[WIP] SoulStealer Bard

Tishj

Hi all!

I recently picked up a personal project I started back when I was still in school, which was a little too ambitious at the time.

This amazing concept art made by RiotPenguin got me so excited!!
Concept by the amazingly skilled RiotPenguin^

This is the sculpt I used for baking and retopo


Lowpoly (13.3k tris, still a little high mostly because of the cape which I wanted to have a nice and strong silhouette)


Spend some time getting the AO base to a point I was happy with, rebaked the side heads and the cape later though.

Spend a lot of time trying to find a color scheme that worked, couldn't really extract a working color scheme from the concept, it's very saturated and contrast heavy.




And finally these are the most up to date screens of the texture and model.

Please don't be afraid to critique the hell out of it, I'm here to learn, I'm struggling especially with getting a good metal feel for his gauntlets so any advice on that is greatly appreciated ^^

I also rigged him to the bard skeleton and animations and I can walk around with him in Unity, which really helps to test every adjustment I make.

Tishj

Got a nice update on the gauntlets, found some reference of Duy Khanh Nguyen's work on leona's ultimate skin, I'm a lot happier with this version:P

Tishj

these colours might match the concepts better? will probably redo all the textures from scratch, just to get a fresh perspective on everything. haven't really had an idea what to do with it for a while now, though I know it's wrong, I don't know what is exactly wrong or how to fix it

Wakamash

Personally I love it and think you're doing a great job! Could honestly just be a case of needing fresh eyes- maybe take a break for a little bit, work on something new, then come back. The only thing I'm seeing is that the concept uses harsher whites in areas of contrast and a purple glow/tint around the black/dark areas, though that could just be for the sake of visual interest rather than the design itself. Here's how I interperet it:

Tishj

Ooooh I think you're right, I need to be a bit rougher with slapping on the colors and those purple/pinks are really adding so much that I was missing, this helps me immensely with figuring out how to move forward :O thank you so much!

Wakamash

You're so welcome, good luck!

Tishj

I actually already took another pass at the beard, pretty happy with the base of it, needs refining though.
also changed his cloth back to a dark purple, the light green or even dark green isnt working for the cloth imo

Tishj

incorporated the colors into his cape and gauntlets and also added it into the shadows of his body

ChiNguyen

Your beard is coming along pretty nicely. I think if you sharpen the edges on the colors it'll make it pop more like in the concept. Your lighter purple shading before brings out the shape of the armor. The darker purple is blurring the readability of the gauntlets.  Other than that I think you're doing a good job so far.

Tishj

repainted the gauntlets, used mordekaisers metal as a reference which I color corrected to something that more resembled the concept, also did actual painting instead of just following the models topology so I'm proud of that hahaha.
I agree with the beard it needs sharper contrasts/stops and not these smooth gradient overflows everywhere.
Also want to completely redo the helmets/skulls next to his head, maybe even modelwise 

Tishj

update, still a lot to fix and change ~

OutlawHue

Great work matching the concept