Cubebrush ArtWar 2 - Literati Demoness
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Hello fellow humans!
I hopped into the ArtWar 2 Challenge a few weeks ago and I thought I'd get a PC thread up and running too. This is a bit of a cross-post, but I would love to get feedback from both the Polycount & CubeBrush communities! You can never have too much feedback, right?! ...Well, professional experience has proven that incorrect, but the sentiment stands.
I'll be posting updates both here and my CubeBrush thread as well as the Twitters
_________________________PROJECT COMPLETE!
I hopped into the ArtWar 2 Challenge a few weeks ago and I thought I'd get a PC thread up and running too. This is a bit of a cross-post, but I would love to get feedback from both the Polycount & CubeBrush communities! You can never have too much feedback, right?! ...Well, professional experience has proven that incorrect, but the sentiment stands.
I'll be posting updates both here and my CubeBrush thread as well as the Twitters
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Replies
Right, so on to the character herself!
For this challenge, I'd like to take on the subject of demons...but perhaps with a bit of a twist. All armies need an R&D department, even an army of darkness. So I'd like to introduce you to my Librarian Demoness, Ezri - succubus book-keeper, corrupted loremaster, and hellion researcher.
Our little hell-spawn here began her life centuries ago as a devoted scholar of lore for the Light, but perhaps got a bit side-tracked somewhere along the way. It is said that those who spend their days in an endless quest for knowledge will inevitably uncover secrets. Delve too deeply into those forbidden secrets, you might find yourself faced with the Dark. And those few who study the Dark for too long... are doomed to become a part of it, corrupted eternally by the journey into the void.
Ezri was totally, definitely, for sure only trying to look up a decent spell to cure insomnia...who knew it would end in demonic corruption?! Of course, the following centuries as a literary succubi may have turned her into a bit of a perv, but she's still a dedicated (if a bit eccentric) researcher. Trust her, she only reads those dirty books for the articles...
Reference Board:
I'm not an expert on anatomy so I probably can't give too much input there, but I think you can probably sharpen the chin a little bit more if you want to go a little closer to your original concept. Her eyes could also be angled down a little, but both of those things might not be too big of a change in the end. I did a quick manipulation / paint-over to help explain what I mean. I think a little stronger angles will give her a more sultry look.
My only other suggestion would be to try out one of your other hair options (if you hadn't already). Not that there's anything wrong with her hair style now (and it's still WIP so I definitely might need to take this back later) but I think you created a bunch of other really interesting styles that could frame her face even better. I think E, J, or K would all give off a good librarian look.
Damn dude, you are right on the money with those face edits! I am definitely making those changes - she's looking great with just your minor tweaks. Thank you very much! And the hair is actually something I'm tackling as we speak. The ArtWar deadline got pushed back a bit, so I'm going to take a little extra time to try out 2 or 3 styles. In fact, you actually picked two of my favorites from that sheet too so I'll block those out and then make a decision from there. Cheers, mate!
@Finalhart
Thanks man, I appreciate that!
BTW from who are the bottom right corner illustrations?
Thanks!
@Tits
Thank you! I feel like I can't work on her fast enough, I'm just so excited to see her realized!
@tierzilla
Thanks mate! The artist's name is Phobs and I absolutely adore her work. I've got a whole mess of her art saved away for future sculpts.
Dropping a quick update on some hair tests based on the sketches posted earlier. My thought was to do something a little more straight-forward like A. But now I'm kinda glad I took the time to block these out as I've kind of fallen in love with the A+B combo. Might be a little too much though as you can't see that nice transition from the temples into the large horns. I'm so conflicted!
Looking forward to see it done!
@Bar0n
Thanks mate! Gonna try and tackle the hair today, so I might drop another update fairly soon.
(Earlier WIP turnaround)
Also threw together a quick test the other day for her eventual body tattoos. They're super rough and I was initially a bit concerned whether they would translate well, but I'm diggin' the look so far.
Character development is on point, mate. Outstanding work!
Thanks man! I bet she'd prefer the term 'spicy', but I'm willing to bet the other demons use 'juicy' behind her back.
Had a request to see some of the base sculpt sans color so I'll add that too.
I'm also VERY new to the process of producing gifs, but popping ZBrush turnarounds into PS to export out is fairly straightforward. Anyone know of other methods that works well? PS tends to spit out fairly large gif file sizes even after optimizing.
I can't wait to see the lowpoly!
The bobbies are imo a little bit too big and makes me feel she's losing balance, but might also be personal taste. Super clean otherwise and nice stylization.
Pentagrams corsets FTW! \m/
Thank you as always, Alemja!
@dGreenberg
Thanks man! That's an interesting point. Now that I look at it, she is kinda looking a bit girraffe-like. I'll play around with it, but I may just need to lower her head just a tiiiiiiiny bit. Hopefully that'll be all she needs.
