Keen Twins Courier

jowinstonsen

Hey guys. This is the first thread that I've ever started here. If I should've posted this some other place, or somehow botched the formatting, feel free to burn me in effigy!

Now that the preamble is out of the way, I just wanted to get some feedback on something I have been messing around with. For fun, I started working on a courier for Dota 2 that I always thought would be funny. My intent wasn't to necessarily complete the project, but to use the restrictions set by Valve regarding NPCs as practice. I haven't gotten very far, but I made this thing. Everything is still WIP, but I can't decide if it's worth finishing. Before I completely shelve this and move onto other ideas I wanted to see what you guys thought. Is it worth pursuing? If so, I hadn't really considered how it would fly? Thoughts?



Thanks for hearing me out, y'all! Apologies if I'm out of line here.

Edit: Latest!

ReMixx

The arms could have wings attached to them like in cartoons with feathers for the flying version.

vertical

I really like this idea of a courier. Just one suggestion though, I think those Keen should be children perhaps. Just a thought.

mihalceanu

Its a cool idea ; when I saw it I got the "yeah ofccourse" idea in my mind . I would recomend changing the colors on the donkey just a bit

For the flight version , you could add a mechanism where they use their hand to spin a wheel that in turn makes some wings flap:) or a bicicle with 2 seats that does the same

jowinstonsen

Vertical: Thanks, man. I kicked around the idea of them being young, but then killing the enemy courier seems weird, no? I don't know.

Milhalceanu: Yeah, the texture work is not final at all. When/if I figure out flight mechanics, I'll put more work into the texturing. UV's are bound to change when flight gets sorted. Still, I like the idea of them cycling gears that make wings flap. It only seemed natural that, assuming they're trying to trick people into thinkin' they're just the donkey courier, they would use wings of some kind when flying. Thanks for the suggestions, dude.

vertical

Now that you mention it, it does sound evil, haha.

[NB] Mohsen

Nice idea. For the flying version, maybe you could add a third person in the middle and he has da vinci flying machine kind of wings on his arms?

Baddcog

Great idea.
2 options:
1-instead of having a child (bad imo) or having a minature sniper looking guy. How about a goblin or troll. Something that looks more like techies.
2- Not having the front guys head show at all leaving it to imagination. You could have some eye holes cut into the cloth on front of horse chest.

#1 would be best because couriers are cute, and sniper is more 'grown' hero type.
#2 would be best because you might easily exceed the poly limit with flying version. Not putting polys into face will alleviate that.
Also, with the cover and horse head the front guys face will hardly ever be seen in game, so it's just a high concentration of wasted polys.

some eye holes cute into the fabric could be very cute, like a ghost made of a sheet.

Some flapping divinci like wings could be cool. A bicycle might be overkill (and a lot of polys), but thy will need some kind of frame/seating. The flying version is going to be much more poly intensive.

Would also be good to have packs, gear on top of the horse, other wise it'll be pretty boring from game view.

Pipotchi

from what i know there are two different types of keen, there's Keen (like sniper and clockwerk) and then there is Small Keen (like timbersaw and alchemist). looks like if you want to use a keen but have it smaller than sniper then you might want to go for a small keen. i think that courier that is a keen but in a greevil costume is also small keen, so its the perfect size for a courier

jowinstonsen

Alright, I took some of the advice given and got him well under the maximum poly count while in flying form. What do you guys think? I haven't bothered texturing at all. It's just lamberts right now. They're not identical anymore. While this'll impact overall texture quality, it helps sell the courier and it won't be such a problem without either courier's face being visible. Added a small pack roll and strap. Given their shape, it's hard to add more than that. If anyone has any ideas about additional bits, I have triangles to spare. Thanks for all the help, guys!

[NB] Mohsen

Well it kinda depends on what the flapping things are? If we could know maybe we could be a little more helpful. Because right now I have no clue what the things on their arms are. I only know they are used to fly the courier

ReMixx

It looks like you could save some triangles by deleting the polies between the top and bottoms of the wings and just have two back to back planes.

jowinstonsen

UPDATE!

Hey guys, thanks for all of the feedback. I've still been messing around with this thing outside of work and I could use some feedback. This stuff is still all WIP, obviously. Textures are still being painted, eyes aren't in yet, animation is first pass, blah blah. Still, any feedback?

bounchfx

holy crap I love this. So creative, the animation is fun and has a great sense of weight. Really looking forward to seeing how it progresses!

jowinstonsen

Thanks, man!

Edit: Or lady! I habitually say "man." Gotta stop that.

MrNobody109

I think that the hands and feets need a little bit to do with different intervals. Because they move absolutely identical. But...this is so fckng good job!

jowinstonsen

Yeah, that's been a concern of mine. I originally had them on opposite footing, but it made the costume movements weird. I'll revisit it. Thanks!

quockhanhlk

I AM FREAKING IN LOVE WITH THIS COURIER, FINISH IT ASAP PLEASEEE !!

TrevorJ

ahh! great idea, made me lol. I think there needs to be just a small amount of stagger in the two guys footsteps, not alternating as you said you tried that, just a bit of delay in one of them. The donkey head has nice weight in the ears and head.

Potm

lol This courier makes me giggle, it's so so cute, well, its TOO CUTE XDDD! totally looking forward it to be in workshop, i will totally vote for this cute thing~

jowinstonsen

Thanks so much, everyone! I was starting to feel a bit bored and exhausted from this project, but I'm pretty pumped to finish it now! I'll definitely revisit their run cycles so that they don't look mirrored. To maintain cleanliness of the donkey costume's movement, I'll probably keep them running in tandem, but I'll push their personalities farther. That should help in separating them. Front guy is bigger, should have a more controlled jog. Dude in back is shorter, but has to cover the same amount of ground. He should look like he's REALLY trying to keep up.

Shock

rly loving it mate this head.. awesome stuff!

for any weird reason it totaly reminds of something..

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqiW6IzvDSY[/ame]

jowinstonsen

@Shock

LOL!

jowinstonsen

Alright, here's after a bit of tweaking. I separated their run cycles by one more frame and relaxed the front guy's run to more of a jog. Does that help?

I went ahead and uploaded a more Dota-like angle, too. I feel like things look a little messy from up front, but are more readable from Dota's perspective. I'm probably going to start and tidy other things before animating any further, but hit me with your concerns!

Toasty

Would be great to see a little more chest swing/rotation, side to side for independent each person.

jowinstonsen

@Toasty

Have you ever looked at something for so long that you start to become oblivious to things that should be obvious? Now, looking at that top angle gif, the lack of chest swing is glaring! I figured I'd put this down for the night, but reading your comment made me open maya right back up and fix it. Thanks!

AndrewHelenek

I'd also make sure to always keep an eye on it from how large it appears in game, I always run an extra viewport with an isometric view to make sure the animation reads when it takes up five pixels on the screen. I can already tell with the current animation you have shown for the running a lot of that detail, while nice, will get lost, heavy exaggeration is your friend here.



From what I learned, vertical animation needs to be heavily exagerated to compensate for the top down angle, and horizontal really helps push the animation. Just from shrinking down the size of the image you can see how stiff the courier appears. Even though when viewed from the 3/4 angle it reads great and has an awesome sense of weight.

Its coming along great so far, really love this idea! Going to become one of my favorites when it's finished.

jowinstonsen

Thanks, Andrew! I went back and gave more side to side movement so that things are more readable from a top down angle. I'll post an update on that sometime soon! Here's this guy for now, though.