really get the design. I mean he has armored Pauldrons on his shoulders as if ready for battle, but also seems to be wearing a gentleman's top hat, which I imagine would make him look more like an NPC in a city. However WoW has some pretty crazily designed characters so it might work I think the hands and mainly the feet could be exaggerated a bit more to fit in with the stylisation. Nice so far!

Dethling

Make the proportians bigger, especially the legs.
In WoW everything is "big".
I have to admit at the moment this don't scream "WoW" to me.

Daew

Yeah I admit I've been playing the design real safe when should be aiming for bolder statements. With the top hat I tried to aim for a kinda alleyway rat but i didn't really pull it off :P
Thanks for the feedback

hopefully this is bit better, the ear needs more tlc

Torch

If I'm being honest I like both your options, you could either go with a 'street rat shady merchant' type character or something more battle hardened like what you have going with the armor.

If it was me, I'd personally go with the former, have light or no armor and have him in a top hat and long jacket, which is kinda ripped or worn.

The only reason I'm saying go for the merchant design over warrior is because I can imagine him as a vendor at somewhere like the darkmoon faire selling poisons or shady stuff like lockboxes that can either contain great items or junk anyway I'm rambling, just my 2 cents!

Add3r

Really nice work so far actually, aside from you "playing it safe" as you say, I think with some really nice texture work you could have a solid contender if you were in the US (Personally think those rules suck). I really like the idea, and think that something like this could easily fit into the WoW world. He could be some sort of black market trader, spy, or something related to being sneaky.

Also, in your lore you say he cut off his ear, but in your current model he still has his ear. Would be cool if you added some asymmetry with that lore aspect (love it btw), and really pushed that story aspect.

Daew

@Torch Thanks for the suggestion, looked at the darkmoon faire and I think i will go for that vide .

@Add3r ah heh his "ear" is on his back . Its going to be magical and stuff.

Again thanks for the feedback

Slowly working on this and learning lots
Some questionable uving and mirroring choices and realizing how important topology is, not just for deformation but pretty much for everything lol.

And i think the deadline for the contest is over, not too sure but the primary focus for this was to create a model to completion so i'll keep working on this little guy.

Torch

Very cool man, he really looks the part! Personally would push for more of a bluey-green to complement the lilac, the gold looks great



EDIT: Forgot to mention, I gave Connor a similar point on his Blood scarab project - you can try to mix up the colors a bit more on the skin/fur so its not just a block beige or yellow. If you look at Firstkeeper's Thunder King work on WoW - http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=128955&highlight=thunder+king

...the orc for example isn't just green, but a mix of other colors like Blue on the Feet and yellow in the muscle cavities.

ducckz

its a troll not an orc :P but i agree with torch , keep up the good work il be following this

Daew

Oh boy, progress is slow on this guy.
Read Firstkeepers Tutorial in the vertexhd pdf and found out I was viewing my model all wrong and in retrospect...makes a lot of sense since i'm painting a diffuse only. So now I'm viewing my model with flat lighting. Also incorporating mudbox into my workflow makes things a whole lot easier.

Still needs more colour variation i know but i think il do that later down the road so it's easier to control

Vertex hd vol1 pdf found here :http://www.artbypapercut.com/
did not know there was a vol2 until now :O. so excite






@Torch thanks for your continued feedback and that paintover, it's super awesome. I cant seem to get my folds right but i think thats cause of my topology which I need to be more careful with in future models ^^.

@ducckz thanks for following sorry for the slow progress lol.

D4V1DC

Your at 6000 triangles with that? share the new wire frame so we can help with that i mean it is probably too late now since your texturing but i'd still like to know where the triangles are at with this guy.

Nice work so far.

Torch

Coming along nicely man, good stuff!