Future Aztec Warrior

Lord Waffles

Hey Polycount,

Started working on a futuristic Aztec Warrior/Gladiator for a small video game project.

I'm a completely self taught artist, and to be honest, character art scares the shit out of me. I've done some anatomy stuff here and there, read a few books, drew a few pictures, but the only thing my conscious mind seems to remember is what the distal head of my humorous is.

Needless to say, my anatomy is pretty rough, so lets bring on dem crits!



That's what I got so far. I'm extremely slow at drawing (hilariously slow), so this is basically my concept piece. It's not quite done, but I have managed to get it to a point where me and my pesky programmer are at least satisfied with the direction.

Some quick points:

• Haven't gotten to the hands yet, the feet wont be seen, and dem abs...yuk
• The thing around the neck is going to be a tube (that resembles some beaded necklace) that will be used to pump oxygen to the helm
• Dynamesh hates that hanging cloth more than me. Not sure if i'm going to try to retopo it from within Zbrush, or take it to Maya
• I his back in some and it seems to have smushed some of my, probably already, inaccurate back anatomy.
• I need to incorporate a little more futuristic aspects into the design, as well as figure out this guys boot situation. I still have to put on the knee guard, but I have a feeling it's still going to look off, though it just might be too polished of a base mesh in comparison to the others.

I'll be posting updates here as I go as well as my attempts to animate him when all is said and done.

Lord Waffles

Small update:

finished the rough sculpt. Now it's time to make all the individual pieces and get a head start on the low poly.

Lord Waffles

Cloth folds have always been a thing of legend to me. I could never really get it to feel at all close to being right.

After about 4 hours of nothing but attempting to sculpt cloth, I think it's finally starting to click.



It's pretty far from being clean, but I do plan on hand painting this model, so I'm not sure if it would be worth my time to try to polish it up nicer.

theblueturtle_

Interesting idea and so far the execution is looking good overall. Let me preface this comment by saying I'm not a character artist but I did have one comment about the cloth, specifically the piece that's draped down the front. In my opinion it looks overworked. The detail is nice but I think you went overboard with the detail. For something that's just hanging there it shouldn't have that much tension built up in the fabric I think.

Haftoof

Yeah, I worked on cloth a few times when I was sculpting miniatures and have to say that the cloth is definitely over-worked. Unless cloth is crumpled you end up with far fewer creases and curves in the cloth, you want longer, downward sloping creases that come together. Do some searches for cloth, or hanging cloth on google and you'll see. Your folds should come from places where the cloth is secured.

Also it depends on the material, judging from the sculpt it would probably be a simpler cloth or perhaps leather and those tend to fold in wide creases that should slop downward. Take a look at selwy.com, amazing work and an entire brush set for sculpting folds.

Additionally the center loin-cloth reminds me of a piece by motenai for a DOTA 2 character, here's a link to the zbrush sculpt he worked on...
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpZa9eBHBFA[/ame]

take a look at the beginning of the video... Notice the creases, also look at the cloth on the shoulder and take some thoughts on how the cloth comes to rest.

Tectonic

I very much agree with Haftoof. Start again on the cloth folds. Here are the references/tutorials that helped me learn how to do them:
https://www.pinterest.com/clay9888/clothing-wrinkles-fabric-folding-reference-and-dra/

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1NpLVsOhCU[/ame]

Lord Waffles

@Haftoof Thanks for the feedback! I actually seemed so focused on the lines, however starting off with a clay tubes brush really helped me when it came to visualizing the folds as a form.

@Tectonic Thanks for that reference tutorialish video!


I started refining the concept sculpt, however after spending too much time focused on making the hard surface stuff all nice a polished, I realized that the model doesn't really have much of any stylization to it. I had initially planned for it to be stylized to some degree, so I'll have to go in and make some of the perfect shapes a little less perfect.




Round #2: Gave the back cloth another shot. Since it is in-fact a heavier material, I tried to make bigger folds...but I feel I still may have a little too many...

I also want the character to learn much closer to a stylized character, so I mad the cloth look less real and wrinkly lol

Haftoof

Much nicer smoother curves, I would add weight to the bottom of your wrinkles.

Slopes down to a soft edge and then the bottom should be a soft curve. Another thing to think about is where the cloth comes against the model, in this case the butt should probably shouldn't have creases running across it, but just below the butt you'll have space for the cloth to fold and hang. Looking much better though. Keep it up ^..^