[OVERWATCH FAN] RAY - by FORTON Christophe

Kinematiks

Hello Polycount! I’ve been playing Overwatch since the very beginning, and I found the art very smooth and stylized, so I wanted to try out a fan made character myself too 😊. I will do my best to produce a full workflow of Ray, the 3 Cushions gran master.

LAST WIP :

RAY’S STORY

NAME: RAY F. CUEMAN

AGE: 66

NATIONALITY: BELGIAN - Brussel

JOB: Professional Carom Player

SPECIALITY: 3 CUSHIONS

ROLE: Tank

Ray is the perfect grandfather, always caring for his family! He is at the same time an international legend in billiard with more than 100 titles in every discipline. Before the big Omni war, he decides to dedicate more time to his family and said once:” No one should have time for politic or conflict, that time should be dedicate to your family, that's all that matters”.

With such a stateman some of his friends decide to turn their back on him and try to find more privileges with government organizations and became puppets.

Still, many people kept good relationship with Ray in every part of the globe. You can always find that convivial grandfather speaking his meaning about everything with a cold beer and a billiard table around.

Now fighting to protect his familiy and closest friends, with his weapons made by our well known Torbjörn, also a great billiard player…

Basic idea:

My main idea came together with Baptiste the second French character and Sigma a Dutch character, so why not a Belgian character? 😊 I thought that I could use some inspiration from my own Belgian-Brussel experience 😊 – In Belgium we have chocolate, “French”? fries, Waffles, Beer, but also the best 3 Cushion players of the world and of course the Legend himself ( I let you find out by yourself :-) ). So, I wanted to mix out some typical Brussel’s grandpa style – sandals, socks, hat… with that amazing sport: Billiard (Carom, 3 Cushion ). So his main weapon is of course his cue stick, but he can throw Carom balls as well!

DOODLING :

Some early sketches I made

I will go for this one but I still have some details to polish of course :-)

Don't hesitate to give me some feedback or advice :-) ( and sorry for my english :-) )

Kinematiks

Hi ! 

I know it is the 3D thread,  and myself, can't wait to post the first 3D art I will produce, but still first thing first, I had so many possibilities, so I had to make a choice... and like Ray would say : Choosing is loosing or something like that  

Here different color concept I try :


Trying a "beauty shot" 



I am not entirely convinced by the proportions of the modelsheet actually, will have to check that out...

DavidCruz

You can ignore the color changes i just wanted to share what i thought of this guy. 

Really cool design for sure, i played with colors because this guy almost looks like Santa Clause goes golfing to me.

Looking forward to the progress: edit: if i had to say anything about the design as a whole the socks and slippers i found difficult to work with as far as coloring goes.

RabidRabit

This is looking great! I'm blown away that you are taking care of the whole 2D visualization side of things as well. I'll be following this for sure! I'd 100% keep the plaid in some form.

Kinematiks

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback :-)

@DavidCruz , it's cool to have someone else advice about his color palette, it is a real pain in the ash to choose the right one... I still can't find one that pops out really, I wanted to keep the 'belgian colors' ( like red devils soccer team, red dragon's volleyball... )

 @RabidRabit , I try to push me out of some 'confort' zone with 2D and concepting as well... I think I'll waste less time when I get the concept from some else and can go 3D   

DavidCruz

Kinematiks said:

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback :-)

@DavidCruz , it's cool to have someone else advice about his color palette, it is a real pain in the ash to choose the right one... I still can't find one that pops out really, I wanted to keep the 'belgian colors' ( like red devils soccer team, red dragon's volleyball... )

Ah, yea i noticed the flag colors, i figured you were keeping them in some way.  That's  why i said ignore mine ;p .  Oh yea I sit at my color scheme choices for a few runs and never really like many of them but if i want progress i have to get to modeling at least & not get stuck in the coloring.  It helps later on, thinking about the colors & working on the design i am like, boom i think i got it.  (I also have favorite power colors that always get in the way, hard to break from your favorites/ (for me anyway))

Looking forward to the progress.

Kinematiks

Back with some Zbrush Blocking stuff :-) !
It is still rough and I'm still not happy with the proportions yet and that's why i made a paint over for further corrections ! :-) 

Because you have to be your worst ( in a good way ) critique !!!






