Arcade Fiora

NickWend

Hi. As you can tell from the thread title, I'll be doing an Arcade skin for Fiora. I'm pulling some inspiration from Hyper Light Drifter as a recent game that plays in the retro-gaming nostalgia space, and one that I feel fits Fiora's style of gameplay particularly well.

Here's my base paintover for what my initial idea might look like in-game and what I would be modeling towards:

While other Arcade skins have accessories in the form of a GBA imitation or a gameboy imitation, I felt like it'd be amusing to have the sword hilt be made out of the unusual shape of the N64 controller. I will probably end up making the design of the controller a bit different from the above to avoid being too close and to make more readable details than the tiny buttons I have now. 

A sketchy paintover of Fiora's model in turnaround:

Not sure how I want the blade of the sword yet, I lean towards the blade being energy like in the in-game paintover. Might want to come up with something more fun to do with the headphones as is the case for some of the other Arcade skins, Riven and Ahri in particular. Initially thought about giving her a VR visor type thing, but felt like it might come too close to PROJECT's visor. Also liked how the gaming glasses looked a bit better, and Fiora does have a history of skins with glasses, so I felt that was fitting. 

I'm not super certain of myself when it comes to color, so any feedback on that would be good. I really like the cyan and magenta that shows up a lot in Hyper Light Drifter and feel like those colors are fairly evocative of the retro aesthetic in modern media, so I kind of went with those. I may want to have the left hand/arm be more different from the right, with more of an actual glove for the powerglove type thing I have going on for that side. 

And here's my reference sheet at the moment, which may grow as I move forward. It's mostly just the other Arcade skins and Fiora's other models for reference when I start modeling for now. 

NickWend

Lost a lot of time over Thanksgiving time and then had to take my laptop apart and put it back together, a nerve-wracking process for someone inexperienced in that area like me, and one that ate up a few more days. So here's an update of where I'm at with the beginnings of my sculpt. Hopefully I'll be able to get a lot more done in the coming days and get back on track. 

Face sculpt 

Needs at least a marker of where the ears would be so I sit the headphones at the right place, but I think the face shapes are starting to look right based on her splash art. Obviously very rough hair shape.

Body (not much done on this yet)

Spent a bunch of time on the anatomy to give myself a decent base to use for other things in the future since I didn't have one yet, any critique on that element would be great as it will be a recurring resource for future projects. Could still use some polish (and hands/feet) of course, but I also wanted to get started on the actual contest project. Just started extracting the clothing shapes, haven't gotten much past that just yet. 

NickWend

Just some progress, made the legs longer because they were looking off, probably need to look at the folds and whatnot again. Obviously still need hands and the shoes. 

NickWend

Currently when I try to post with images it now tells me that I haven't been around long enough to post links, so I'm going to try to just attach the images here. 
I haven't updated in far too long, but I have a lot of progress. First off, based on feedback from some friends/fellow contestants, I remade the head in a more stylized fashion, referencing IronStylus's sculpts for Fiora's visual rework. See attached Head Turnaround image.
Then I adjusted body elements to fit stylization and added more details/refinements. See attached Sculpt Turnaround image.
Finally, I made the sword, see attached sword turnaround image. 

Then I entered retopology and UVs in 3D-Coat. See attached Fiora Topology Wireframe image and UV snap image.

And then I moved into painting in 3D-Coat, and this is where I'm at now, see attached Painted turnaround image. 

Any feedback on painting is especially welcome as this is the first time I've done a hand-painted model. I've been referencing the Dawnbringer Riven and Project Katarina models from Trevor Carr on artstation for how things are painted for League. I think the hair needs to be cleaned up more. The texture is in tga with alphas to get the cape shape and the transparency on the glasses, which seems to be within the realm of possibility based on models with transparency in League.