"I want you to have it” Said the girl, with a smile on her face. “What is it?” Asked the creature with curiosity.“I know you don’t need it. But I also know you like these kind of things. It’s a piece done by the Capital’s best artisan. You know... With the ongoing conflict back at the city...” Her smile faded “I may not be able to come here so often. That’s why I wanted to give you this.” The creature gazed into her eyes.
The Beast contest thread - The Manticore
ngon master
...
“Thank you. It’s truly beautiful. But please... Take care”
Full Shot:
Beauty Shot:
(This is the one I'm submitting)
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Plus an extra one:
Texture Sheets:
Textures used:
- Body - 1x4k
- Wings - 1x4k
- Tail, horns - 1x4k
- Mane and fur - 1x2k
------
- Pedestal - 1x2k
Wires:
Whew, so, that's all! I'm glad this is over! I'd like to have made a ton more of corrections, there are a lot of mistakes but honestly I'm quite tired of this model. Maybe in the future I'll revisit it but for now I'll forget it for some time. Anyways it was great participating on this, it was a good exercise and I loved getting all that feedback. Best of luck to all!
-Nat
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ORIGINAL POST
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Here’s what I have so far!:
Creature
After thinking for a bit, I decided to base my entry on one of my favourite mythological creatures: The manticore. The manticore is a mythological beast with a lion body, human-like face and a scorpion tail. They’re often depicted with wings and horns. Here are some of the references I gathered for myself:
I like to
think about manticores as intelligent beings: they may have a lion body, but their
mind is very human-like, kind of like a Sphinx could be. Despite their looks,
they can think, feel and talk. They still retain feral characteristics and
prefer to live in the wild, isolated from humans (Disliking technology and
civilized life, probably seeing humanity as a destroyer of nature), But they could perfectly establish a conversation or socialize
with any human they trusted.
Using this as base, I thought about the idea of a manticore feeling despair because of what he is: not fully a human, but not an animal either. What if he enjoyed the company of humans above of his clan’s? What if he despised his animalistic nature? He would be seen as some kind of traitor, and probably be condemned to live in isolation.
Mood
Sadness and despair would two concepts I’d like to depict. The creature will have some kind of defeated pose/expression. The scene will take place in the wild, which will be shown making use of the pedestal. I’d like the manticore to be contrasted with the surroundings. Maybe it will have a very dark pelt, almost black, in contrast with the greenish, fresh environment. My idea is to depict him as being strong, menacing and dangerous, but shattered and melancholic.
I sketched two little pictures to show possible ideas for the scene:
This one depicts the beast holding something very valuable to him, possibly given as a present by a human girl, one he holded very dearly. Maybe they can never be together again and he mourns her in silence.
I’d like to show great contrast between the delicate, golden ornament (still undesigned) and the furry, dark, and strong beast.
This one is just a rough doodle, but I liked the idea of the beast staring at his own reflection with a melancholic expression on his face, probably wishing to be something else.
That’s all
for now. Thanks for reading, and looking forward to think about more ideas and
start sculpting! 
-Natalia
Replies
Only those wings are bothering me (so spread out) - Maybe it could improve the body language, like hes covering himself abit with those large wings (ashame of his monstrous look)- if you want that.
Regarding the wings, they're still in a default pose @razzman. I was planning to rig them after the retopo and pose them as you say, in a more introvert and expressive gesture. Although I still don't know how will the final pose be, I'm definitely not leaving them like that, so don't worry! I'm also considering to simulate the membranes with nCloth. I'll have to wait to see how they look without it first.
Vamos que va genial
Thanks everyone, much appreciated! Retopo coming soon!
Wohoo @OrganizedChaos I'm honored, I love your stuff as well!
Haha happy to hear it @Rhimor! Thanks to you for stopping by, and best of luck!
Soo haven't updated this thread in a while! I've been a bit busy (#totallynotbeenplayingfarcryprimal) but I'm finally moving on to the baking stage.
This is how the topology looks like:
The tail and wings are independent meshes. Topology is a mix between zremesher and manual retopo; face was done by hand, while horns and wings were zremeshed with guides. The body is mainly done by hand with some zremeshed bits, like the ears.
Right now everything here is 48k polys. I'm now working on what's missing, hair, decorations... etc. Trinket will be done at the end, once I pose it.
Today I baked the body's normals and AO. Gotta clean some artifacts but here are a few screenshots I took from Marmoset using a quick Skin shader with the AO as diffuse:
I'm using one 4k map for the body and another for the tail. The tail is a quickly posed placeholder, don't mind it yet.
Soo those are all the updates for now! Tomorrow I'll probably bake the wing's membrane and the accesories and keep working on the hair.
Thanks for reading!
-Nat
Remember that you have a budget of four 4k textures
are you using any maps/mask for the skin shader or just the basic sliders?
Thanks much @Nazedo ! Yeah I know, I'll probably end up using three 4k tiles max (Body, wings and tail, although these last two could be made smaller) Plus a smaller tile for the hair and rest of details.
@tierzilla Gracias capo
Thank you @lotet , appreciated! The images above didn't have maps at all, I just messed around with the sliders as you say.
Here are two more quick screenshots. I started working on the maps now. Did a diffuse, specular and gloss base (For the body). Nothing final yet, every texture is in progress. Started with the hair as well. Still a ton of work to do!
Anyway, that's all for now. Cheers!
-Nat
I've mainly kept working on the body's shader and maps, although there is still much to do.
Here's a quick pose test. Final pose/composition will probably kind of look like this.
Only the first test tho. Wings may not end up posed like that. Also, the tail is too big here and hasn't got its final density. Lots of tweaking to do!
Cheers!
-Nat
Also what are you rendering this with please? looks lovely
Best Regards
Ian S.
Thank you @DigitalNinja! Actually it's not the first time I get that. I may play with the colors later and see if I can achieve a more coherent look between the two parts! This is all rendered in Marmoset 2.
-Nat
Small update. I've been working on the pedestal and testing some poses such as this one
But after making a couple of tests I decided to stick with my first pose. So my final entry will look very similar to this
I planned to finish this tomorrow so it was almost done (Some stuff is still missing like the trinket and some body hair) But now that the deadline has been extended I'll use the extra week to polish everything and maybe add some more fur to the body!
-Nat
are u planning to modify a bit the pose of the wings?
Since we have some extra time I think that yeah, I'll experiment a bit with their pose @mianpeco. They look too symmetric right now.
-Nat
Full Shot:
Beauty Shots:
Texture Sheets:
Textures used:
- Body - 1x4k
- Wings - 1x4k
- Tail, horns - 1x4k
- Mane and fur - 1x2k
------
- Pedestal - 1x2k
Wires:
Whew, so, that's all! I'm glad this is over! I'd like to have made a ton more of corrections, there are a lot of mistakes but honestly I'm quite tired of this model. Maybe in the future I'll revisit it but for now I'll forget it for some time. Anyways it was great participating on this, it was a good exercise and I loved getting all that feedback. Best of luck to all!
-Nat
So fragile and powerful at the same time. Gorgeous Work.