Hand-painted low-poly character art! [+ Sketchbook stuff]
polycounter lvl 9
Hey guys, first time actually posting my stuff here!
I'm a student, and my current focus is low poly character stuff. For the past couple of months I've been doing small character commissions online to practice my skills and get better at hand painting (I use 3d Coat). I'm pretty happy with how the last character turned out so I thought it was about time I posted a couple of the best ones. From most recent to oldest!
I'm starting to work on some hand painted low poly props and environment assets in prep for my final student project, so I'll probably post some of those while I'm working on them! Turn this into a sketchbook thread.
C&C is very appreciated!
(edit: removed animated gifs since they refused to load, replaced them with some presentation pics)
I'm a student, and my current focus is low poly character stuff. For the past couple of months I've been doing small character commissions online to practice my skills and get better at hand painting (I use 3d Coat). I'm pretty happy with how the last character turned out so I thought it was about time I posted a couple of the best ones. From most recent to oldest!
I'm starting to work on some hand painted low poly props and environment assets in prep for my final student project, so I'll probably post some of those while I'm working on them! Turn this into a sketchbook thread.
C&C is very appreciated!
(edit: removed animated gifs since they refused to load, replaced them with some presentation pics)
Replies
One the first one you posted the eyes seem to be pretty close together, that's giving him a weird look. Your paintings are great. The presentations are awesosme, too. How about showing us some wireframes?
These are quite wonderful! I'd also love to see some wireframes.
I'll post up some wireframe shots when I get on my desktop! I've used the same base body mesh I whipped up for all of these, so I'll probably only post one or two wireframes. Thanks again!
besides that good work
Here's some generic props I've been working on! I haven't really done many props before, environment stuff has never been my forte, but I really want to work on expanding my skill set to beef up my portfolio. I'm also planning to do a diorama piece with animation for my final student project, which I'll be starting to work on soon, gotta get practice in for that.
And some wires
Pretty happy with the barrel but any suggestions are really appreciated, especially for the wip crate, this is my first time doing proper wood textures. The tiles are a work in progress too, my first time doing a real tiling texture!
Here's some wires from my most recent character commission
And these are the wires from my male base model. I also have a female version that's a little bit different. Pretty simple, I aim to do most of the details through texturing as that saves me time making armour and edits to the base, as I can match the low poly geometry and don't usually have to spend forever making detailed clothes and props.
And finally I've mostly finished the crate. Any feedback on my wood texturing is very appreciated! Also chucked a bottle that I started months ago on there, starting to finish texturing that.
Ps does anybody know a good image hosting site that can host large gifs? I'm not sure if its just on my side but most of the images in the first post seem to be having trouble loading and I'd like to find a good solid free image hoster.
Unfortunately as soon as I put this up on my in-progess website I realised that he has the exact same pose as the very first character I've posted, so I guess I'll be editing one of these character sheets sometime soon!
I can post some wires, but he's modeled from the same base I've used for all of these characters, just with some revisions to create some more facial definition, so I'm not sure how interesting that'll be.
The main thing I would work on at this stage is depending less on textured overlays for the fabrics and doing more actual painting on them. They could use a lot more folds, and the folds could stand to be a lot bigger and deeper as well. You started to do some of that on the cloak for your latest character, so that's good, but the rest of his outfit could use a lot more of it, still.
Also think about realistic construction of clothes, such as seams and closures. Your boots especially seem to miss a lot of details. Boots and shoes are always made of a lot of sections, so there are a lot of seams. You also need some way of getting your feet in and out of them, so there would be laces or zippers or straps with buckles. Granted, there are some types of boots that are simply pulled up over the leg, but those invariably have to be loose around the ankle, or you wouldn't be able to manoeuvre your foot in them.
Even though you are making stylized fantasy characters here, you'll want to look up some real reference to get a better idea both of the folds and clothing construction.
I hope that helps, good luck on your hand-painting journey!
Clothing has always been really hard for me to render, especially pushing those folds and not being afraid to add a lot of contrast with them.
The first two characters were commissions and based off other peoples' characters, so I was following references with the boots, but I have a LOT of trouble with shoes anyway, it's definitely something that I'm going to pay more attention to in the future, properly looking for references etc.
It's funny that I'm terrible at designing and drawing clothes yet one of my favourite parts of character design is costume design.... as long as I'm not actually doing it. :P
I'll definitely try to get more confident with my cloth rendering, thanks!
If you are interested in clothing design, you need to build a library in your head of design elements and pattern shapes. The way to build this library is to study lots and lots of actual clothing and gear!
The best way to do that is to start creating a reference library consisting of fashion photos, historical costumes, movie and theater costumes, armor, military gear, riot cops, protective gear, athletic armor/gear, bags, purses, pouches etc.
Try to avoid looking at too much concept art and other made-up costumes, because oftentimes those don't really work as clothing and gear in real life. Not to mention, good concept art is generally inspired by real life anyways! So you might as well go to the source.
If you love stylized fantasy art, you may be tempted to think that real-life designs are mundane, but if you start looking in earnest you'll find a crazy wealth of design variation, especially in unexpected places. Try looking up motocross armor for instance. Personally, I never knew these guys were wearing such cool shit UNDER their clothes, haha!