[Artstation AncientCivilization's 3D Game-Character Challenge] 'Commander'

Aveon

Hey all~ I usually keep contest entries constrained to the community the contest takes place on, but I seem to see everyone else share everywhere and thought "well, we're all artists at the end of the day, can't hurt to get as many eyes on my work as possible!" So here I am! Throughout this process please feel free to C&C, I don't really mind if it's harsh critique either, just want to hear peoples thoughts ^_^

For now just sharing the showing the chosen concept and a body proportion draw-over..Also Artstation has twitch-stream integration for this (totally taking advantage of that xD) so the link for that is:

Aveon

Alrighty. First WIP and the reference sheet is done, gotta back off on some of the complex forms of the calve area and make sure I'm not destroy anatomy on her thighs, but the blockout is getting there!

I know there's not much at the moment, but please share with me any C&C. I want to make sure the silhouette is on point before I get too far in.

Aveon

Aveon

Day 2 down, refining the blockout,

Aveon

I got an opportunity to get some wonderful critique from UnicornDev on her twitch streams, and it really helped to correct some of my proportions. Legs were too thick on the Z Axis, shoulders were too far back and spine was broken, the torso was too long and the legs were too short/wrong proportion. So adjusted that, added the blockout of the skirt and cape, and got through the plates for the helmet (mostly). Gotta clean it up a bit and do a retopo to be sub-d, projected, and sculpted on.

Even got my schedule set up xD

As always please feel free to C&C!

Aveon

Day 4! Made some mistakes with my workflow on this so went a little slower than I wanted to, but gettin there! Front plate and the Pauldron are made, the branches are pretty much entirely blocked in.

Aveon

Didn't post day 5 because I didn't make substantial progress, mainly just cleaned up/finished the helmet block-out, and same with the body. Today though I'd like to share the current sculpt progress I have on her torso, I'm trying to hit all the marks and details that the concept can provide before I start sculpting to give the drift-wood shapes. As always feel free to C&C!

kanga

Looks great! Like the way you sculpted the branches on the helmet. Looking forward to seeing this one develop.

Aveon

Thanks @kanga  Slowly just cleaning the body still, making smaller design choices to fill in the gaps of the concept. Ultimately would be nice if by the end of the weekend the body is done, maybe with the exception of the helmet.

CrazyMoon

Hey man nice to see you are doing the artstation challenge. Good luck! I like where this is headed Keep it up! 

Aveon

@CrazyMoon
Thanks mate! I felt I under-performed in the ArtWar (particularly on design) so gotta redeem myself now haha. Thanks for the compliment

Aveon

Made some adjustments to the torso, glutes, and legs, but mainly just showing the left shin is done on clean-up, hoping to get the other shin, both arms, and the pauldron done tomorrow. If I can have the main body clean up done before the end of the weekend I can start experimenting with methods for doing the cape! Probably gonna be nanomesh, but you can also render geo on fibermesh, so I'll see if there's a way to make that rendered geo permanent, or at the very least may use reeeeaallly low rez fibermesh to nanomesh the petals on. 

Aveon

Computer froze at one point and lags at 6 mil poly's in zbrush (never thought I'd see the day where a 970 msi gaming motherboard, GTX 960 TI, and 16gb of ram gets out performed by a 5 year old mac...smh. I'm beginning to think the 960 GPU isn't compatible with a true 4k monitor). Even so though the arms and the other leg are fully cleaned up! unfortunately didn't see Satoshi's crtique on my artstation thread till this upload, so I'll have to try out that edit next session (may take a break tomorrow). 

As always please feel free to C&C!

Aveon

I got an amazing critique from Anthony Weisheng Lee. and he helped me to realize that in my attempt to accentuate femininity I had created a flat silhouette in the profile and 3/4s, and additionally created some proportion problems I had overall on the character and particularly the helmet. The man gave me a full essay breakdown for crying-out-loud xD; by far one of, if not the most, in depth critique I've gotten and I'm highly appreciative for it. Make sure you check him out! https://www.artstation.com/artist/weisheng

Aveon

Helmet is cleaned up, final bits of the concept shape are in except I still need to do the breastplate difference that Alexandra pointed out, just thinking of the easiest way to work that in, since she's already zremeshed (may just dynamesh -> dup -> zremesh -> project all over again haha).

Also tested today to see how Parallax + Normals would look in MT3 for the petals, it worked surprisingly well! The problem however was when viewed from the X/Z axis (if the card faces are mainly showing on the Y axis) then you could see a repetition of the texture, creating this weird "heat haze in the distance" kinda look, where the petal showed twice. So unfortunately can't proceed with that method, was still pretty cool to learn though. As always feel free to C&C ^_^

Elithenia

Looking great!
Got some nice shapes going.

Good luck on the challenge! Looking forward to seeing your progress. 

Aveon

@Elithenia Thank you! I'll need all the luck I can get haha.

Moving forward with the petals, most of todays stream was retopo'ing the base cape for both sculpting and game-rez purposes, as well as illustrating the workflow idea for the cape, identifying the different petal shapes in the concept, and blocking a lowrez plane shape to start the petal sculpts for use in the sculpture and baking. Plan on doing an 8 hour stream tomorrow, so hoping to make some good progress on it! 

Elithenia

Well it seems like you're doing very well! 
I'll follow your progress  

Aveon

@Elithenia Thank you! I appreciate it ^_^.

Did the cape over the past 3 days and it feels good to finally have the petals on there . Feel like I need to edit the hips, but also need to do a final sculpting pass for the drift-wood look and work on the branches and belt, then may make the weapon before retopo.

As always please feel free to tell me what ya think! Critiques are OK too!

Aveon

I wound up getting a lot of good critiques from various artists, but the one thing that was consistent throughout what everyone said, was "The petals look too heavy, they look too uniform". So that's what today's stream was; breaking up silhouette, thinning out the bottom of the cape a bit, and redoing the left shoulder (really didn't like it from the front). Think it's an improvement but still not quite there, also gotta get the collar petals to go over the medial edge of the right pauldron.
C&C welcomed here.

Aveon

Petals are done in my book as far as sculpting and placement, though will probably need to inflate the cards for them a bit once the bake is done.

Weapons in, and I'm 1/2 through the wood pass (though I need to deepen some of the cuts) C&C always welcomed.

Aveon

Woot woot! Finished for the contest, gonna take a day or two off (worked from friday to 5:40am monday without taking breaks (except for alittle sleep) but then I want to improve her textures a bit, maybe fool around with lighting more, create a base, and get her in unreal to do some VFX for falling petals and maybe get the cape to blow in the wind. Anywho feel free to C&C!

Elithenia

This came out really nice! Nice work Good luck in the contest

Aveon

Thank you! I saw your entry as well, good stuff! Good luck to you too

Elithenia

Aveon said:

Thank you! I saw your entry as well, good stuff! Good luck to you too

Thank you very much @Aveon I saw your comment on the artstation piece. I can show you what I got from marvelous if you want But mostly things were hand sculpted. 

Aveon

Sure! I asked because I'm trying to formulate a way I can use this tut I saw, but for Stylized work instead of realistic (http://zbrushtuts.com/2016/09/27/the-making-of-re-imagined-ellie/) and knowing you did your cloth in marvelous designer is quite encouraging, I think I may have a good idea how to do it now because of it

Elithenia

Awesome Keep up the good work then!
Marvelous can give you basic wrinkles to work with for stylization. It is just to play around with the settings