Rainbow Rocket - Improvement Thread

Rainbow Rocket

Hey there!

This is my first post ever on polycount. I hope i can soon be a part of the great community here. I've been watching the activities ( contests etc. ) and admiring the awesome art that is posted here everyday and thought it's time to present something myself, hoping to get honest critiques so i can improve.

Something about myself: My name is Annie, I'm from Germany and 21 years old, studying art, focussing on 3d and character design. Working on my B.A. next semester. The stuff im going to show you was created in 3d sculpting class mostly.

Now on to the art! I really hope to get some honest critiques, because i didn't show it anywhere else yet. Thanks in advance! Everything was created by me, don't be confused because i used different signatures or names, i'm still working on my professionalism and logo etc.

Concept


High poly turnaround


Close up face and mask


More details


Low poly


Marmoset render with textures



I'm already aware that i have to improve the hair. Also there was a normal map bug on his right bracer ( the bumps not showing correctly).

Cheers!

Markovnikov

Honestly, the colours clash a lot and don't really look that good. Either a tighter scheme or more muted colouration would be best I think. Or just getting rid of that lime green.

That aside, the model itself is pretty damn good.

Rainbow Rocket

Thanks for your reply! I was very insecure about the color scheme, i was inspired by this kind of style in Tokyo
Maybe it's a bit over the top or just not fitting to the character. Was experimenting with it.

skyline5gtr

I agree the color scheme hides a lot of the good detail you have made.

There is too much dominant color, if you wanted to put some accent colors it could work or have the mask be green and the rest of the body be a much muted color to help the mask pop

Lukitscherie

Aw his eyes are so pretty *_*
Design is great, hair lost a bit of volume but it still works fine imo.

As for the colors maybe try with one color only parts? Like in your B&W concept the shoulders pad and the leg plates don't have a lot of different shades in them, but in your colored version they do and it works less.

praetus

So, I think you need to think about what grounding this has. His armor looks old school feudal Japan in a way but his colors look like they belong in a Neo-Tokyo Cyber punk type of setting. I think you need to focus on one or the other to ground the character in a proper setting. If you're going for traditional, maybe some muted colors with brighter edging could stand out. If you're going for a cyber punk look, there is nothing that grounds it in a future setting. Adding some tech to the armor could help.

I think the modeling looks good, but you need to ground this in a setting and move from there because right now the model and the coloring are conflicting with each other.

Rainbow Rocket

Thank you guys for the responses. You really opened my eyes and i totally agree with the mistakes i made with the colors.

@ skyline5gtr Good point. I'll keep the neon green mask and tone down the rest of his clothes / armor.

@ Lukitscherie Yeah the hair lost about half of the original volume, it was the first time i modeled hair in Zbrush, none of my characters had hair so far haha. Always hats or fur instead! Tried to add some planes on the low poly model to give it more texture and make it less slick ( didn't work out in the end, so i had to remove it. T_T Next time! )

@ praetus For this character design i tried to combine several styles from japan: the traditional samurai armor and the colorful, young, crazy plastic-fashion ( not cyber-punk-ish yet ), as well as kabuki costumes. I think for my next character i need to do more research and adapt the different parts of the look. I'm a big fan of mixing everything together, but you are right, a good design still needs a grounding that somehow holds it in place. Thank you!

Atm i'm coloring him in dark purple and petrol colors and just let a few neon green highlights pop. I'm also removing the hair color fade. When i got some new results i'll update this. Thank you guys!

Rainbow Rocket

Quick update!
I reworked the colors and i prefer these over the old ones a lot! I modified the colors in photshop only without baking a new diffuse map.



...and two Marmoset Toolbag pictures, because i wanted to play around with the new fog tool.