Sketchbook: Cuboids! 64
polycounter lvl 5
Well, been a undergraduate for more or less a few weeks. Feels kinda crazy! But i'm gonna try not to rest on my laurels. So I decided I might as well beat my anxiety and post this thread where I can put my post-college work and have it be critiqued while I try to work on a portfolio. The best way to learn from your mistakes is to make them.
This is the first thing I did out of school, little bit of fanart for Splatoon. Low-poly, or at least low-poly by my standards (as close to 1k as I can get!)
[SKETCHFAB]e5f8aa25315c417587db885fa4e5d8af[/SKETCHFAB]
Which was also easy to modify into a blue/male inkling.
This is the first thing I did out of school, little bit of fanart for Splatoon. Low-poly, or at least low-poly by my standards (as close to 1k as I can get!)
[SKETCHFAB]e5f8aa25315c417587db885fa4e5d8af[/SKETCHFAB]
Which was also easy to modify into a blue/male inkling.
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And picked one I liked, and added more to it!
Gonna add a little more detail to it and get it clean, do a model sheet, and then start on the 3D! Looking to go higher-poly than the inkling with this but not like, super-high.
And then I got into the modeling! I think it's going alright, but I feel like i'm at a point where i'm not sure how to move on. I mean, I LIKE where it is, I think he's looking good smoothed... I just feel sort of apprehensive about it.
Modeled and rigged a friend's character. Had some fun with toon shaders.
-Eyes: The iris's lighter side should always be the opposite of the light direction as its a concave surface (normally light will be from above, yours is from below). The cornear on the other hand is convex and thus catches the light on the opposite side of the iris, or close to opposite. There can also be secondary light sources but I didn't go that far in my paint over. The top and bottom should have some amount of fading to show the eye is round (reds and greys work fine here).
-eye 'mask'; should be thicker at the top then the bottom, as if its at the bottom it makes them look like they have bags under their eyes, while as above makes them look a bit fiercer and more ready for a match. Plus its more accurate to the original designs.
-nose: yours is upturned, but in reality very few people have such a nose (the splatoon characters technically dont have nostrils at all). When looking directly at the face only a small amount of the nostrils will normally be visible.
-Mouth: The angular arrow shape is fine for simple comic characters, but it's not very interesting to look at. The splatoon characters have a 'beak' though which means some compromises need to be made to accentuate that without showing the teeth.
-hair; This is just my opinion, but the extra cut on the side is an important part of their design. I also think their should be a soft gradient to add some interest since a completely flat color is sort of dull, this goes for the rest of the body as well.
-Shadows: The form of an object is described to the viewer via three things; silhouette, light, and shadow. Without a normal map, ie. when dealing with low spec art, shadows need to be painted directly into the texture. That means shadows from the hair, the nose, the lips, the chin, the arms, etc. are all things you have to paint in. Don't underestimate how important this is.
-Highlights: A little 'extra' normally done near the end of a textures creation, little sharp highlights that accentuate the areas you think will get a lot of light. Only use them on smooth surfaces, never ever dull ones (wool, gravel, etc.)
I wrote a much longer explanation for them but the forums ate it, and I'm too lazy to write it all again
Also, if you don't already use one, get yourself a 3D painting app (3DCoat is good for this sort of work), no one who is serious about this sort of work paints character textures in just 2D apps these days. And here's a link to an artist who does probably the best hand painted textures I know of which a lot can be learned from (though its not in English):
http://blog.sina.com.cn/pugui2001
Couch I made to try bringing stuff into Second Life. Also when I finally figured out how to get UVs for seperate objects onto one texture image. Feel so dumb now! Also trying out baking AO in Maya. For some reason no matter what I do I get seams though.
Game Boy Advance. Nothing really special about this one. Don't feel like it came out as well as the one below though.
Game Boy Color in a color I never actually had! More for messing around in 3D-Coat.