Summer Character Workshop - Illaoi Fanart
Lee Devonald: http://polycount.com/discussion/174008/summer-character-workshop-swordswoman-potential-nudity-warning#latest
Joe Atilano: http://polycount.com/discussion/174026/summer-character-workshop-most-high-ceoptra#latest
Tom Lishman: http://polycount.com/discussion/174043/summer-character-workshop-nemesis-demon#latest
Shana Vandercruysse: http://polycount.com/discussion/174047/summer-character-workshop-the-baker#latest
Sanna Kempe: http://polycount.com/discussion/174058/summer-character-workshop-the-swordmaster#latest
Week 1 - Day 1: Picking a concept and finding reference
A few weeks before the first day of the workshop I was going around artstation and stumbled upon this little marvel. It was a concept done for a League of Legends character illaoi by Alexandr Pechenkin (artstation.com/artist/littledruid) and I couldn't resist.
This specific concept really stood out to me. Not only for the challenge to pull it off but because as a once avid player of League of Legends she was my go to character for quite sometime. She is a strong female brawler with a "don't back down" kinda vibe which fits my play style to the T. Plus this concept of her in the armor of her god couldn't get more bad ass.
There's quite a bit of material information going on with her as well and since I decided to go with a realistic approach as far as style I needed to find some good references for that. Sticking with the Horseshoe crab armor of the concept along with aged bronze plates kept together with thick leather really gives her the that tank kind of feel.
Also I didn't want to skip out on the brawler aspect of her so I had to hunt down some specific anatomy references. I want to give her some bulk and real strength in her stature. I don't want to just give masculine features to a feminine form but show her as a real powerhouse of a woman, exactly as her personality shows. 
Tomorrow I'll be going over how all of the armor can fit around her practically and how each piece connects to one another as well as clear up some of the back pieces.
This should be a real blast of a character to do and I'm excited to see your critiques throughout the process!
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Today we began sculpting! Although first we were shown how to create a scene so our character was as close as possible to their actual height. For my character I wanted her to be large but not towering so I went for a slightly above average 5'11". Creating the boundaries for our character's height helped a lot of the proportions fall in line and I wasn't falling into the pitfalls that I normally do when beginning a project like this.
I haven't sculpted many female forms in the past (a reason why I chose this character) and even less so one like this. I still think a few things are off but I'm having a hard time pointing them out to myself. Shes carrying around a mixture of shell and bronze armor so I wanted her to be fairly toned especially for the weapon that she swings around as well. In the original concept her shoulders and arms are insanely huge and I wanted to give off sense of size but still keeping it believable.
I'd love to see what you guys think and can possibly point out!
Depending on how feminine or androgynous you want her, maybe look at the foot size and neck muscles. In the concept what gives her more or a feminine silhouette and makes it interesting to me, is the smaller feet and slim neckline contrasting with the bulky armour and headgear.
Good luck!
I'll also probably change the foot size too right now they do seem a bit more manly than anything.
Also here is yesterday's work:
Retopology time! Yesssssssssss.....T~T
We were given the task to retopolgize and create a base-mesh based off the sculpt we did earlier. Lee was using 3DSMax for his retopology so I went about figuring the equivalent tools in Maya. First we laid cylinders along the chest, arms, and legs then made sure that our reference model was live. Next I used the conform tool under Mesh - > Conform on each cylinder so it layered itself against the surface of the character. Then I would use Maya's Quad Draw tool under Mesh Tools - > Quad Draw and use that to relax the topology in place. Also using the Quad Draw tool I would start to connect the cylinders to one another ie: arms to the body via the shoulder and body to the legs. Then we would use the same method for the fingers and the only thing that was manually done was the head and feet. Our goal was to keep the entire mesh quaded and although there was a lot of deleting and back-stepping I was able to do it.
This was my first time retopologizing before the end of a sculpt it was also my first time using Maya's retopology tools as well, this made things both frustrating but exhilarating. This was great for also making topology pretty exciting for myself personally, learning these tools and having efficient results was fun!
Next I have to create materials for the different parts of the body that I would then want to become polygroups once the mesh is imported back into zbrush.
Its looking so rad dude! :awesome:
Here is the update on yesterday's session! Today was time to start blocking out all of the major forms for our character. Not a whole lot of teaching but amazing critiques and very helpful input. I was able to get everything on her looking about the way I'd like so far, still a lot of pushing and pulling to do but its definitely looking much better.
I also worked on pushing her face in a more feminine direction, I got a lot of input regarding that and it was insanely appreciated and helped her look much better overall. All of my blocking out was done in zbrush with the exception of her head-wrap which was done in marvelous. Everything was done with a mixture of extracting and inserting spheres and moving them into the required shape.
Now that the armor is on her and shes getting a bit of that bulk I'm really enjoying working on her and can't wait to see how this comes out as we go along.
If you're open to critique I'd like to just say that the concept image you shared at the beginning seemed to have a really kickass overall shape to her which might be getting lost a bit here. The image at the beginning had her form being a really strong triangle with a wide, thick base moving up to her helmet that was a bit more elongated than what you have here. With a bit of a stronger tip to it. Yours might be a little boxy in comparison.
The other thing I wanted to throw out there is the proportions seem to be a tad off. It could very well be that this is all done on purpose to get that stout and thick look of the LoL character. My suggestion would be to try and push the proportions around a bit by making her a bit taller. Right now shes about 6 and 1/2 heads tall which is condensed by even normal standards so I think you could go up by another head at the very least. That would also mean lengthening the arms a bit and probably increasing the hand size just a smidge too. I think if she was slightly taller it might also be a step in the right direction for getting that more triangular shape to her silhouette.
Again, awesome work so far!
Here are a couple suggestions. The armor on the forehead seems a little wide and doesn't wrap around the sides of the head as much as it does in the concept.
I'd also say the skirt seems a little wide on the sides and flat in front. I'd suggest moving the shapes to be something closer to this.
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I do think the overall proportions could use a bit more work though.
I don't know if you want to stick close to the concept or if you're going for something a bit more realistic so take this with a grain of salt.
- Her headpiece/headgear could be a bit narrower at the base and get some more verticality (?) The concept has this triangular shape (saulti mentioned this) that is a combination of her wide stance and tapering headpiece.
- Her hands and forearms could be bigger and bulkier. She's a brawler and the concept has her palm about the same size as her face.
- She could use more girth overall in her clothes. They look fine from the front but are kind of flat from the side view. This is especially noticeable in the 3/4 view you posted where it looks like her body's been squished in the Z-axis. Giving her more volume will give her a consistently recognizable silhouette from all angles.
Looking forward to future updates@polymator It's alright the paint over you did especailly for the arms and the side view for the volume is very helpful!
Unfortunately yesterday's session was postponed but it gave me some time to get into pushing out a lot of the detail on her clothes instead of just blocked out parts. Next up I'll need to start putting in some of the real tentacle hair for her as well.
I appreciate all the critiques and comments that have been left so far as well, its helped tremendously.
All of last week was detailing and finalizing the Hi-Res sculpt. I had a lot of fun and a bit of trouble figuring out how to detail some parts and deciding what should be left to the texturing in substance. Overall though I'm really happy with the look I'm getting on this and I think I'm prepared for retopology! I'm really excited to get into the technical side of things because I believe that's where my biggest weaknesses lie and it'll be fun to get some knowledge bombs dropped on me.
Also appreciate any input you guys might have! This has been a lot of fun so far!
I'll second what melli06 said and suggest you crisp up some of the edges a bit.
I've marked the areas that I think could benefit from some hpolish and pinching.
Blue = hpolish brush
Red = pinch brush
I'm not saying you can't make it weathered but right now they look a bit too lumpy and read like clay instead of forged metal. And if you do decide to add crispness don't do it all along the edges evenly. Definitely leave some of the weathering in there. Maybe try sculpting using layers in Zbrush. If you don't like it you can always turn it off.
Hope it helps. I'm looking forward to the retopology too actually. There's so many parts! I wanna see and learn how to tackle retopo on such a dense character.
So over the course of the week before we started retopology Lee decided to crack a few skulls and sculptover things he found off in our pieces. That for me was my character's face. It was a face I had mentally started veering towards because it matched the silhouette of the body and I thought would make sense. But, it didn't match the actual face in the concept and I wanted to stay true to that as much as possible so Lee shot me back in the right direction.
Now this is my first full female character so female faces aren't my strong suit in any sense. In my mind I wanted to give her a very strong looking face that matched the style of the character, unfortunately this started to veer off to far.
Here is the sculpt over that Lee provided, definitely made a huge improvement and it was a blast to see him make adjustments and minor movements to really change the overall shape of it.
Here isthe face I have currently, I might make some minor adjustments and clean it up a bit overall but I'm really happy with it so far. I'd love to see what you guys think could still be adjusted!
Should also be done with retopology and UVing soon, I usually suck at having clean UV's and will probably post again once I'm on that point!
Minor tweaks there but I think your cheekbones are slightly too high and protruding too much, it shouldn't stick out of the line between the bottom of the jaw and where the cranium starts to curve at the top from front view. Also the shadow that it creates on the cheeks should point more or less towards the corners of the mouth exactly like in the sculptover.
Apart from what Amaury mentioned I'd like to add that the backside of the jaw (below the ear) needs to be moved forward a little bit. It appears to be protruding backwards and jaws don't really do that.
And it looks like the ears are hanging a little low. Slightly moving them up might help.
Of course since both those things are covered up it doesn't really matter in this case lol.
As far as color scheme goes, the concept I chose had no final colors to it so I decided to stick with her original color scheme and go for a combination of gold/gree/brown/red in certain areas and have the green be a kind of focal point tool.
As always I'm up for any CC you guys might have, sorry for the size of the images I grabbed quick screen grabs before posting them up.
Take care!~
I guess I was thinking of ..... more like Elvish Steel. Usually those have blue or green tint to it.
Obviously not the following kind of color, but more like materials, I guess. I dunno....
I got a lot of input as far as color/noise levels also a few tips on how to accomplish a lot in substance. This part has been one of the most enjoyable parts of the entire workshop so far.
Like always any input you might have is beyond appreciated!
I do like the color scheme but I think you need to work on the material separation some more.
Right now all your leathers look the same and all your metals look the same.
Try different roughness/gloss levels on different parts. Make the red leather shinier than the brown leather or vice versa. Try playing with the luminance of your metals (make gold armor brighter than anchor etc).
A trick with digital painting and illustration is to make the image grayscale and look at the value separation and material read because color has a tendency to throw us off. I think the same can be applied to 3D.
I've done a quick and dirty paintover to show what I mean.
Notice how in the original image your values are all kind of in the same range (except for the gem in the middle). After lightening and darkening some areas the different parts become more readable. This is just an example as you may want different local values entirely.
Looking forward to the next update
but I agree with @polymator that It might need some material separation. but my biggest concern if the face, especially the eyes are giving a kind of crazy empty look to her. you can probably fix this in the textures and tweaking some polygons in the lowpoly, Lee can probably help you out even more and go more in depth of what could be tweaked.
here are some of the things i did though:
- increased the size of her pupils so she dosnt look so crazy : P
- added a eyelid shadow on the eye
- added more defined eyelashes
- gave her some eyebrows
- added some AO to her nostrils and mouth/lips.
- defined the lips a bit more, also lowered the contrast some.
- I also pushed her mouth and jaw closer to her nose, this is up to you of course but I think she looks better/more feminine this way.
@lotet whoaaa I didn't see how much it affected her face before that, very rad. I'll need to take some time and give her face a second go around and add in some of those adjustments. Thank you for the draw over it definitely gave her eyes a different type of style.
I should be posting after the end of tomorrow's session, thanks a ton for the input!
I still need to make adjustments to the textures on the weapon and all of the materials are early on the base as well. I also put together a quick pose of her as well, trying to stick to the concept for that.