--FINISHED-- Tyrande Whisperwind Fan Art

SgtBabbit

A project for over the christmas holidays! Somewhat indulgent fan art. Planning to just make it a bust so I can enjoy doing my favourite elements, Details and clothing! I also want this to be completely handpainted, not pbr as I would usually do. Just focusing on the torso will give me a smaller area to practice on. 
I like to bring my own style and interpretation of the character in fan art so I started off with a little doodling, getting to know her details and silhouette a little better. I also started to think about where I wanted to cut her off. 

Starting the mushy blockout phase, decided to take the time to practice some basics with some anatomy and muscle groups. 

akiratang

Good start!

SgtBabbit

@akiratang thank-you!

Made some face changes, moved the eyes up, made the brows less angry, gave the lips and nose a little tweak. Started on the body, some fixes to make there, especially on the neck and back I think. Mushy blockouts for the armour and dress. I don't want to do a really long bust but a lot of the really interesting design elements are in the chest armour and layered dress... Need to figure out where best to cut her off.
Some polypaint to bring her to life!

SgtBabbit

I allowed myself some time off for the holiday season, now I'm back on it! The head and body are retopo'd now, some anatomy issues fixed, now I can start figuring out how I want to layer her dress

SgtBabbit

Updates! Blocking out the hair, braids and jewellery. Most of my time spent on the tiara. Made mainly using Zmodeller and Move Topology brushes in ZBrush. Kept it all low poly under the subdivision previews so I can easily fix it. I also tried to make some of the shapes chunkier, and close up some of the smaller gaps by hiding them in deep bevels. This should make the final low poly mesh cheaper, with lots of 3D detail and not have to rely on opacity cut outs, which I think could look flat on a larger piece like this tiara

SgtBabbit

So I realised that the chest piece was made up of mostly the same shapes as the tiara, so I was able to cut it up and reuse some of the pieces I'd already done, that saved some time! Looks like the pauldron on her left shoulder is also a modified version of the chest piece. If I'd spotted that earlier, starting with the chest would have been a smarter idea! Oh well. Large portion of work done, starting to think about what would be the best looking way to cut her off at the torso

I also drew up a short tutorial on how I approached all the armour elements for this! They are a bit complicated so I'm focusing on keeping it simple, mindful of retopology (not too many tiny gaps, fiddly intersections etc) and easily editable (the low poly is still active at the lower subdivision level)

SgtBabbit

Shoulder armour and feathers! Went much quicker because I used the elements from the breast plate to create it. I gave it more shape than the her in-game model because I really wanted to keep it chunky and exaggerate the asymmetry for a bit more drama. I also made a quick and dirty paint over to get a better idea of where the bust is going to be cut off, and how to shape the edges in the most interesting way. I think I'll go with floating fly-away pieces of her dress. Tyrande also has glowing glyphs on her dress, I wanted to animate these as a scrolling texture all over her but I don't think 3D Viewers like sketchfab or marmoset support that yet. Maybe I could animate them as floating planes?

SgtBabbit

High poly first stage done! Just in time to go back to work tomorrow, the biggest load of progress on this is done. Aiming to get it done by the end of the month. Next up will be subdividing and sculpting in details like metal chips, hair strands, cloth folds etc. I decided to drop the hip armour which the in-game model has. They work in-game because they're on a plane so they don't effect the silhouette, but they'd be too chunky on my model and would make the design look too cramped and busy. 

HarlequinWerewolf

Loving the armour pieces! That's definitely something I need to try in a future project so thanks for the breakdown. Excited to see where this goes. Her face already has a lot of personality but, personally, I'm not a huge fan of the 'kink' in the ear. I think if you're going to do that you could maybe make the bottom of the ear closer to the shape of a human ear... I dunno, just personal preference I think :P 

mpej429

I want to learn how to make so detailed armour piece. I'll be focusing on that next round Awesome job by the way, I want to see the final result !

Torch

That jewellery looks like a pain to model in 3d, thanks for the breakdown! I need to have a go at doing ornate details like that for armor too. Good progress 

Astrocoolbug

Hair is looking awesome! What did you do to make the topology of it so clean?

One critique I have is that her mouth looks to be too angry in my opinion. I'm going to guess you are planning to rig based on your other projects so you can obviously change it there, but her face just feels more like her new Night Warrior version versus the priestess Tyrande. It might sound nit picky, but it's because everything is looking great so far. I just feel like she looks a bit angry/entitled when I feel like she's usually depicted as more composed and thoughtful.

Otherwise again it looks awesome. I like how to chose to drape the clothing and how the shapes flow into the hard surface parts.

SgtBabbit

@HarlequinWerewolf Thank-you! I agree with you on the ear, it was bugging me too, so I've straightened it out a little in this stage and I think I like it more
@mpej429 thank-you! I hope it helps!  
@Torch No problem! If there's any more that you think would be helpful to a breakdown on, let me know
@Astrocoolbug Thanks! I did all the topology early, working Low -> High rather than High -> Low, like in the breakdown. With the body I retopo'd the base sculpt as early as possible in maya, like right after blocking out the clothes. Your comment about her expression is valid and a deliberate choice on my part! I wanted to do my own little spice on her. I love her strong night warrior persona, but also wanted the challenge of all that swirly armour, so I wanted to bring a little "I'm super graceful and elegant but don't mess with me" kind of attitude to my version. I do think I'll make the edges of the mouth a little less tense though. 

Moving forward with the sculpt from the top down! Working in higher subdivisions, fixing shapes, adding details in the hair and cloth. Slowed down now because of work but I'll keep chipping away!

SgtBabbit

Retopo (Mostly) done! I think I'll cut it down more. I'm used to retopo-ing with the intention of baking normals etc but I think if I'm doing handpainting I can get away with a much lower poly count, might give it another pass and decrease it more. Mostly looking for a nice clean silhouette. Quick and dirty test bake in marmoset to get me pumped for the next stage!

SgtBabbit

Handpainting started! Using the AO and curvature maps to drive the gradients and an ID map to mask out the different materials. I'm working with layers of grayscale to balance the values, and then layers in 'colour' mode to add colour without losing those values. Hand painting metal has always been a weak spot for me and part the aim on this project was to focus on improving. Does anyone have tutorials/techniques that they like using for this? Would be much appreciated! 

SgtBabbit

Metal painting.....BEGIN! I've asked around a lot for advice and did a lot of reading and watching tutorials. Painting in greyscale first and then using layers to define the colour in a non-destructive way seemed to be popular, and made sense to me! So I've made a start! And also a little breakdown of the way I ended up approaching it. I'm sure I'll look back on this during the next project with a better way though! 
I also made some changes on the hair colours (making the ends darker instead of lighter, to keep the overall values darker and more contrasting) and I also narrowed the warm light so it was more dramatically centered on the face

Astrocoolbug

This is looking incredible! How much time Are you spending between hand painting in substance versus Photoshop?

Also for someone who was hesitant about hand painting metal I think you pulled it off really convincingly, It's looking great so far.

bhaktimarie

So excited to see this coming together! The metal is looking great. Thanks for posting the break downs of your painting process.

SgtBabbit

----COMPLETE!!!----
Thank-you for all the support on this one I enjoyed it so much!! Felt really good to get into hand painting again. For the final touches I took her textures into photoshop and painted freely on top, this gave me the kind of tight control I can't get with substance painter brushes. I also hand painted the leaves and added those. A slight pose in Maya to give her some life and we're good to go! Hope you like it! Full post on my ArtStation