going for WoW Style plz help

Bloodhound8784

I am working on a character for a personal project, and I am having difficulty seeing where my problem is. I am going for a wow style and something about it just seems off to me. Any input or suggestions are appreciated. It is currently still in progress (obviously) but I feel like I am hitting a wall and can't seem to find the right track.

Bloodhound8784

Any feedback would be a great help. I feel like I am hitting a wall

FemCharles

Can we get a shot of the whole character? Also what reference are you using?

praetus

So, I'll try and cover a few things but we'll see how it goes. First of all your facial anatomy is way off. The landmarks of the face are all pinched too close together. Typically, the eyes should have about an eye width separating them but yours have about half of that. Also the hair texture feels a bit "string-y". The armor has a number of areas that lack value definition. It's like you're trying to add details but they come across as muddy because there isn't a clear value to back it up. If you haven't watched it, I would recommend watching Tyson Murphy's tutorial on 3DMotive.com. He's the lead character artist on WoW and the video or sub is worth every penny.

Luke003

Hi there Bloodhound. I like the direction you're headed. I apologize for the quality, but I made this quick paintover to show some areas where I think the face can be improved. Right now it looks really mirrored because of the eye angle. I would double check the anatomical proportions of the facial features too.



Other than that, I think you can maybe push the shadowed detail on the textures a bit more to make them pop.

Edit:

praetus wrote: »

value definition

That was the word I was looking for.

Tobbo

With hand painted styles I would avoid using the color black for AO and shadows. Darker colors are okay but you don't want the colors to get close or reach pure black.

I would also second what Praetus has suggested. Check out the Tyson Murphy tutorial on 3d Motive it's really good and helpful.

praetus

Yeah look at actual paintings and illustrations for how people handle value as well as color. With what Tobbo said, you'll very rarely find pure blacks and whites in nature so you need to look at materials and see how they react under different light settings.

For example, whenever I use an AO map on a characters skin, I never set it to multiply and forget it. I usually will run a colorize hue and saturation to make sure it complements the skin it is laying on.

Bloodhound8784

Thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it. I will definitely check out the link and try revamping some stuff. I will also get some pictures of the full model. As for reference I was kind of using sylvanas as a base for the overall silhouette.

Brian "Panda" Choi

See if my old thread helps any. I tried to keep minute documentation as I went along.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113859

hadidjah

Seconding Tyson Murphy's 3DMotive tutorial, it's fantastic.

Some other sources you might want to check out:
Both volumes of Vertex have texturing tutorials by two WoW artists, one fully hand-painted (Volume 1)and one from Zbrush bases (volume 2)
Tamara/Firstkeeper's deviantArt portfolio, which has a lot of her WoW armor and weapons