Stylised Sword Set
polycounter lvl 11
I've decided to actually do something with my Summer, so the first thing I'm gonna be doing is a set of swords. I'll be doing gradual updates with the progress of the swords. Next on the list, give the concepts some colour me thinks! Any and all feedback is welcome! =]
Replies
-I think you're rushing the concept phase. I would pull back, focus on one of these weapons and take more time to plan out your shapes as well as the functionality of the sword.
-Proportionally #2 and #3 are looking too short and stocky to me, almost coming off as daggers rather than swords.
-I would gather some reference and spend some time understanding how other artists have accoplished strong weapon design, right now your silhouettes are making me think you're shooting for a WoW or Wildstar type of shape design, so look at their weapons, see how they balance their shapes and the rhythms that come with that balance.
-Definitely make an effort to make them look functional as well, the thick band around #2 would get in the way of the blade edge, maybe try reducing it to a strip of metal joining the two halves of the sword, but not extending to the cutting edge, the hilt of #3 goes very high on the blade, again interfering with cutting, but it also doesn't extend to the sides removing the protection it's supposed to provide to the hand.
-Last thing, overall when you're designing anything, for especially weapons since they're often such an important part of a character, think about the story of the weapon.
-Who wields it? is he/she a barbarian, a knight, a space smuggler, a thief etc let his personality show through his weapon
- is it well cared for, or has he/she let it fall into disrepair?
-Where did it come from? A dwarven ruin, an ancient crypt, the treasure cache of a wealthy aristocrat, did he/she earn it upon graduation from their order? again show me in the weapon
-It can help to set your design in an existing universe and tie into their designs, especially to start off.
Sorry for the novel there, but hopefully that can help you breathe some more life into your weapons
-True, I didn't really spend too much time on the conception phase, but I thought these designs were good to go with, but I definitely didn't really think of functionality, but compared to the designs of the Wildstar swords, the length of the blade to hilt and handle is pretty similar to Carbine's designs.
-Admittedly the actual weapon design isn't very strong on #1 and #3 but I feel #2 is pretty nice (aside from maybe the actual length of the blades and the band around them, but I'll work on that).
-It sounds silly but I wasn't really too concerned with the functionality of the swords hilt, the way I thought of it was that if a Warrior was using any of these weapons he'd be swinging it left, right and center without much consideration for his knuckles haha
-As for story, I aimed it toward the Warrior class from Wildstar, though I haven't really thought about the story of the weapons, other than the blades of #2 and #3 are made of Loftite (the in-game mineral on Nexus) so I have kind of thought about a story for the swords, but I'll definitely take your advice into consideration.
I'm gonna make a few alterations to the swords now =] Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated! =D
Additionally, this may seem like I'm jumping the gun, but I just wanted your opinion on what do you think would benefit the models most? Texturing and using dDo/nDo or sculpting high poly and baking down?
as for the length issue I think I'm mostly getting it from #3 because a good third of the actual blade is being swallowed up by the mechanical chunky bits of the hilt.
Warrior class and loftite blade are awesome starting points, you may also want to tie it to a race as well to have more design elements to drawn on, maybe it's wielded by a mordesh and so there's green fluids pumping through parts of the hilt as well as tubes and wires etc, or a Granok blade that's mostly stone and thick metal etc.
Anyways, I just keep talking...I'll stop for now... keep on it and make something cool!
EDIT: just saw your other post, personally I haven't used NDO enough to fall in love with it, usually a high poly will get you a very good result especially for some of the cleaner shapes Wildstar has (that spug link I posted had some Zbrush examples), personally I would Sub-D most of the detail and shapes in Max (or any other program you're using) and then use Zbrush from more organic dings and scratches etc and NDO only for more precise intricate details, but it's your workflow try experimenting use whichever tools work best with your skills
Yeah I've had a look at Spug's stuff (inadvertently haha), it's really cool stuff to look at. Yeah that's not a bad idea, I might just take the screenshot and do some further design work on them.
I've just played around with the length of the blades on both #2 and #3, they do look a lot better now, plus #2's band has been made more proportionate and functional.
Yeah, I'll definitely think about race in the deeper details draw up =]
I haven't really messed around with sculpting programs a lot but I've been dying to play around with zBrush finally, so I'll probably do a high poly sculpt in there.
Thanks for your feedback it's a lot of help, cheers =]