Mergol - the beast. Oscarini (OskarsDzenis) - FINISHED

Oscarini

FINAL SUBMISSION
He once was a young and handsome prince, equal parts cruel, vain and selfish, with no place for kindness, love or compassion in his heart. One ordinary day he crossed and old witch’s path, and she cursed his evil soul to wander his own lands as much a monster on the outside as within. No magic, wits or tricks could save him until he himself finds the ultimate sacrifice in true love. The witch gave him a rose that would lose a petal every ten years. If the prince has not found love when the last petal falls, he will remain forever a beast.

Wire: (char = 99482 tris / pedestal =  4995 tris)

4x4096 texture set for char

1x2048 texture set for pedestal

Ps. All modeled in Maya, sculpted in Zbrush, textures made in PS, final render VRay. No touchups or any kind of overpainting.

SpiritCastle

Dont forget they dont want people using any sort of fur system, if you you want it it will have to be poly based as in planes/alphas. Cool idea though.

Oscarini

SPIRITCASTLE - thnx for positive comment. I was checking on fur-mesh converting pipelines. Gonna go with zbrush-fibers to mesh (with alpha), if will stick to this idea.

Oscarini

Spent some quality time at concepting other ideas. Different randome shape aproach for the start.

Oscarini

Made some work progress on chosen forms.

Oscarini

So, finnaly got 3 main ideas to think about in perspective and move on with chosen one to 3d space finnaly. 
Pros and cons of all 3 designs.

Bear-thing (actually he wasn't sopposed to be looking like one):
P: Can melt hearts - if polish him and deliver properly.
C: Storywise - he looks like bear/Chewbacca bastard son.  Technicaly - too toony, will need lots of compliacetd work on fur (modeling it or making with polys/alphas - to fit in 100k polys margin)to get it done intresting so it have aesthetic value. So I put it this way, it desn't feel, that I have good feeling about this.

Satyr looking beast (horny guy, or guy with enormous horns)
P: Contains many intresting desing elements to become a powerful character in perspective. 
C: Satyr looking creatures are very classic in design, it just allways pops out the toughts in mind - oh, not another goat-guy. So it will be a challange to deliver look more beast - less goat.

Dark creature (something rated R):
P: Can spawn many different impressions, like everybody looking at him can riddle - what this guy is about, why he is like this, etc.
C: Too gory, looks more like monster not beast. Too dangerous.

thomasp

i'd go with the direction of the original concept. it has a nice pixar-vibe to it. i'd expect plenty of angry looking competition with horns and fangs as it is. can't hurt to stand out a little.

with all the texture pages available to you in this contest, getting high res looking fur with moderate polycounts should be feasible. question is if a figure fully covered in fur isn't a bit too uniform looking overall. how about putting on some sort of outfit to mix things up?

as for creating fur - look into creating a bunch of poly-elements and distributing them as instances with an object painter on the surface for starters.
if you go with fibermesh or any other tech solution, it's going to be hell to try and balance polycount, distribution, density and length. getting it wrong will most likely require a restart. fibermesh is cool though for creating a blockout of it all and for creating the hair textures.

Oscarini

THOMASP - thnx for constructive feedback, was thinking about this very hard for a week, but I believe that I could do more with "Horny guy" this time.

Oscarini

Last week started to flesh out "Horny guy". Have couple ideas about story, guess next week gonna come to final stage where the character will have complete look with proper face(head) and more finished look of body and complete design.

Kaspars_Pavlovskis

Looks good man! It kinda reminds me of southpark devil, for now...

Oscarini

KASPARS_PAVLOVSKIS - thnx man, yeah he is totally something between goatman and devil - try to avoid those two margins.

Oscarini

Hello everyone, made some hires sculpting + starting to make retopology. Low poly model is going to weight about 50k tris for now, I guess fur (will work on it more and hair) will make other 50k. Also need to make microdetailing.

Oscarini

Here is color version with overpaint in PS. Still have doubts about fur - looks too decorative now. Horn color will need more work too, but skin is close to what I want.

Ps. My SSD main disk just "burned to crisp", but I have 1 week old backup on secondary HDD drive, hopefully will get new SSD fast enough to continue working on char.

Oscarini

As far as my PC is back on track again. Still grinding my way to the finish line hiting that 100k triangle mark. Zbrush part for char with micro detailing and texture baking is over, now its time to combine all the textures in 4 sets, paint'em properly. And my podest is till in wip - sculpting, baking, finishing all for this last week. Pose I had from the start in mind, so Maya HIK setup will come quick and handy to flesh it out perfectly, then - VRay render and it's done.

Kaspars_Pavlovskis

Starting to come together nicely!

Oscarini

KASPARS_PAVLOVSKIS: Thnx man. I'm totally on it!

Oscarini

Pose update: 

All sculpted hi-res, made retopo - keeping tris at dangerous counts , rigged, skinned, posed, baked out textures. 
Making last tweaks with textures - gathering them from all baked stuff. Shader setup and lightning is almost done.

