Handpainted Hammer - Looking for Critiques and Feedback

Forsyth

Hey all, I am looking for some feedback and critiques to a two handed hammer I have been working on. Any feedback on the model, texture, concept, presentation, etc. would be greatly appreciated!

felipealves

Your crystal material looks like a mosaic glass, I think you should work on your color blending in that part.


Some references to help you with that:

Jeff Parrott

Simplify the design! Zoom out and see what gets lost in the design. Things should be readable from far away. Most games this will be like 250 pixels big on screen or so a lot of times.

Also the smashy part (technical hammer term) is crystal?? WTF? Not gonna happen. That is gonna crack fast. Make it stone or metal or something.

I did a quick PO for you really fast to get out some ideas. Mainly the silhouette is close but you have a lot of smallish detail and hardly any medium shapes. Get those in there!

AzzaMat

Agreed with felipealves. Apart from the sparkles this video is quite good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPFxFGCMNO8
I also like drawing random lines with the polygonal lasso tool, filling a gradient and then using the hardlight filter. Do it a few times and then drop the opacity and it creates quite a nice fractal look.

ducckz

dont get rid of the crystal part i love it!

ExcessiveZero

Jeff Parrott wrote: »

Simplify the design! Zoom out and see what gets lost in the design. Things should be readable from far away. Most games this will be like 250 pixels big on screen or so a lot of times.

Also the smashy part (technical hammer term) is crystal?? WTF? Not gonna happen. That is gonna crack fast. Make it stone or metal or something.

I did a quick PO for you really fast to get out some ideas. Mainly the silhouette is close but you have a lot of smallish detail and hardly any medium shapes. Get those in there!

totally wrong about the crystal part dude diamond is stronger than steel, Obsidian was used by the mayans in club swords, was as sharp as surgical knives, crystal is entirely viable for all manner of things in the real world as well as the fantasy world

Odow

I like the stained glasses look too. Couldn't care less if it doesn't look like diamond or isn't possible IRL. It gave a nice unique look.

Adrian.Howden

Jeff Parrott wrote: »

Simplify the design! Zoom out and see what gets lost in the design. Things should be readable from far away. Most games this will be like 250 pixels big on screen or so a lot of times.

Also the smashy part (technical hammer term) is crystal?? WTF? Not gonna happen. That is gonna crack fast. Make it stone or metal or something.

I did a quick PO for you really fast to get out some ideas. Mainly the silhouette is close but you have a lot of smallish detail and hardly any medium shapes. Get those in there!

I agree with the part about simplifying the design. But as for the part about the crystal. Not so much.

But apart from that Forsyth, the design looks keep and definitely try and get that crystal to look more like crystal, rather than stained glass.

Dethling

I would also increase the radius of the shaft, it looks like the shaft would break every second. Also the shafts textures look very flat, add highlights and shadows

Forsyth

Thanks for all the great feedback everyone. This is an update to the hammer to get some more feedback on the changes I made.

felipealves and AzzaMat - The pictures and video really helped a lot and made me realize exactly how far off I really was.

Jeff - I took you suggestion to simplify, but I decided to keep the crystals. You are right, crystals would probably shatter, but magic crystals . . . would probably shatter as well, but look cool doing it!



I feel any if the textures need another pass or so, but I wanted to get some opinions before I kept going.

stevston89

Did a quick paintover. You need more contrast overall and really punch up the lighting and gradients. Add a gradient over the whole hammer darkening the bottom so the focus is drawn to the hammer head.

Also I can't really tell what material you are trying to imply on the yellow areas. If it is supposed to gold/ brass you need way more contrast and some sharper highlights.

Here is that paintover: