Cyber - Overwatch Style Character

theStoff

I'm making a character from a design a friend made. We thought it would be fun to go for an overwatch-like asthetic. It's probably hard to tell without textures but I'm curious if anyone feels the model is hitting the mark or if I'm off. We also are trying to include some samurai inspired armor pieces.

theStoff

Got to low poly and textures. Still not done but progress is being made 

GravityBwlast

Hi @theStoff,
this is looking pretty nice!

Here are my thoughts to improve it towards an Overwatch style:
- The skirt design is way too blocky to fit in Overwatch; you may want to add thickness and play with large bevels. Breaking the triangle border shapes with smaller ones may also be a solution.
- The chest area may benefit from having small twists here and there. The golden line can be broken with angles so it's less boring.
- 2 materials are not selling it in my opinion: the metal one on the tiled skirt, which looks too realistic and flat at the same time due to the lack of geometry in the base design for it. And the dark red pattern in the belly area, which is too detailed/too high-frequency. I think this area should be less charged so your eyes can rest over there.

Other than this, I really like the face, anatomy, hair, and tattoo texture. Good start anyway.

Hope this helps, cheers!

RocketBryan

Incoming wall of text. 

Interesting direction mate, there's a lot to digest here. I do think there's quite a bit of work that could be done to improve your character pretty dramatically, but it looks to be pretty late in the process to make any large changes and I'm only just now seeing this. Regardless I have a few thoughts for you to consider (either to go back and completely redo or to learn from for the future).

Unfortunately I think one of the major flaws you're dealing with a sub-par concept from the beginning. So even with perfect execution you are never going to land on higher ground than where the original concept falls short. Granted I can't see the reference you're pulling from, but I'm assuming you're remaining faithful to your friend's concept piece. That being the case the primary concern here is a substantial lack of cohesive direction in the character's original design. The costume inspiration is all over the place, individual pieces do not mesh with each other, there are no repeated themes or materials, and a general shape language is lacking. Let's go over a few examples.

• You have samurai-esque leg/skirt plates, but there's no real demonstration how that armor is actually constructed and it lacks the volume/bulk that kind of armor structure would typically have. A defining element of Overwatch's style is the large, bulky armor shapes that convey both weight and dictate the overall silhouette. That aesthetic should be taken into consideration for any armor you construct.
• Each individual component seems like they were designed in a vacuum. The shoulder, chest padding, skirt, shorts & midsection, leggings, and boots all look like they're from different characters and she simply riffled through the miscellaneous  "costume bin" at the Overwatch base to put her outfit together. The scaled shorts/midsection is from some kind of knight...bodysuit? The chest padding could be a fencers top. The shoulder and shoes are neat and definitely fit in a near-future cyberpunk setting. She's rockin some cool tribal tattoos, but there's nothing about her that speaks to that influence. The leggings are ambiguous and don't connect strongly to any other part (although secondary parts like that can be kept subdued). Etc.
• There are 7 different materials on display, but nothing is repeated. I see copper plates, fabric leggings, padding, bare-metal shoulders, cloth arm-wraps, scale mail, etc.  All interesting materials individually, but together it further reinforces a breakdown in cohesion between parts.
• Beyond the oversized skirt, there's nothing that hugely identifies the character in a silhouette lineup. Overwatch borrowed one of strongest traits of Team Fortress: you can easily identify characters (and their roles to a lesser extent) based purely off their silhouette. Scrappy here is just a girl in a skirt. 
• Something slightly more subjective, but the overall costume feels oddly anachronistic - meaning she looks like she was a cyberpunk hacker thrown back in time and had to construct armor in an age of samurai....knights? That anachronism isn't necessarily a fault by itself as McCree is actually a great example of that same dichotomy - old western cowboy infused with cybernetics and tech. The issue here is that I cannot tell what your character does or how she fights, whereas McCree communicates both his personality and the fact that he's a gunslinger based purely on how he's dressed. 

Phew! That's a lot to cover, but you also have a lot of strengths here. Your anatomy is working quite well, and I think you're REALLY close on your head/hair sculpt (it's a little hard to tell without closeups). Your modeling/sculpting execution on individual parts is also quite good and her boots look spot-on Overwatch. I took a moment to sketch out a few ideas based on the strongest areas of your design. I tried to borrow a bit from Overwatch's Hanzo for some of the samurai inspiration, but this is assuming you were considering more of a swordswoman concept to begin with. Regardless, it helps illustrate a bit how you might harmonize all the various parts of the model - big shapes, small pockets of detail vs. large areas of rest, cohesive and repeated materials use. The biggest challenge for you would be to find a way to blend the traditional samurai armor patterns into something that looks futuristic and techy (ex. expanding her 'back' implants into connecting with her powered armor).



A lot to take in, and I totally understand if you'd prefer to call this one done and move on instead, but at the very least let this be a great learning experience on the value of picking a strong concept design. Or barring that, finding ways to improve and bolster an existing inspiration piece.

Cheers!

Eric Chadwick

Kudos for the in-depth critique!

theStoff

Thanks you so much @GravityBwlast and @Rocket Brian !

I wish I could respond with as much depth as you both provided. It's too bad I didn't have this input earlier on but they are great points that I'd love to try out. My team for this little project wants to move forward so I may just have to keep this is mind for future work but if I get the chance I might go back and apply this. 

Thanks again!

Chimp

@rocket brian thats a commendable post, nice substantial crits  

RocketBryan

@theStoff No worries at all, mate! As I mentioned before, I figured it was a little late for that kind of heavy feedback. I just got a little excited because I immediately saw the potential for your character. I'm just happy to hear it was at least helpful in some small way. Looking forward to perhaps seeing more from this project.

Just out of curiosity, do you have an image of the original concept? I'd actually be interested to see what the original inspiration was.

theStoff

@Rocket Brian Well I felt I couldn't come back with at least acting on something . Again your input was great. Decided I would at the very least try sculpting and if I get nice results I'll take it back to final. So here's what I've gotten to. Just a start.



Also here's the very original design. We did change a few things after I started modelling to try to match the style better. But it gives an idea of how we started.

RocketBryan

Oh Neat! It's already interesting to see some of those larger shapes go down. I still think you're gonna have a real challenge on your hands for translating and integrating the armored parts to smoothly flow with her cybernetics, but I believe in you!

That concept is actually enormously helpful for figuring out how you navigated to where you did. She's definitely almost got a Kimiko Ross from Dresden Codak vibe going on. Bit of a steampunk aesthetic in there too. In fact I could see you taking this all the way with the steampunk influences as you already have a lot of the markers for it in the concept. The armored, copper/brass skirt there feels almost DaVinci-esque. That would obviously invalidate a lot of my previous breakdown, but if it makes for a stronger character I say go for it. 

theStoff

Yeah there's still work to be done You make a good point about the steam punk aesthetic although that wasn't our initial intent. I feel it helps as far as learning goes to try to hit the look we were aiming for. At the very least it's fun to experiment!