A Boy and his Monsters {Character WIP}
greentooth
Update:
11/09
I started this pre-comiccon challenge and then put it down, now that the challenge is over Im picking it back up.
I saw this illustration by Don Kenn a while back and I thought it would be fun to do something based off this and then take it a bit further...
To be clear, this is just inspiration Im not trying to recreate this exactly.
I started with the monsters but I will be redoing a lot of my texture work to push things farther. There will be different variants with hue shifts and proportional differences, same mesh, textures and rig, just tweaks.
I also made a "carved version" and some gibs to use as a background element
And here's the boy, I took the weekend and refined the face/head and the clothing a bit more and did a proportion tweak or two.
I have a few more things to tidy up before lowpoly on the kid (also gotta due some furniture and silverware) but I figured it would be wise to post up my progress so far and get fresh eyes on everything before I get tunnel vision.
11/09
I started this pre-comiccon challenge and then put it down, now that the challenge is over Im picking it back up.
I saw this illustration by Don Kenn a while back and I thought it would be fun to do something based off this and then take it a bit further...
To be clear, this is just inspiration Im not trying to recreate this exactly.
I started with the monsters but I will be redoing a lot of my texture work to push things farther. There will be different variants with hue shifts and proportional differences, same mesh, textures and rig, just tweaks.
I also made a "carved version" and some gibs to use as a background element
And here's the boy, I took the weekend and refined the face/head and the clothing a bit more and did a proportion tweak or two.
I have a few more things to tidy up before lowpoly on the kid (also gotta due some furniture and silverware) but I figured it would be wise to post up my progress so far and get fresh eyes on everything before I get tunnel vision.
Replies
bakes (AO, Normals, Cavity) are done too, rollin with 2 2k maps. All the skin is on one map and everything else is on the other. Eyes and hair have their own maps.
And here's some texturing progress, been focusing on skin and eyes so far. Everything else is just base color flats/polypaint.
I'll be baking eyebrows and eyelashes tomorrow.
@komakc- Thanks that's a good point, when I swing back to the monster I'll add a bit more taper to the wrists and hands.
Here a hair update:
So far so good I think.
Here's another update. The clean pass on the skin and what not is done. I'll finalize the materials on the clothes and then do a filth/dirt pass on everything else.
Albedo, Gloss, Hair Alpha
as for the kid's hair, I can see you're trying to go for that short buzzcut kinda thing right? using all those alpha shells to achieve that. I really think getting a good texture on his head for the hair will help support the alpha shells (I'm not sure they alone can do it)
great work man, looking forward to seeing more!
Everything looks scrumptious but i have to agree, the hair looks odd and kinda bringing the kids quality down for me honestly. Hope it works out in the end
The Monster/creature is outstanding. Maybe you could add some variety to the scene with different shaped head. Just a thought.
As for the kid, by having a shorter buzz cut with patches of different length here and there may solve some problems. Try angling the hair in a slight direction to.
Other than that keep working away at it.
In regards to the monsters there will be color and proportional differences in the variants, when I get back to work on them.
Better? Worse? Go home you're drunk?
Added dirt/smudges to his face hands and legs. Worked more on the dirt and stains on the shirt and pants. I need to do a ton more but progress is progress.
There's two thing that I feel could be improved:
The hair is looking really unnatural, theres no natural flow in there like [IMG]http://chairliftchatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/DSCN1221.jpg[/IMG The nails are looking "dirty", are you overlaying your AO on your diffuse? Besides that, soild work
As for the hair, I going to lay out alpha cards this week to get something more believable and put aside the alpha shells for now.
Me being me I'll probably try and find another alpha shell based solution in a few months
Thanks for the feedback!
here & here
Good luck with everything, cant wait too see this finished
Popolo thanks for the ref and yes the plan is definitely to make a little scene for everything.
Thanks newto3d
Still plugging away at this Ive moved on to alpha planes. This is still super WIP (he's partially bald so i guess that is obvious) but I thought I would show where I am at with the new hair. When i have full coverage I will dial everything back and start adding thinner patches to show the scars. Right now there is no normals, spec, gloss, etc. just the raw alpha. Sooooooooooo much more to do.
Edit: forgot to post the more cohesive shot:
Almost done with the hair still have a bunch of small tweaks to make. and need to get it lookin ace from all sides. I will probably be swapping some UVs around to thin the hair out a bit more in certain places as well.
I also made some adjustments to the skin gloss.
Did some work on the hair silhouette and played with filters...
Dont worry just playin.
And for shits and giggles I turned off the eye stuff:
this plugin for max can help with it:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/normal-thief
I think the monsters are pretty much done at this point and the boy is almost done. Just a few more hair tweaks and fix his tie, then I can finally build the diorama scene for them. I'll be happy to finally wrap this up and move on.
Things I done did:
I dropped all my spec maps just gloss and letting the shader do its work.
Adjusted subsurface maps
Adjusted hair and hair settings
Lots itty bitty tweaks.
and now Images:
Right now yours looks pretty monotone; sort of a flat tone of grey, and it looks very very thin and soft, in a way I've never seen human hair look. Human hair is actually pretty coarse and varried. I'd suggest maybe giving him parted hair, which will be easier to get looking good with conventional techniques than the current hairstyle.
The hair you have now is loads better than the hair you used to have, but it still isn't there compared with the rest of the work on this piece.
Its a small update but I pushed the gloss a bit more on the eye lids area and lips. Also thinking about dropping the hair all together and just texturing a buzzcut for him.. Im going to give it one more hard try before I do that though. Probably start the new hair attempt from scratch tomorrow.
Also thank Gir, i got the normal trick to work
Keep it up.
Made a book an evil looking book of magic yesterday for the kid. This is just the sculpt so far with some poly paint in Toolbag2, no lowpoly yet.
I'll do the texturing tomorrow and give DDO another whirl as well as open the book up and get some interior pages going on in there.
Still need to do a lot of little things, its always a lot of little things hahaha
Pushed a lot of things but still need some tweaks and to add the tattoos (text on the back and decoratively), also closed the kids mouth. He's not rigged this was just to see what he looked like with a closed mouth.
Also that book is sick! no really, super gross
Added the tattoos and adjusted the tarnish on the gold tonight.I may have overworked the scratches but they've grown on me, so they might be here to stay.
Im also thinking about bringing the monsters the kid and the book together in one scene to start checking how they all look together. Probably try it this weekend.
Adjusted the gloss (again), albedo, and all the eye textures.
A few more stray stands of hair and a sanity check on the gloss work then I think he's done. Oh and the monogram gold stitching too.
I'll start blocking out the scene next week... Note to self look up 19th century operating theaters.