Character WIP - Temperance Dawn
polycounter lvl 12
Started a new character. To spare the details, I'm aiming for a beautiful sci-fi character of Elegance, Royalty, and Authority. I use my result/model from my anatomy practice. Hair is placeholder, will do nice and proper hair planes. No real concept art used, I just look at loads of Pinterest for inspiration.
Still blocking out her costumes and forms.
Here come walls of text.
She's my original character; I been trying to improve my designing skills for awhile now. The idea is to create a futuristic space princess. O o' It's part of culture norms that royal bloods lead armies into battle. Or, more like, armada of spaceships. So, apart from being a Princess, she's also a fleet Admiral. So, her costumes will be consisted of ceremonial armors and uniforms with royalty decorations on top. After countless of battles, victories and defeats alike, she's undergone cyborg implantation in order to keep going. So I will replace some of her limbs as well as installing machines/devices plugs onto her flesh. Maybe like some sort of brain interface and tubes/cables and what not.
And yes, Temperance is her name. The others, you know, Wrath and Avarice and Acedia are royalties from other empires at war.
TLDR: Appreciate all feedback you can give me !!
Still blocking out her costumes and forms.
Here come walls of text.
She's my original character; I been trying to improve my designing skills for awhile now. The idea is to create a futuristic space princess. O o' It's part of culture norms that royal bloods lead armies into battle. Or, more like, armada of spaceships. So, apart from being a Princess, she's also a fleet Admiral. So, her costumes will be consisted of ceremonial armors and uniforms with royalty decorations on top. After countless of battles, victories and defeats alike, she's undergone cyborg implantation in order to keep going. So I will replace some of her limbs as well as installing machines/devices plugs onto her flesh. Maybe like some sort of brain interface and tubes/cables and what not.
And yes, Temperance is her name. The others, you know, Wrath and Avarice and Acedia are royalties from other empires at war.
TLDR: Appreciate all feedback you can give me !!
Replies
Instead, I'm just popping in to say that I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes! Good luck (also, subbed)!
Working on replacing her arms with machines now. Most likely the sleek-looking metal-shiny ones. Also, robotic high heels coming soon !
My 2 cents would be to really harden those edges around the neck area of the clothing. The curve moving up into the neck really captures the elegance but the soft edges make it lack authority. A really sharpening and defining those edges would bring that out. I'm really liking the lines in the clothing so far.
Also, some people actually don't need a concept but some of them have been doing this for years. You can do that if you like. Keep going.
Going to turn her left hand robotic next, then her feet.
Keep up the good work!
Robotic hands and all that. Not final.
As for her hair, I'm thinking of woman samurai kinda hairstyle. Long and ancient looking. That, or quite short and militaristic looking instead. Will sculpt them for ideas, then do hair planes later.
Gotta say, I quite missed getting a lot of comments/helps like last year. :P Hopefully I have improved a bit over time ??
Anyway, more arts, less chitchat.
I worked on her hairstyles. Four hairstyles to be precise. (more actually, but some are crappy.) Can't decide on her look yet. What do you guys think !???
I like the samurai style as well.
If you're going for a more reglar look none of these really convey that to me right now. Either they're Warrior (Samurai), Grandma (Princess), boring (Captain) or Rebel (Futuristic).
The Princess one is closeish to what I'd imagine a ruler to have - but only on the front. The back kinda says "Grandma's hair" to me. A longer, curly and flowing style with some knots and a single accessoire would probably be best. I'd incorporate parts of the Futuristic style into it, to make it look more fitting.
I love the sleeve on the right, but the left side looks super derp to me right now by comparison. Then again you didn't work on that yet. Also I really dislike these 1-sided-cloak-things you love so much, but that's really my personal taste. It really fits here with the sleeve. BUT IT BUGS ME STILL
Robo-Hand will need work down the line to look more robo.
I've no idea where you're going with the boots yet, so I'll hold off on those. But my brain does nag me a little that you might be trying too push asymetric looks too obviously instead of it being sublte. Too much 'in the face' I guess.