( of course many other things are still rough and in progress ) ...I already want to try some Substance materials  ...
So that's more what it will have to become later  -> it feels to 'dwarfy' and his moustache is not yet what I want... :-) 

Kinematiks

I couldn't resist to make a quick substance test to get a feel of what my character could become and it was afwull damned



So I still stuck with the colors but I wanted to get further ! with my proportions anyway and it felt better :-)

here some corrections and polishing of the model don't hesitate to leave your comment as well



Going from this I will try some quick colors test again
 

Kinematiks

Just trying out a clay render

DavidCruz

Nice progress i hope this gif helps took a while.

Concept is 3.75 heads tall, your current sculpt is 4.25 heads tall.

Forward view, i tried to match it to the concept.

I think the arms being like that (i can never enjoy working on things like that, thou i hear its how you should do it) but posting images for guidance probably best to lower the arms to sides, helps view the length of them.

Top of shoulders are odd to me idk what was going on, idk if those where folds or what so i drew over it, i made the hands feet, stomach, head(bigger)/mustache longer(shirt v neck), glasses, hat bigger.

Widened the stomach and gave it "weight", and exaggerated the folds everywhere especially the pants cuffs.

Hope the rest if apparent and easily noticed, i noticed i missed the collar but you should be able to fix that once you get to the rest.  So less fold/wrinkles more stronger pronounced wrinkles and the colored version is that a game res version or a sculpt textured? I couldn't tell to easily.

Personal preference i like the gloves to have fingers, but finger-less makes sense for golfing, i just thought it looked better to me as a battling glove.

Nice progress, keep on keeping on and don't worry about redoing things i sometimes redo my personal stuff 3 times till i happy with it (not the entire thing but noticeable things) it happens.

Anyway great to see progress, also probably to late but marvelous designer gives some realistic results that you could tighten up after it lands on the characters naked geo.  Few youtube vids should help you if you are interested in that.

Kinematiks

@DavidCruz it's really great, THANKS  when I saw your gif, it makes me feel like this is the character I wanted till te very beginning ! it's really cool that you get the shape and personality in him like this ! 

Myself was struggling with the proportions since the very beginning, and the fact I wanted to fit my character in the 'overwatch' world made me change his proportions... anyway for his shirt I put indeed extra useless unreadable fat stroke for no reason... I will try to make something with it...

Thanks a lot for your feedback it makes my day !   

PS: the T-Pose I did is indeed not the right one if you will rig and animate your character this will give him strange shoulders ! but top view like this is a lot easier   so it was pure lazziness I admit it

DavidCruz

Kinematiks said:

Glad to read you took it well, i did want to say you can ignore any critique you rather not follow(mine) do what you think is right for your design.(it is okay.)

Though i do really enjoy this design apart from the footwear everything else is cool to me.

I also just want to see you do a good job so when i come here and post anything i am trying to get you to do the best you can.

I linked these references to someone else (who i hope is still working on theirs)

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zA6ea6
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EVJrAe
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0DRDY
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qPRJ2
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8N38x
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YNBkq
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Lqn60
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OJLEb
Hair stylization you can try:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qaPrP

I didn't see any references linked or mentioned in your post above so i included these to help give you more of a visual, if you haven't looked around more than usual, 1st before jumping in to far.

Kinematiks

@DavidCruz
it is always interesting to have the opinion of a fresh eye on your work thanks a lot for your time ! 
most of my inspirations came from many overwatch characters ( roadhog, torbjorn, reinhart, mei, hanzo... and those clayshot are on zbrush central, made by @Renaud Galand  )

now I can say that i'm done with this character actually ( it's never done, but 'abandonned' more likely
after this one :


I made a new try on the texturing : 





and again I wasn't happy at all ( I guess i'll never be )

So i'll try some paintovers again for coloring


And I choose the central one ! 

Maybe the next step will be some reskin for popular events like Christmas

But here is the final character : 



So I made his action sheet that maybe can bring some fun inspirations  




After that I tryed out some posing







A real time shot

And an averwatch POG shot  



-Christophe AKA Kinematiks

RabidRabit

I didn't expect to be viewing a completed character the second time I checked in on this haha. Looks super cool!

Kinematiks

@RabidRabit
I already wanted to start a new project
but I need a break now

Olingova

Haha i jumped on my seat when i realized it's a dude from Brussel, really fun concept good job!! Feel like texturing could have benefit form a bit more work on the roughness for the fabric (pattern or such) but really good quality anyway

Kinematiks

@Olingova
I couldn't agree more ! it feel too smooth and even a subtile pattern can help to make it better.
I tryed it in the concept before and it felt too noisy.
and a solution between the two textures could have been a right alternative ! 

Thanks for your feedback ! I totaly agree