PC-CSGO | M4A4 | Transcension (Finished)

Chemical Alia · May 2016

Fun Fact #1: My mom came up with both my first and middle names (Shaylyn Alia) after reading sci-fi books (The Mirror and the Dune series)!

Fun Fact #2: Alia in Dune was known as “The Abomination”!

Update with final image:

Off to a late start, but the contest will have my full time attention until the deadline, and I've been really excited for this!
I want to go very 70s with my theme. Less cinema influences and more the novels I read growing up. The aspects of 70s scifi that I enjoy and would like to focus on with this skin are the abstraction and mystery. The way people thought about sci-fi back then, rather than just looking back on it.

Here's some reference for inspiration:

Originally, I had started an AK-47 and was going more generic 70/80's spaceship type stuff with it some cyborg/anatomical elements that Drysocket and I were planning on doing some metallic material work with. I absolutely hated this direction and felt that it was too expected, bland and there's a lot of cool skins that go the futuristic scifi/military route already in the game. I also found that it lacked the visual interest for a covert skin and the surface areas weren't really suited to fixing that problem.

So I've switched to the M4, which has a lot of angles and curves that complimented the general shapes I was going for, and I was able to get a much more coherent composition out of the gun that flowed throughout the entire form. I started messing around with the eyes, and then the decorative etching stuff, and immediately
started drawing this more abstract design, which I am about 100x more excited about!

The M4 is classified for this contest, and I think that the limited color palettes you see a lot in novel covers will work very well for that. I don't want to add any larger areas of visual detail or huge focal points as I don't want it to feel like it's getting into super-rare territory, but I intend to go for a hand-painted look.

I'll be working on the color block-out next before starting to paint. I like to do a secondary unwrap that allows for really nice projecting of the image onto the final UVs, and I'll show the progress of that when I get there.

That's all for now!

Primrose~ · May 2016

Hyped for this, could definitely be a winner if you pull it off as well as it could be done! Following this one for sure!

Chemical Alia · May 2016

Here's a quick color block-in with two slightly different variations. I'm leaning towards the bottom one right now, at least until I start texturing for real. I'm strongly leaning towards green shades for this skin, and keeping the colors in a restricted palette to keep it in line with the target rarity. Green is also rarely used in any of the official skins for the M4A4.

Rather than working from a flat planar that stretches from every angle but one side, I've UVed the gun by section in such a way that I can easily draw the illustrations and bake from that onto the original UVs with much more accuracy. I always end up adjusting this as needed as I texture, but something like this:

I hope to start the actual illustration for the baking mesh tomorrow, and will post some updates when I get to the next step.

Chemical Alia · May 2016

Got the basic colors in place on the whole gun, broken down into five working textures to make things easier for me. I have the center area about 85% done, and am about to start painting in the rest! Below are flat colors in Max, and some test shots in the Workbench:

I'm also planning on doing a patina version of this skin as well; I like the contrast with the illustration and the plain dark base metal areas, and the metallic look of the finish you can get with that style using spec color from diffuse.

Mouzer · May 2016

Don't forget to play with Alpha at the end to get better wearing at the end. Great idea on the skin, keep it up!

Chemical Alia · May 2016

Mouzer said:

Don't forget to play with Alpha at the end to get better wearing at the end. Great idea on the skin, keep it up!

I'm painting like mad now so that I hopefully will have plenty of time to focus on the wear over the weekend. Thanks a bunch!

ifrostbite7 · May 2016

Reminds me a bit of Pans Labyrinth or Doctor Who!

Chemical Alia · May 2016

Just wanted to post my progress from today, and my big-ass to-do list for tomorrow, so I don't forget everything I want to work on. I spent like 19 hours painting in the squiggly lines today, so at least I got that nightmare mostly out of the way

- polish everything everywhere
- clean up chrome
- try aqua to emerald green gradients on sides inward
- try subtle color variation on the eyes
- try a thin yellow stripe on top of the beige stripe in the back, and make the current yellow one blue
- brighten up the parts that got too dark from adjustments
- green lighting on eyeball skin monster parts
- final adjustments or gradient maps to unify colors
- do something cool with the masking (right now it's wearing outward to inward, which looks sorta cool)

Chemical Alia · May 2016

Started on the wear and took some notes on that, gonna get back to painting for a bit and work on the alpha again later. I'd like it to wear inward from the sides, preserving the chrome. I like that the base material is a dark matte, so wearing the edges hard keeps the focus on the center of the image and prevents it from becoming too noisy. The classified rarity level is my main priority! c: