UE4 - Grave portfolio piece

Lev216

Hello everyone! I'm working on my first portfolio piece. It's a small sceen build in Unreal Engine 4. It shows recently buried human, who is trying to escape from his grave. It's set in 18th century. I'm working on it for about a week, so it's heavy work in progress. I decided to do something smaller, because I'm not able to finish something because of it's scale. I'm trying to push my skills in sculpting. Here are the screenshots:
ORIGINAL:

LATEST:

WIP Hand sculpt:

Lev216

I'm back with small update. I've been workking on pile of dirt on grave.
This is my concept/painover of final scene:

My current progress:

Tobbo

Your proportions seem off. The shovel seems much smaller than it should be compared to the lantern and the headstone.

I would also revisit your grass. The blades are the same height with about the same amount of separation between each blade of grass. All of the grass blades are almost pointing straight up.

Giving the grass some bend and more variation should help quite a bit.

nickcomeau

I agree, the shovel is way too small and the grass is pretty thick and even. I would suggest showing a bit more dirt, usually, if it is a freshly dug grave, there would be the remains of a pile of dirt next to the grave or something of the sort.

Also, not a huge fan of it just trailing off into space, I think it would be nice it you filled the whole image and maybe added a headstone or two or three around this one, really try to tell a story here, that's what is going to sell this IMO.

Lev216

I did a quick blockout according to your suggestions:

I'm not sure how to make that small piles of dirt next to the grave. I'll probably make it by mapping decal to mesh.

Lev216

I did a new blockout. I think it's better than the previous one. I isolated background and foreground from center of interest. It also has scarier lighting. I want some creepy tree shadows in the foreground and thick fog at the backgound. There's a fence in the backgound, but it's barely visible.


I did some tests with pile of dirt mesh. It turned out well, so I'll make usable version of it (I did it in Blender). I also finished low-poly hand mesh, but I have some issues when using my skin material. I want green tint to the skin, but then the material makes subsurface scattering pink.

supersnakelx

It looks better. You should work a little more on the hand. Looking at the wip image, I could not tell between the pinky and the thumb at first. Get some good references and my be easier to start with a low poly to get the proportions right

Lev216

I updated my hand model. It has better proportions.

nickcomeau

The hand itself has a bit better shape but I would revisit the shape of the fingers. Also, they look a bit broken but only the tips.

Lev216

I did my blockout in UE: