I've know about polycount since 2009 and I finally decided to submit some artwork. This is more of a journal than a critique thread. I'll make separate posts for critiques.
You know it's funny. It's been about 13 years since I last did some fan art of Rikku from the Final Fantasy X series. Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and tons of different anime have been a huge influence on my style. They're the games that made me want to become a game artist and they're also why I spent 2 years taking Elementary Japanese courses. My goal has still been the same since then, get a work visa and try to work for a Japanese Game Dev.
Square would be cool, but there are other companies I would want to work for too. I'm definitely going to do some 2B fan art after this project, because I literally cried after getting the full ending for Nier:Automata. I've also considered seeing if I can maybe get a contract with Good Smile. I think it would be pretty dope to make figmas every season when there's a new anime that premiers.
This was my entry for Retrogasm 2019. I've seen artists make projects for that competition for quite some time, but I never really joined. (Never thought I could keep up with the competition until recently)
Obviously I didn't finish, but I specifically started a sketchbook so I could show the finishing of the project. (And future projects)
As of right now I'm working on the Bakes for Rikku and this is what the High Poly sculpt looks like at about 80% completion.
I've been baking the character for most of this weekend only to realize that I needed to retopologize her head and hands. (I still can't believe I forgot to do that)
But in my defense, I've been jumping back and forth between, Zbrush & Maya UVing and setting up ID maps for the entire character and all of these assets. Yeah EVERY ASSET HAS IT'S MAPPING SET. Which I only realized was idiotic after doing it. I've made plenty of assets in the past, but I never really sat down and thought about how I would map this out and set up my texture sets.
This is how I've set up my Texture Sets. The reason I'm making the body of the character 1 full Texture Set is because I plan on using this mesh to practice animation and rigging. I original started of learning how to animate back in art school, and now I'm starting to remember how much fun it was making things move.
I'll call this project finished after I've completed 3 new things that I haven't done in character art:
Create a simple dynamic hair system Create natural squash & stretch for the character rig Re-create Rikku's Battle Idle and view a rendered version in UE4
I'm still a few weeks away from completing those 3 goals, but I'm enjoying the new things I've been learning with this project.
After I retopo the head and hands (or during the retopo phase) I'm going to be learning X-gen and modeling out her hair cards in Maya.
I spent a lot of time working on this character while having polypaint turned on. Right now I'm in the process of setting up my texture sets for Substance and I'm doing my baking in Xnormal. I've also set up my scene for my Xgen hair cards and I've made my first pass on this character rig. I'll post a small animation and the look of the hair cards this week. But I'm still retopologizing a few areas so that I can reduce the number of Texture Sets that I'll need to fully texture this full character.
I've learned a lot while working on this character. And the main thing I learned is that the next time I work on a realistic character I can't just have references for a face, I really need to try and get down an accurate interpretation for the character's ethnicity and likeness.
I think I'll spend some time doing portrait sculpts just so I can get better at sculpting different kinds of people.
Replies
You know it's funny. It's been about 13 years since I last did some fan art of Rikku from the Final Fantasy X series. Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and tons of different anime have been a huge influence on my style. They're the games that made me want to become a game artist and they're also why I spent 2 years taking Elementary Japanese courses. My goal has still been the same since then, get a work visa and try to work for a Japanese Game Dev.
Square would be cool, but there are other companies I would want to work for too. I'm definitely going to do some 2B fan art after this project, because I literally cried after getting the full ending for Nier:Automata. I've also considered seeing if I can maybe get a contract with Good Smile. I think it would be pretty dope to make figmas every season when there's a new anime that premiers.
This was my entry for Retrogasm 2019. I've seen artists make projects for that competition for quite some time, but I never really joined. (Never thought I could keep up with the competition until recently)
Obviously I didn't finish, but I specifically started a sketchbook so I could show the finishing of the project. (And future projects)
As of right now I'm working on the Bakes for Rikku and this is what the High Poly sculpt looks like at about 80% completion.
I've been baking the character for most of this weekend only to realize that I needed to retopologize her head and hands. (I still can't believe I forgot to do that)
But in my defense, I've been jumping back and forth between, Zbrush & Maya UVing and setting up ID maps for the entire character and all of these assets. Yeah EVERY ASSET HAS IT'S MAPPING SET. Which I only realized was idiotic after doing it. I've made plenty of assets in the past, but I never really sat down and thought about how I would map this out and set up my texture sets.
This is how I've set up my Texture Sets. The reason I'm making the body of the character 1 full Texture Set is because I plan on using this mesh to practice animation and rigging. I original started of learning how to animate back in art school, and now I'm starting to remember how much fun it was making things move.
I'll call this project finished after I've completed 3 new things that I haven't done in character art:
Create a simple dynamic hair system
Create natural squash & stretch for the character rig
Re-create Rikku's Battle Idle and view a rendered version in UE4
I'm still a few weeks away from completing those 3 goals, but I'm enjoying the new things I've been learning with this project.
After I retopo the head and hands (or during the retopo phase) I'm going to be learning X-gen and modeling out her hair cards in Maya.
After
I spent a lot of time working on this character while having polypaint turned on. Right now I'm in the process of setting up my texture sets for Substance and I'm doing my baking in Xnormal. I've also set up my scene for my Xgen hair cards and I've made my first pass on this character rig. I'll post a small animation and the look of the hair cards this week. But I'm still retopologizing a few areas so that I can reduce the number of Texture Sets that I'll need to fully texture this full character.
I've learned a lot while working on this character. And the main thing I learned is that the next time I work on a realistic character I can't just have references for a face, I really need to try and get down an accurate interpretation for the character's ethnicity and likeness.
I think I'll spend some time doing portrait sculpts just so I can get better at sculpting different kinds of people.