EVA 02 Full Character - Critiques Needed

skadoo

Hey again Polycounters,

I'm working on a sculpt of Evangelion 02 and am just about ready to start retopo. 
I'd really like to hear some feedback while editing is still easy.

What I'm really looking for is feedback on forms, readability, silhouette, etc. I'm aware the sculpt is not incredibly detailed but I am considering adding some scratches, dents, and damage.

EDIT: Progress so far

Please take a look and feel free to speak your mind. I'm interested in what you have to say!

(Open in new tab for full size)

Edit: update for retopo


Edit: update for normal bake

LRoy

I'm not super familiar with EVA, but this is looking awesome. I'd say maybe the front view feels a little plain compared to all the other shapes going on.

PolyBrother

Not familiar with EVA as well here, but I like the direction of the color palette in your paint over.

The red armored sections like the lower torso area and shoulders could be broken up more with grays/whites between plating, or some sort of gradation of color. Really depends on how you approach this, because this character can easily be imagined with a stylized/painted texture or with realistic materials.

Small and subtle dents/scratches would look cool as you mentioned, but also little hard surface details that imply bolting or connections of joints would be interesting too, which would help explain how this bio-mechanical character is held together in a sense.

snoop

EVA Unit-02 is my favorite unit, with the TV series version being my favorite of its 3 variations (not including Unit-02'). Rebuild totally ruined the color scheme with it's addition of so much white to the color palette, and the helmet is just... well, awful in my opinion. EOE version like you're making is cool with me still, though.  

The only thing I see as being off or strange is what you did to the crotch and the boots, but I'm guessing you were merely taking artistic license in the case of these differences.

Oh, almost forgot to say, great job so far! 

edit: something else I noticed that is different is the thigh armor. your version isn't bad by any means, but it's definitely different than any version of unit-02 you look at.

Bummer6

Dude, that thing looks sick! Your paintover is spot on. I agree that it's not super detailed, but maybe that's not a bad thing. I say keep details to a low and let your awesome sculpt speak for itself. A lot of people feel they need to add a ton of tiny details to everything and it just turns out noisy.

skadoo

Thanks for all the input guys. Nice to see there are other fans of Unit-02 out there!

As for the thighs and boots, I was following a lot of different reference material including an EOE action figure (which had thighs, crotch, and boots like so). You could say it's a franken version but I tried to stick with mostly the TV show version.

Definitely planning on dark areas between armor plates and definitely planning on not going super realistic. Maybe stylized PBR? It's up in the air at this point as texturing is by far my weakest area.

I like to keep my work from getting noisy with lots of tiny details but I think some scratches/dings are warranted here for interest. Maybe even some bolts as polybrother suggested.

LuisCherubini

Really like how its seens clean. For me, it's finished. Did you render this straight from zbrush? What material did you used? What is your main purpose with the sculp? Fan Art / Portfolio? 

Looking foward to see how you pose after retopo.

skadoo

Kerub said:

Really like how its seens clean. For me, it's finished. Did you render this straight from zbrush? What material did you used? What is your main purpose with the sculp? Fan Art / Portfolio? 

Looking foward to see how you pose after retopo.

Thanks man. This is rendered from Zbrush PBR with the render passes comped in Photoshop. The material is just called "Basic Material" if i remember, but I played around with the material settings a bunch. I need a more streamlined approach to presenting out of Zbrush. I can't quite get that "clay" look for models with any of my matcaps.

Once I get this thing retopo'd, textured, and posed with the knife It's going into my portfolio.

skadoo

Small update. Just some bake testing while retopo kicks my ass. Really excited to get baking this guy.

skadoo

Retopo finally done and what a pain it was. Sitting at 12600 tris for this guy. Finally time to move on to baking.

skadoo

Normal bake is done. I'm pretty happy with the results. There's a few minor defects but I don't think they are too noticeable.  Moving on to my AO bake which I now realize can't be done well with the current pose...

skadoo

Update: First pass at texturing is done. I'm not too happy with it. There's definitely a noticeable difference between Substance Painter's viewport and Toolbag's. I'd love to get some feedback on how to push this texture farther.

The Rizzler

Nice work, imo you should add that detail that suggests this EVA is several stories tall if you want to progress the texture - tiny hatches and dings/scratches like you suggested earlier might be a good idea, such as in this artwork (plus some signage/lettering?) 
Obviously in the anime, the EVAs are shown next to buildings/people etc. which conveys their size, and when drawn from a distance then they are going to look much more simplistic (no point or way to add all that detail when it's too far away, just like LODs in games) but when you get a close up view, they adjust the detail to be much higher to compensate. Just an attribute of a drawn medium really, but with a 3D model you can effectively see everything just by zooming, so I would consider adding some subtle detail to really sell the size 

lotet

Is it just me or are the arms kind of short?

skadoo

Annnnnnd posed! I'm about done with this project. Hopefully I'll turn it into a sketchfab or toolbag viewer soon but I'm feeling ready to start something new. Thanks to everyone for all the feedback!

LuisCherubini

Really nice! Well done!