WIP Stylized armor clad girl.

mrlemonyfresh

Hey everyone, i'd really like some critique on this game character I'm working on in modo indie.

Here's my concept:



And here she is in modo:





Most noteworthy is the fact i went with more conventional shapes for her face... it was pretty easy to make the square eyes happen in theory but not so much in execution if i ever want to rig her...

ATM she is around 4 million tris.

I'm really itching to start baking her and texturing her, but i'm not sure where I should put the most polish in terms of fishing this sculpt.

Your feedback could really give me the boost i need to finish her. This is the closest I've ever come to finishing a high poly sculpted character.

katana

Eyes are too big (even in the concept), Brows are to thick. The sword handle needs sculpting and i don't get the brick texture for the shield, beyond all that, she's a lovely toon!

Shadownami92

I wouldn't really say the eyes are too big as much as that the eyes are too high, if you moved them down a little it would help the face look a bit more proportional, head proportions can go a long way to making a character look good, always ensure room for a forehead.

For the eyebrows I think you could actually do with giving them some thickness/depth to make them pop.

For a toon style character like this I'd chunk up some parts like the belts/fabric wrapped on the sword, something that thin would be doing nothing for holding a blade in place. Maybe it dig into the blade a little with some notches to show that it's really tied on their tightly.

The cuffs of the gloves could all be chunkier to make the silhouette more interesting.

One thing I may worry about is that the chain mail is super detailed compared to the larger parts of the model. However a lot of that would depend on how things look in the bake.

I think the skirt area of the tunic could also use a little bit of love, I think some more thoughtful and clean creases/folds could be more fitting for the toon look than the rougher and partially more blobby details that it currently shows.

Definately a cool concept though and the rest looks really good. Love the brick wall shield idea, if you could have some of that detail show through on the back of the shield that could help make it more interesting as well.

Steve Schulze

Looks a bit like one of Valuemeal's Fellows.

The head in the concept has kind of a blocky appearance which is quite distinct and appealing. It'd be good if you could push he shape on the eyes, cheeks andjawline back towards that more square typed shape.

Generally speaking, I'd suggest pushing closer to the concept across the board - it's a pretty strong design and you're not quite capturing what makes it good in the 3d version yet.

mrlemonyfresh

This is the best advice I've received on the character so far! I especially like your reply Shadownami, so much thought! I think I want to push the character more towards the original concept like Steve suggested.

I'm only worried about how an animator might make the eyes work within game though...

Heres my own idea:


I add a square shape deformer to make the eyeballs square, so i can still move them as spheres beneath the deformer's shape, make morphmaps that for every direction and then tell a programmer to create something that simulates a direction constraint that would usually be applied to normal spherical objects.

Shadownami92

Couldn't this essentially be simulated by square irises a round eyeball with a square shaped eye socket?

Otherwise I think that animated UV's might be a bit less resource intensive that multiple blend shapes per eye movement.

mrlemonyfresh

Shadownami92 wrote: »

Couldn't this essentially be simulated by square irises a round eyeball with a square shaped eye socket?

Otherwise I think that animated UV's might be a bit less resource intensive that multiple blend shapes per eye movement.

I've thought about this first idea at one point and found that there would be holes in the corners of the eye where the sphere goes deeper than the corners. I could see what it looks like when i push the corners in a little to match the depth of the spheres maybe.

As for animating the uvs, i don't think unity (my engine of choice) supports it. You can animate the offset of the texture within unity though. But unless you have each eye with a different material and texture duplicate?, the character would look kinda goofy looking in the eyes because though would not even closely resemble the rotation offset between eyes in real life.

Does it seem like i left anything out? i may well have ;p

Based on the idea of having spheres though i was thinking, what if i could find a way to squash the eyes a little to fit the square frame better? so it is freely rotating within a parent that is scaled smaller on one axis. That way, it looks fine from a front angle but when you view it from the side it's like a squishy coin. I'd do the rotation with a deformer of course, joints naturally. Does that sound like a good idea to you?