@GravityBwlast
Thanks again, dude! Hoping for the best on your Riot Challenge entry - I love that little guy!
She definitely is a little...big. I usually stay fairly restrained when it comes to female anatomy, so I'm using Ezri here as a bit of experiment to push towards a bit more of the silly/sexy proportions. It kinda suits the succubus character type so it does serve some purpose as well, but it's a good thing she has a nice long tail to keep her from tipping over while being so top heavy.
This may be the last update until the finish line as I really need to focus. Aside from one or two tiny cleanup spots, all of her highpoly work should be 100% done. I'm currently cruising through her retopo phase, but I wanted to try out a few composite renders from ZBrush to try out a similar method I saw another artist use. I need to just bite the bullet one of these days and pick up Keyshot to get some decent clay renders done - it'd be so much faster.
There's a number of other props besides the base and her book here, but they may or may not make the deadline, we'll have to see. I can say that whoever opens this book is probably gonna have a bad time....or maybe a good one, I don't judge.
Also you definitely made the right choice shortening the neck instead of thickening it, so great call. Keep on killing it!
Thanks man! Yeah, I waffled a bit on the neck and I still made a few tiny fixes that aren't represented in those renders. The tattoos actually helped balance out the longer neck a bit, kinda filled it in.
The renders are actually just some basic ZBrush BPR render maps. I messed with some of the layer settings in Photoshop when compositing them all together. Not entirely sure I'd use the same method again though - I think you can achieve similar results in something like Keyshot without all the hassle of compositing render layers. The basic AO and Shadow settings for the ZBrush BPR were borrowed in part from another artist. Tweaked them a bit afterwards - probably don't need the 'rays' that high for a basic render.
Hah! Considering a number of the artists I follow...I am 100% okay with that.
@slosh
Thanks mate! The deadline for entries is February 26th 2018 @ 11:59pm PST, so we have just over two weeks to wrap everything up. I am REALLY racing to finish her on time. Might have to cut a few corners where I can and then refine a bit afterward.
Amazing work!
Hah, thanks mate! I sincerely wish I had the skill set to mentor other artists, but I feel like I'm really still learning as well. I might look into producing some tutorials in the near future, but until then I'd be happy to answer any questions though!
@jpr @Wazikhiel @adrxzero
Thanks so much you guys!
I was a bit worried that I wasn't going to quite make the deadline for the ArtWar, but it looks like the deadline got pushed back slightly and I'm super stoked. Gonna make sure that extra time goes into really polishing her textures. I'll try and post an update soon with some Marmo renders - I'm tweaking her bakes right now.
She does indeed! I whipped up a fun little mini-bio in the second post here - Her name is Ezri ('Ehz-ree').
...Although there's been some suggestion that her full title is "Ezri the Thiccubus" >:)
Can't wait to see the finished version
Of all the entries i've seen so far, yours is the one that I like the most !
Wow, thank you so much man! I'm thrilled you like her so much and I really appreciate the kind words!
@PatrickSF
Thanks dude! Heh, not a fan of the nerd-girl look, I presume?
And don't worry, fellow polygonal denizens, I am still alive!
I'm racing through the various technical bits, so I haven't been putting together updates like I normally would, but Ezri here is looking smokin'! Grabbed a quick Marmoset shot from the early texturing stages that I thought was pretty neat. This is the first pass on (and first time trying to make) candles. Messing with the shader effects is a lot of fun!
Still a metric f*** ton of work to do still, but she's hummin' along nicely.
I like the candle effects you have too, feels cozy
I submitted just in time for the ArtWar deadline on Monday, but I ended up really pressed for time for the final renders and wasn't happy with the results. Decided to go back and fix a few issues with her rig, re-pose, and render everything out again. Time for one last image drop give Ezri the proper treatment she deserves.
Large image batch incoming!
This project was an absolute blast to work on and I am incredibly grateful for everyone's support and feedback along the way. You guys are simply amazing and I am blown away by shear amount of epic artwork that has gone into the ArtWar challenge. I'm going to get to working on a bit of a post-mortem write up for myself to make some notes on areas of improvement...and then it's back to work.
Up next: reboot my Red Witch project! She's already pretty far along so I'm excited to see where she ends up.
Thank you all once again.
Thanks so much, guys!
So far they just have the first round of finalists picked for both 2D and 3D catagories. I am incredibly grateful to have made it through the first round - there are just so many amazing pieces, I'm not sure if I could even pick a favorite!
Thanks man! Yeah, that demon girl is a cutie for sure. I'm not very familiar with the artist. but she goes by SootySheep. She's got some great stuff and I think I stumbled across her work from finding this particular demon girl image.