Well, that's all I got right now. I'll drop by now and then to randomly shout suggestions at you :P
@Xaragoth, you raised a very good point actually, and I thought over that a lot as well. I like to think of the Samurai hairstyle as more of a commanding presence in the bridge. Like a war general on the frontline, I suppose. I also got the idea from Knights of Sidonia where the captain dons the samurai attires as ceremonial outfit sometimes. There's something cool about the fantasy sci-fi ^^
I REALLY love the 1-sided cape though :P Influenced by Lightning from FF13 and Assassin's Creed, among others.
With that said, any suggestion about the more subtle asymmetrical look ? I don't want this to turn into 'left hand, right arm, left shoulder, right-sided torso, left thigh, right knee, left calf, right foot, etc etc' <_<"
Anyway, I am working on improving the Samurai hairstyle right now. We will see !!
As for the asymmetrical look ... I'd keep bigger pieces very similar, but work with smaller difference to offset them. The bigger the pieces, the more they'll offset from each other and turn into noise.
Examples from your sheet:
Top row, picture 3. Offset by the blade/cloak and helmet, while being very similar in armor design.
Bottom row, picture 2. Leg pieces. One is a bit shorter, but offsets it nicely. Same goes for the chest piece and the shoulder. Chest is a bit too much on that one though.
Bottom row, picture 5: good example here is the single shoulder piece and the difference in the cloth below it.
One of the better examples I can think of for subtle asym. is Katarina from League. She wears a very specific armor, but if accented in asym. design by her tattoo, the knives, the belt. It's not "in your face" but instead fits very well in the overall picture of her.
I've been spending some time myself looking for good examples, since I want to start on my Royal Assassin project soonish and wanted to have subtle differences without it turning into noise.
For example this armor from TERA is one I quite liked:
http://tera-online.cc/uploads/gallery/main/63/human_f_l19.jpg
It has a tiny bit of an issue in the chest piece for me personally, but it's still pretty good. The overall armor is similar, but there is small differences in the arrangement and details.
Otherwise very flowing transitions could help as well. Also what would probably be a good idea is to force her curves a slight bit more on the hips. Make her look less blocky and slightly more feminin, without overdoing it.
Edit: never post before coffee, I think I got all the typos.
- tied knot
- braid
- short
- sidecut
I have to agree with the "Anime main character look" (lol Xaragoth), but maybe thats what your going for
in any case, looking good man! I would like a request though, can you post a render without colors?
and a more standard zbrush material that isnt so plastic and shiny. the zmats are kind of distracting for me and its hard to give crits on the actual sculpting.
Its good to pre-vis stuff, dont get me wrong, but its also good to take one thing at a time and look at the forms first.
Man, I can't stop laughing at the 'anime main char'. Bull's eyes, LOL!!! That's how I came up with the story/character in the first place. I will see what I can do though. I don't really like the Janeway's look, TBH <_<"
@Xaragoth I see what you mean about the subtle asymmetrical look now. Both her arms are mostly the same now except her hands and the shoulders thing. Same with her legs, maybe except a bit of her thighs.
I'd rework some pieces here. To show off her leg, it'd be better to change the cut of the robe and the leg protection. Just slightly enough to show that it's a robotic leg, without trying to shove it into exposition.
I'd also scale down the right shoulders hanging cloth and instead focus on making it more unique looking instead of big - currently it feels a bit noisy in the silhouette to me. Lots of gold embroidery to make it unique. maybe some kind of brooch.
Uhm... otherwise I feel her breasts/ribcage area looks extremly wide with all the layers of cloth and leather and what not there. Might need a tiny bit of work.
Hair is betterish. But as someone who occasionally has long hair, I can tell you having hair hanging like that in your face is the devil and annoying as hell :P
edit: pre-coffee-typo fixing.
ZippZopp, I'm sorry I still can't see the wrongness of her hands
Thanks guys. Also working on her chest/waist/hips now.
