Space guy and ship
polycounter lvl 9
Finally decided I needed to start on this personal project.
I'm still fairly new to Zbrush work, so this will be a pretty big project for me. If you have any tricks to share with me, please comment!
I'm making a backstory for him as I go, but basically, he's an old dude who has fled/been banished from his native planet and ended up stuck on a very far away planet with a parasitic organism on it. The organism integrated with the ship, and connects with the pilot in a symbiotic relationship. The pilot finds food for the organism, and in turn, the organism converts it to usable nutrients for the pilot to share when he is connected to the ship. The organism also enhances the ship's abilities, and they travel system to system in a really desolate area of space to find either the way home or a place to live.
The pilot comes from a really fancy society and I wanted his space suit to look as ridiculous as possible. Here are my first few sketches:
I was favoring the middle helmet, and decided that I should make the spaceship tall to match that shape. Here is my Zbrush sketch, I'll be using Topogun to make some cleaner hard surface to work from soon.
I haven't started making the organic pieces of the design asymmetrical yet, and I'm thinking about putting a brain-like tumor between the engines. Mmm gross stuff
I'm still fairly new to Zbrush work, so this will be a pretty big project for me. If you have any tricks to share with me, please comment!
I'm making a backstory for him as I go, but basically, he's an old dude who has fled/been banished from his native planet and ended up stuck on a very far away planet with a parasitic organism on it. The organism integrated with the ship, and connects with the pilot in a symbiotic relationship. The pilot finds food for the organism, and in turn, the organism converts it to usable nutrients for the pilot to share when he is connected to the ship. The organism also enhances the ship's abilities, and they travel system to system in a really desolate area of space to find either the way home or a place to live.
The pilot comes from a really fancy society and I wanted his space suit to look as ridiculous as possible. Here are my first few sketches:
I was favoring the middle helmet, and decided that I should make the spaceship tall to match that shape. Here is my Zbrush sketch, I'll be using Topogun to make some cleaner hard surface to work from soon.
I haven't started making the organic pieces of the design asymmetrical yet, and I'm thinking about putting a brain-like tumor between the engines. Mmm gross stuff
Replies
Thank you, that's quite a compliment! I'm glad you agree about the helmet. Looking forward to fleshing out that suit a little more.
Only had time to work on the spaceship today, but I got a little bit of cleaner detail done. Also worked on the organism and made it asymmetrical on the ship.
Thank you, I'm a big fan of Warframe!
Bit of an update:
The suit and ship hook up together via many ports on the pilots back. The ports lead to implants on the pilots body to allow for faster reaction time and more accurate ship feedback to the pilot. Later in this narrative, the organism that attaches itself to the ship exploits these ports to form a connection directly to the pilot, which is necessary for both their survival.
Meanwhile, my high poly of the ship is coming along:
Thank you! I did have to modify it slightly to get his head to fit, but hopefully it still carries the same vibe.
I've added a VR headset to the character, it plugs directly into the ship with 3 ridiculously massive tubes. Middle sketch is headset with tubes detached, and last one shows how the VR displays flip up.
The orange over-helmet is actually a forcefield sort of thing and can be turned off with a blocky dissolving effect as it powers down. The pilot turns it off once the ship cabin is pressurized. I'll use the same kind of imagery on the ship's force field as well.
It's difficult to say, considering you intend for his outfit to "look as ridiculous as possible" and all three of your concept explorations have these elbow and knee shapes. I must say, those two elements create a very uncomfortable feeling, visually. Unless this effect is desired by you the artist, I think you can maintain ridiculous while also obtaining aesthetically pleasing. God speed you filthy maniac.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply!
I agree about your final point. My goal with this piece is definitely to push the boundaries into "ridiculous" but not out of the realm of believably or aesthetically pleasing. What about the elbows/knees feels uncomfortable? The metal pieces? Or something about the silhouette itself? I'm mostly just interested in kind of an exaggerated poofy/draping kind of look at those points.
The appearance of inconvenienced suit movement and spacial locomotion bothers me but think is unrelated to the solution, I think it helps add to the design's element of ridiculousness; Ridiculous by industrial design standards. If that's the type of ridiculous you're going for, then I'd say, spot on. I do think it's funny, which is totally fine too.
Really all of my feedback here hinges on preference and I'd just like to first say with all seriousness, if there is real momentum in the original design idea and interest on your part, and it looks like there might be, keep going! I feel that's much more important than anything.
So, just to share my thinking, I think a solution to the would-be problem is more closely related to silhouette aesthetics. What I dislike about the knee and elbow elements, I think is that they break some visual design ideas.
For one, they create angles that direct the eye outside the object rather than into and around the whole, they almost kick the eye outside the form at these beats. The feet would be an example of flowing back into the object, where they are fat at the top near the knee and then get smaller towards the ankle and foot and then the smallest at the toe which points back up into the form, they create a nice circular movement back into the form. On second hand, this effect on the elbows and knees could help support the environment were it the chosen focal point.
They also segment the arms and legs in the exact same ratio, at the hinge points, which creates a stagnate balance in form in my opinion, what otherwise could be visual movement. If the legs were noticeably larger or longer than the arms, then that wouldn't be the case, but they are relatively within the similar proportions. The helmet is a great example of having a good ratio that create movement, there is empty rest at the top and then busy detail at the bottom, framed with nice smooth curved lines; a vertical eye movement, up or down.
One solution might be to elongate the sleeves and drop the elbow ring over his hands, and line them up with the knees rings so he creates one large ridiculous wedge.
But, having said all that, remember what I wrote regarding preference and momentum. :smokin:
Thank you!
Not sure what your reference has been for your character's design, but it made me think of this type of fashion:
So far I've only made some minor deviations from the sketch, but I think it's working better overall already, partially due to being built on top of a somewhat more realistically proportioned character. I think the legs look a lot fuller and believable now. Still messing around with proportions of things though... Thank you for your thoughtful feedback so far.
The idea with the clothing pieces is that it's gathered up in the back and held in place with metal clasps out of the way of the plug holes. The pilot should be able to sit down in the seat without much obstructing his backside but the frontside and side-sides are flared out. Still working on getting the joint areas to work (knees and elbows in particular). Face is the most finished part but still pretty rough.
Slowly but surely. Face is getting close.