[RIOT CREATIVE CONTEST 2017] Lil Slugger Ekko -Gab Schwall

gabdraws

WE DID IT !
 


Hey everyone! Super excited to enter the contest, hoping to learn a few things from the community and sharpen my skills up. My main areas of focus during this project are to work on sculpting and painting the human form better, considering my portfolio currently consists of mostly animal/creature projects.

I will be doing Ekko for this project! 
I want to do a Lil Slugger Ekko skin, similar to Trundle's already existing Lil Slugger skin.
 Here are my reference images for Ekko

And some baseball reference images I will be using.

I will update the post with concept sketches shortly!

gabdraws

Started roughing out my concepts. Not particularly in love with the baseball bat, so I'll do another round of concepts for that! 
Would love some thoughts and opinions!  

GravityBwlast

Hey Gab, glad to see you jumped in with this cool idea!
4 is probably the best shape for the hair/cap, I like it

AnthonyAnimation

Cool! I'm with Antoine on the hair. It's pretty iconic to his character so it's nice to see it outside of the hat. As for the bat, I think his academy skin is maybe a cricket bat? But it's a good reference. 

Something that may help come up with ideas is thinking about what tier of skin it would be in game. 750, 1350? Adding a hint of technology to the bat would allow for nice color contrast and a base for vfx.

gabdraws

Working on blocking out the body and mapping out some porportions. But wanted to share a WIP!

lucak

You are missin g the real Lil Slugger in your references

 

gabdraws

Sculpt update! Fixed somethings porportionally with the face, and worked on the shoes. Currently working on the baseball mit! 

gabdraws

Another sculpt update! Thinking about redoing the shoes, not quite happy with them.
Next step is to figure out the color scheme and do a paintover of this, so the concept gets solidified. as well as make some logo designs for the "team"! 

gabdraws

I made some quick color schemes. I actually really like #2.
Thoughts?

yararstss

Yeh, I prefer the second one too. Its getting realy nice gabdraws!

gabdraws

Pics of the wireframe! Originally I had the face and the shoes much denser in polycount, but I cut it down pretty significantly. Do you guys think thats fine, or should i remove more of the loops?
Current polycount is at 8,018 tris

JunkieKong

Looking good! I reckon definitely cut more polys out of the shoes, remember for a top-down game like League the feet are pretty small on screen and don't need much detail. Look at some wireframes of the actual characters and you'll see what I mean. The ballpark tri-count for the game models seems to be around 6-7k (without weapons). The mouth could probably be simplified a little more too.
Also don't forget to put in the necessary edge loops in the fingers for proper deformation, two loops per joint should do it.

(Forgive the terrible paintover)

gabdraws

Edited the topolgy and cut out some loops. 
Thanks for the feedback @junkiekong ! Originally I had the single loops with the fingers because Project: Ekko 's skin only had a single loop
( https://www.artstation.com/artwork/m1Yy9 ) but I went ahead and added extra loop since it wouldnt hurt

JunkieKong

Nice one, yeah I had a look at that Ekko model and see what you mean, seems weird to me for fingers to be like that but I guess if you don't need any extreme poses like a clenched fist you can get away with it. The topology page on the wiki here has some good examples about edgeloops for deformation if you're interested http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Limb_Topology

gabdraws

unwraps

gabdraws

AO bakes plus some handpainted highlights, and a black and white gradient

gabdraws

flat colors

GravityBwlast

Hey Gab, this is looking cool, the bakes look clean and the color scheme fits well with the sports skins (thinking ezreal's and blitzcrank's soccer ones).
Hope you'll finish on time, you're getting there! Cheers

gabdraws

@GravityBwlast thanks Antoine! definetly going to be a race against the clock, going to be some late nights!

gabdraws

Some paint updates. 

gabdraws

Another update! Fixed the eyes to make him look more like Ekko  

gabdraws

He has a bat now! :O almost done texturing. Just got a little more cleaning up to do on the sash and the baseball mitt.

GravityBwlast

Very nice!
I'd reduce a bit the AO and tint it, cause atm it makes the darks really black, and also darken the shoes a bit, and play with a slight color dodge layer on the face/bust area to make it pop more.
Good job anyways!
Also, remember that the character has to be unlit!

Zerahtai

Does it?  LoL champs aren't unlit.  They have a top-down gradient and they have highlights all over them from top-down lighting.

gabdraws

@GravityBwlast thanks! Ill work on all that : )
@Zerahtai im not sure the lighting situation in the game itself, but the rules do call for unlit renders.

GravityBwlast

League characters are unlit in-game. Any lighting information (gradient map, AO, point light, fake emissive...) is baked/painted in the diffuse texture.

TheIceWolves

@Zerahtai They are Unlit, but some champions like xayah and rakan has specific specular shaders also detail map. Mostly they only use diffuse map, all the other details such as reflections and light fx are faked on the diffuse texture.

gabdraws

After a long night, I taught myself how to rig a character! 
The rig is pretty ghetto, but i think itll work for the renders  

gabdraws

WE DID IT!