Need critiques on sea character.

MujtabaYousuf

HI everyone. Hope you all are having a great day.
This is a character i am working on. He is basically a sea humanoid creature. I am at this stage and need critiques so i can add some more things to him and make him a bit more interesting. When high poly is done, i will retopo it accrding to game res needs. I don't know how this project will go. really hope to complete this.
Thanks 

Dylan_Kowalski

Hello, Really nice start for your project, cool to see more of this in the future. 
You can, actually add a lot of things here, jewels on the head, armor in the head ? make big element and small element can give a nice looking too. Hair ? 

You can make a really stunning stuff with this, keep up the great work dude. 

Brian "Panda" Choi

The design is weak relative to the objective.  There's very little about the charatcer that doesn't allude to much about "sea."

Why does the character have other people's heads on his belt?

Spend more time fessing out the design and sketching out the silhouette before committing to the overall idea.

MujtabaYousuf

Dylan_Kowalski said:

Hello, Really nice start for your project, cool to see more of this in the future. 
You can, actually add a lot of things here, jewels on the head, armor in the head ? make big element and small element can give a nice looking too. Hair ? 

You can make a really stunning stuff with this, keep up the great work dude. 

Thanks for the tips. I am planning to add more things. Let's see where this project goes. Brian "Panda" Choi said:

The design is weak relative to the objective.  There's very little about the charatcer that doesn't allude to much about "sea."

Why does the character have other people's heads on his belt?

Spend more time fessing out the design and sketching out the silhouette before committing to the overall idea.

Thanks for the tip. I actually got a new perspective and started to rethink some main things about how this character is gonna move. whats his story line. Where is he from etc. Never thought that it would actually concern me :O 
This was still in a concept phase . Gonna post more updates on him,  

MujtabaYousuf

so this is the update on him. Made some changes. Added more features sea like. Worked on his hands. 

Brian "Panda" Choi

Silhouette still feels minimally interesting.  I'd REALLY exaggerate the feature.  You've made a good couple forward steps, but push it even more.

MujtabaYousuf

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Silhouette still feels minimally interesting.  I'd REALLY exaggerate the feature.  You've made a good couple forward steps, but push it even more.

yep actually the problem is that i am very bad at getting creative. Guess that's a roadblock that typically some artists have to go through. Gonna post more updates. I am thinking the mouth area of this character needs some tweaking. The foot seems weird to me now lol. Let's see where this goes. 

Brian "Panda" Choi

It's very telling to me that you don't seem to have a reference board full of inspirational or reference images for this.  If you don't have that yet, I'd recommend making that document so you at least know what you're aiming for.

MujtabaYousuf

This is progress so far. Started tweaking mouth and ended up changing whole face lol. Let me know what you guys think. 
Also any more tips on what i can do to improve the design will be great.  

Stefmon

If you're going for a non-human head you made up, I recommend spending a lot of time making it work.
Also, as Brian keeps saying, figure out what this guy is, exactly. Not necessarily his entire story line but at least the visual theme. What images and characters or art styles are you thinking of? Get a bunch of reference images of clothes, characters and whatever else in order to fill your visual library. Keep throwing on simple shapes to make up the character and the outfit, in order to get a silhouette and design. That process is quick and iterative. Don't start detailing until you've got a good design down. 

It's a good start. If you want to just practice sculpting, I would say just start refining the materials of the robe and belt. If you want to make an interesting character design, however, I recommend slowing down and getting a good design, silhouette and visual theme figured out. When making characters without concepts, you have to be a designer as well as a sculptor. 

MujtabaYousuf

This is the update today. I ended up deleting every other accessories because they were not contributing to the overall design. This project is really forcing my ass to work more. I am still struggling with the creative part of me which is becoming a roadblock. (idk how to express it but still...) . Its really hard to start all over again when you know its not working out. 
Gonna post more updates soon. Thanks everyone for the replies. They are really helping me out.  

MujtabaYousuf

Stefmon said:

If you're going for a non-human head you made up, I recommend spending a lot of time making it work.
Also, as Brian keeps saying, figure out what this guy is, exactly. Not necessarily his entire story line but at least the visual theme. What images and characters or art styles are you thinking of? Get a bunch of reference images of clothes, characters and whatever else in order to fill your visual library. Keep throwing on simple shapes to make up the character and the outfit, in order to get a silhouette and design. That process is quick and iterative. Don't start detailing until you've got a good design down. 

It's a good start. If you want to just practice sculpting, I would say just start refining the materials of the robe and belt. If you want to make an interesting character design, however, I recommend slowing down and getting a good design, silhouette and visual theme figured out. When making characters without concepts, you have to be a designer as well as a sculptor. 

btw i am using kuadro. Idk if you guys have heard about it. Its a free tool u can use which kind of places all reference images on top of your desktop. I collect many reference images from google which has helped me improve the overall design of my character. He is basically a sea creature which can swim also. I know the head need more work. If the head design doesn't work I will start all over again with a new design until i get it done. Wish me luck  

Brian "Panda" Choi

You know what you can do is sculpt multiple sketches insstead of hammering out on one scsulpt thinking it's going to be the only one.  Do like 5 seperate approaches, and choose the best looking from them

MujtabaYousuf

I dessigned some new head sketches to see which one works better and ended up with this 


Tell me what do you guys think? I am tired now.

HarlequinWerewolf

I'm digging your progress from the first model, the silhouette looks better already. I would keep pushing the sea theme, look at some fishy references, or sharks if you want to be more predatory. I think your character could benefit from some fins and more streamlining details to help him speed through the water, just look at the Zora in the Legend of Zelda. Maybe try some more paintovers, really play with the silhouette and just through on some shapes. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, move on and try something new. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out!