This seems like something that demands high res close up shots with an offline renderer to look right, with the corresponding detail required, else the thin details do not really show and add mostly noise and aliasing, also why cut through the lips, that would not make much sense : P
Also you do nice highpolies and the bakes look good too, try laying more focus on texturing and lighting in the future, those things need the most attention from you
Agree with Shrike on the lip-split.
Otherwise for texturing I would suggest to try and grab some stocks and do some polypaint with spotlight. That should give it a bit of a kick
Assani, I know it's too late, but have you thought about painting iterations out before committing to a particular direction instead of sculpting it all out?
ROFL ! LOL wut !?? Anyway, yeah, I lost sight a bit and couldn't really sculpt the hair out the way I wanted to.
I will see what I can do about the texture though
@Sukotto Thanks man! I will be damn sure to check and adjust her hands. They def. look kind of off right now.
@JadeEyePanda I do a quick paint in Photoshop about something I am about to do, yes. But, no, I don't really design things out in Photoshop. Most of the times I can't tell if the design is good or not until I see it in 3D. In Photoshop, I only paint out blocks of what goes where, and then I do it in ZB to see if it works out or not
And here's update. That's new Bionic Hand. Will take today's feedback into the next update. Still debating the lips split thing...
Here's the face split panel things that I try to make. I will see what I can do about it.
The upper one is neat *saves because gud* and looks like someone who might've had to get pieces of her face replaced after an incident to me.
Made changes to her dress/coat. Opted for her Command Sash instead for the one-sided cape thing. The sash looks horrible, though, so I will work more on that. Still planning about her thighs area. Completely blocked out her heels now, so I will refine em next.
Looking good though, Pyr, though the hair is a bit crazy. Are those feathers or her hair? Additionally, her hair is defying gravity to an uncomfortable extent (not just like anime, like, entirely implausible). Kinda looks like you've changed the ponytail a bit though, since the previous update. Can we get a shot from all the angles again, if you have?
It's all nice and clean apart from that, though, love the shoulder pads. Keep goin', hope you can get a way to get those high resolution details you need.
I made some changes to her ponytails, aye. Smaller, and a bit diff shape. and turned them into planes. Those things around her hairs are decorative stuff.
Would you be alright with me doing a quick paintover of this, or no? It's just a little hard to describe alternatives, easier to just sketch 'em out.
Added: Went up to 2mills for a short period of time, then crashed and burnt <_<"
For now, my solution is to keep the trimmings on a separated subtool.
Okay, hair first. The back needs gravity and stray strands from shorter hair at the nape of her neck. Right now it just kinda terminates... makes her head look like it's got a misshapen skull.
If you don't have long hair yourself, be sure to look up how it's pulled into a ponytail. The way the segments are flowing looks a bit awkward to me right now, too.
I also feel there's a bit too much volume in the bangs, this thickness that feels a little lost in the rest of the style. They're also starting at a kinda weird place. It's hard to even try and explain what I mean, but here's something I picked up on while trying to illustrate it that'll help it look less awkward without much effort.
Have a look at shoe construction, too, slightly odd shape and no features. I'm assuming WIP so I didn't mention it or fix it. The heel is really odd though, just a strange uncomfortable shape you don't see. I honestly think these look like they're not meant to have heels at all.
And also, have a look at the shape a foot goes in when wearing a heel, I feel yours are a little flat, not as arched as they could be.
I am assuming this is all dress outfit, for inbetween battles. Even so, I'd try to make the 5 belts more practical. Can you imagine her getting up in the morning, like, "Ah, I'm late for the meeting with [important person who needs to know military business here]! Gotta get dressed and ready to go!" then... have to put this on. Literally, standing there and fastening one belt after the other. You'd think she'd get bored after just one? Maybe make it a single wrapping or faux belts or something if you want this look.
Hope my rambling on can help you push this forward into something awesome! I think recently, at a technical level, your works have become exponentially better. You just need to hone your eye for form and aesthetics and you'll be well on your way.
I will see what I can do with the rest as well
Lots of small adjustments around. Considering she wears like an armor on top, I don't think belts are needed anymore.