Oscarini

Final renders.

Pixelgorilla

Wow! Looks great!

OBSTEG0X

This turned out looking killer. The pose and the lighting are very strong, and that expression... win!

phaselock

Yeah, the pose is awesome, good luck and cheers !

Oscarini

Big thnx guys, glad You like it. Ang good luck to all contestants.

Kaspars_Pavlovskis

At the beginning, I was a bit skeptical, however, as always, You delivered a strong contest entry! Good job, I hope You take this one!

Oscarini

Actually, before I noticed, that story can be 100words, I made a long story. In final submission - there is a short version. But as I don't want to trash a full story - I will post it here, just in case somebody likes the long stories. )

Mergol - the beast.

It was almost a lifetime ago, as I was hunting in the North Woods, not far from the Great Sea that I came across a wicked place called the Black Forest.

They say that magic rules there and creatures from distant worlds call it their home. It is there that I encountered this hideous monster, who was once man, but now roamed the woods a monster banished for his dreadful sins.

He once was a young and handsome prince, equal parts cruel, vain and selfish, with no place for kindness, love or compassion in his heart. One ordinary day he crossed and old witch’s path, and she cursed his evil soul to wander his own lands as much a monster on the outside as within. No magic, wits or tricks could save him until he himself finds the ultimate sacrifice in true love. The witch gave him a rose that would lose a petal every ten years. If the prince has not found love when the last petal falls, he will remain forever a beast.

I was out on a long hunt with my tribe, only seven days had passed since we left our home. As the dawn was almost upon us, we came across a meadow with a beautiful well right in the middle of it. This place, it felt so extraordinary, full of life and free of all evil that was lurking in the Black Forest surrounding it. The others laid for rest, but I could not find peace and was drawn to the well. It was as though it was placed there just for me to find and to explore, it was as though it was calling out to me. I approached the well intrigued and saw water so clear and calm it could have been frozen. I reached out for a sip, but the moment my fingertips reached the mirrored surface, the unimaginable happened. The water started bubbling, as though it was boiling, first slowly, but then faster, until red sparks started appearing out of nowhere. I gasped and covered my eyes, but it was over as suddenly as it had started. Slowly I pulled myself together and gathered the courage to look. There it was, a beautiful ripe rose floating on the surface of the water that was once again calm as though nothing had happened. I reached out, gently took it and carefully hid it from my comrades who were still fast asleep.

We continued our hunt for weeks upon weeks, with the rose hidden deep in my satchel. After a while the happening in the meadow seemed like a distant dream, a mirage that appeared to me out of tiredness and hunger. My mind focused on our hunt and the path before us, slowly forgetting about the flower I was carrying with me.

Our path seemed riddled with ill luck. We were getting lost, our horses were disobeying us, men were dropping dead left and right. It was as though someone was following us and making sure we never get out of the Black Forest. It was the middle of a rainy night after another terrible day of roaming the forest, we were all asleep. Out of nowhere, a pack of wild wolves attacked our camp, scaring away our horses and attacking everyone in their way. We scattered in all directions, losing the sight of the camp, all our belongings and each other. I was left alone careering through the damp woods trying to outrun my death only to sweep right into the most gruesome beast I had ever seen. I tripped and fell right at his feet, my satchel slipping out of my fingers and onto the misty moss covering the ground. We stared at each other, his eyes yellow and full of scathe, mine teary and filled with fear. I could feel death nearing me, this beast will be the last thing I witness in this mortal world.

Then, the unthinkable happened – the beast collapsed over my satchel. He lied there, trembling, for a while, the opened my satchel and rummaged through it for a short while. I just stood there, frozen in fear. As he gathered himself and slowly stood up, I saw sorrow in his face. He gave out an ear-piercing roar of pain and a single tear rolled over his ghastly cheek. I saw it then, it was there, in his hands, the rose I had found in the well at the beginning of the hunt. It dawned on me that I had taken something of his, the last remains of his human life, the last hope for solace and salvation. I understood that it was him who had followed us all this time, but not to do us harm, but only to retrieve what was his to begin with. We looked at each other for one last time and then I swiftly turned and ran away, afraid of the monster to change his mind and punish me for what I had done. I have never felt his presence since.

miezis

Awesome stuff! You pulled it off!

Enalya

Wow after seeing the pose I was really sold, super dynamic and his face is sort of cute : ) Beautiful renders!

Oscarini

KASPARS_PAVLOVSKIS: Hehe, Your lack of faith in me - gives me strength each time. )) And big thnx for saving me after my SSD died on this project! You da man!
JAXR3: Thanks man!
MIEZIS: Big thanks! Finish line was hard, but without Your support it would be hell for me. So as we all know - You are a great guy and personally for me -You are great artist.
ENALYA: Very glad to hear such nice comments. Thank You.
POKERONE: Thanks. Yeah, texture process I had to made twice, as my "SSD burned to crisp" and it rolled me back for 1 week, but retopo was allready done and UV's also. But as they say, You learn best - when You do it twice.