TMNT - Bebop

ljsketch

Latest Progress:


I've been wanting to do something in a cartoon-animated style for a while now. And since I am a huge fan of the ninja turtles, I thought I would start with something from the new series. Bebop's concept art surfaced not to long ago so I decided to model him since he is a new character that will at some time appear on the show. The only problem is that there isn't much concept art out there for him so I'm going to have to use some imagination for some of the design. However, I did find some Anton Zeck screen shots to reference from when he appeared on the show. Not much else outside of that though.

Any who, my current progress is below. Thanks for checking it out and do feel free to offer some constructive crits if you have the time.


concept I found online


first progress shot

ljsketch

little more progress

Brian "Panda" Choi

Do you have access to Subsurface Scattering, etc? The skin could definitely take advantage of SS, Transluscency, etc.

ljsketch

Yep. I haven't created those yet . Right now I only have diffuse maps and a normal map on the skin. Thanks for your comment!

ljsketch

Added SSS and spec maps to the skin. The lighting is a bit bright and maybe the reds are a bit too strong. Going to start working on the weapon now and thinking of a basic pose for the final render.

jhoythottle

What are you rendering from? The lighting looks a little blown out. Also, is this the high res or did you retop it? I'd love to see some wireframes. I feel like you could do more with the lower lip area. It doesn't seem fleshy enough. I know the reference is boxy, but I'd like to see some more overlapping skin, especially around the 2 big teeth. Other than that, the model looks good, You matched the proportions pretty well and the likeness is pretty spot on.

pmiller001

I gotta say, the model itself matches very well with the provided concept art, bravo!

that being said, I think whatever lights you have are too close to the model, cause homeboy is lookin blown OUT.
PS I agree with JHOY, them wireframes would be nice. and the skin flaps

ljsketch

Jhoy, PMiller – thanks for the helpful feedback! Got some wire shots for ya. I included both level 1 and level 2 divisions for the body and the pants. Everything else is at level 1. I'm rendering in Maya MR with FG and using level 2 on the render. No AOs yet, just the maps.




I had a little extra time to work on him today. Made some of the changes based on the feedback...especially with the lighting . Moved the face around a bit. I'll have to go back and add more details in the texture. It looks like they handle most of the detail with the texture maps on the show so I'm going to try and do it that way also. I need to double check and see if they do an AO pass. I'm not terribly familiar with how they do things with TV Animation so it's a learning process for me at the moment. Again, thanks for stopping by and leaving comments.

pmiller001

THanks for fixing thelight amigo.
I think the texture on his arms is looking a little wobbly. The part connecting the hair to the back of the neck is looking mushy too.

BradMyers82

I think his head in the concept is way bigger. Your character looks like he is weighted a lot differently because of that. I would go back an look over all the proportions. One thing you could do is do a quick pose similar to the concept, and setup the lighting similar too, so that you get a good comparison on your character vs. the concept.

One tricky thing about this character will be to give it a cartoony like rendering while maintaining some of the realistic elements you have there. I think its a really cool concept tho and you are on the right track here. Keep it up man!

ljsketch

pMiller - not quite sure I see what you mean on the arms but I see what you mean on the neck. I put neck folds back there. I think I'm going to go back into ZBrush, redo the folds and export a displacement map so they don't look so mushy. Either that or paint the folds in the maps and flatten out the geo a bit.

Brad - I think you're right about the head. I didn't catch that until now. Good idea about the pose for comparison too.
Thanks for all of the feedback guys!

So today was mainly a fail day. Had all sorts of tech issues with posing and I should have given up a lot earlier...but I tried to chug through it. I say tried because once I went to export the geo from ZBrush, all sorts of verts disappeared and those that didn't were stuck to the center point of the grid. I'm pretty sure I know what the cause of the madness is but figured I'd post the pose anyway. And yeah, head definitely looks smaller.




Also, here's a another test render I did yesterday...I added an AO pass this time. I'm still trying to match the render style of the show.

ewHurtado

Hey great progress!
I am not a character artist myself, so I'm always in awe when I see posts like these.

Keep it up!

Deathstick

While the model does seem to match the concept you chose pretty well, I'd have to say personally that the concept doesn't really do bebop justice.

The whole point of Bebop is that he is a mean pig, and a pig having a long thin body like the thin-men from X-Com doesn't really make any sense character-wise to me. I think he looks better as a character with the usual hulking, thick upper body with the stocky, squat lower-body. In the concept it looks like he hasn't eaten for a month and is a marathon sprinter.

Anyways just my two cents about the concept itself so you can take from that what you will. Otherwise keep it up!

ljsketch

thanks for the comments guys.

Deathstick - yeah I hear ya man. He's definitely not the classic character we're use to. In fact, I didn't recognize the connection between Bebop and Anton Zeck on the show...until I saw the concept art. This may be the only character they've changed up this much. I'll have to look again. But overall, I've liked the design of the characters in the series. Veck had some cool techy gadgets..I'm assuming Bebop will use the same tech also, maybe that's why he is so skinny.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Is the jacket supposed to be metal?

ljsketch

Jade – I don't think so. But it is a bit stiff on the concept.


Did a quick test pose today to match up with the reference. Seems a few things are a little off so I'm going to go back and adjust the proportions a bit. Still getting that crazy trouble with the verts moving after posing with transpose master in ZBrush. I was hoping to avoid having to rig in maya for a quick pose but it seems I'm getting more trouble doing it in ZBrush than I expected. If anyone has any ideas on this I'd love to hear it.

BradMyers82

Not sure why its doing that with transpose master. Although I have had some weird issues with it in the past and I can't remember why.
One thing you can try is simply not using transpose master. Like simply collapse everything down to one mesh and doing some dirty posing just for the sake of figuring out stuff now Then at the end do a proper rig and pose for a beauty render.
I think if you are posing in zbrush just using masks and stuff on a single mesh you won't have any issues like your having now. Also you can make adjustments in zbrush on a layers that way you can always get him to deform back to tpose. So like pose on one layer, then make size adjustments on another. Then delete the pose layer when you are happy and adjust the hp and rebake. Something like that might work well. Personally, I also like to take screen shots of poses and stuff and do paintovers on the pose (in a seperate layer) in photoshop so I can clearly see what changes I need to make to get it just right. This especially helps when trying to create likeness sculpts but pretty much works well whenever you are trying to match a reference.

ljsketch

Brad–that was great advice man! I used every bit of what you said in my workflow.

Ultimately, I resized the head, tweaked the arms a bit and made the legs a tad bit longer. Did a rough pose...but still, after the adjustments, the 3D version looks a tad off from the concept. I am however more pleased with the new adjustments than before. At this point I am going to work on the textures a bit more and try to finish this guy up.








Thanks for all of the comments and suggestions...it really helps to have another eye on your work.

BradMyers82

Very nice progress man keep it up!

ljsketch

Just a static pose but going to call this guy done. I'll come back and do a pose with the weapon at some point. I was running into way too many issues posing in ZB like never before. I guess the ZB gods didn't want me to pose him. Ended up deciding that I'll rig him in Maya...which is going to take me awhile so yeah....Any how, here's the final image. Rendered him in Marmoset 2 because Maya was trippn and crashing during my renders to.

Again, thanks for all of the feedback guys! Hope ya dig him