Arenanet Character Art Test - Norn Armor

Avelyne

Hi everyone! I started working on the Arenanet Art Test recently and I have finished blocking in most of the high poly. I've played Guild Wars 2 for awhile and I really like their art style, but I haven't made many characters in this style previously and I would appreciate any advice or critiques. Thanks!



Concept

Avelyne

Here's my progress so far! I've worked on detailing and fixing the proportions

Alemja

Looking good so far! The sculpting is pretty clean, there are a few things that could be touched up though, here is a paint over for you:


I hope you find this helpful! If you have any other questions or are looking for more advice, don't be afraid to ask me, I've helped with a ton of Anet art tests in the past

RocketBryan

Really strong work, @Avelyne, she's looking quite nice. I'm really liking the slightly exaggerated lip in the interwoven armor pieces. Helps give them a bit more weight and should help keep them from being too subtle in your textures and normals.

I'm gonna go ahead and second pretty much all of Alemja's suggestions. I would also reinforce the recommendation for detailing out some additional anatomy for her, especially any part of her that can be seen between the outfit, mainly around her midsection. The character concept is implying she's a member of Guild Wars' Norn racial type and those Viking/Norse analogs are seriously built! Now I wouldn't say you have to hulk her out by any means, but I think your model would be better for it if you devoted some sculpting to bulking her up just a bit more and lay in some solid musculature. I actually ran across this reference image just the other day and this is pretty much what comes to mind when I think of the Norn race...or female vikings types in general. Again, I don't think you need to go this far, but perhaps somewhere between the supermodel figure you have and this wrecking ball of a woman pictured below.

Avelyne

Here's an update on my progress!



@Alemja Thank you for the feedback and paintover, I really appreciate it! Great advice! I made the arms longer, added some muscle, tried to fix the knee area and face and worked on the shoes. I will definitely let you know if I have any questions, thank you so much for your help

@RocketBrian Thank you for your kind words and for the reference picture! It was very helpful. I definitely agree with you and Alemja about the anatomy and that she should look much stronger. I tried to build up more muscle around her midsection and back and I hope it reads better. Thank you for your advice  

Avelyne

Here's an update on my texturing progress! I'm using 2048x2048 maps right now, but will scale them down once I am done. 

Alemja

Looking pretty good so far! The next step for the textures is to get a little bit of wear and tear in there, you already have some nice shading and gradients, you just have to add a little bit of history to it and it will look awesome!

Avelyne

@Alemja Great advice, thank you I tried to add some more wear and tear to the textures. I hope it reads better now. 

Here are some final render shots and wireframes. Critiques and feedback always welcome!

slosh

This turned out great!  Probably one of the better takes on this concept that I have seen.  Nice job!  My main crit would be that her waist feels too thin.

Alemja

I think your renders may have been sharpened a little too much, I would tone it down a bit. Slosh mentioned the waist being too thin and I agree, it also really suffered quality wise when the textures where reduced in size. I think your noise also is a little too uniform all around, it works for the metal but for the cloth I think I would tone it down a bit. The glossiness feels kind of similar on everything, you didn't have that problem on the previous render, I think the added noise might be causing it. Even though the test doesn't call for gloss maps, you can still create one or use your spec map in the gloss slot to help material definition, it's a little hacky but it gets the job done.

If you can manage to make those tweaks, you will have a very strong art test!

Avelyne

@Slosh Thank you for your kind words and feedback! I agree with you that her waist feels too thin. I went back in and made some adjustments to make  her waist wider.

@Alemja Thank you for your feedback! It was very helpful. I lowered the sharpen and tried to fix up the quality of the textures. I agree that the materials weren't reading as well as before so I tried to tone down the noise and improve the material definition. Hope it reads better now!

Winstone

Hey man! Looking great so far! From what I can tell in your geo renders, it looks as though you have an alpha and unused geo on the negative space of her armor. You might be better off to save yourself some poly's and delete them. 

Great work man. Keep it up.

Alemja

Agree with @Winstone it's uneeded geometry that you could probably use somewhere else if you wanted to.
The textures also look much better! Good job!

Avelyne

@Winstone Great advice, thank you for pointing that out and for the paintover! I wasn't able to delete some of the polygons at the top because it was removing parts of my texture, but I deleted the polygons at the bottom. 

@Alemja I am glad they look better, thank you and I really appreciate all of your help throughout this process