[WIP] Annie Mei Character Sculpt

MisterWolfen

Hi  so I've been a huge fan of the artist Caleb Thomas (CTChrysler) for quite a while now. When I finished my most recent character project I figured I would try my hand at doing a 3D version of his character Annie. I've been working on it in between work for the last few months, C&C is welcome 😊

Original concept by Caleb Thomas https://twitter.com/ctchrysler_ 

MisterWolfen

Here's the first batch of WIPs, they go back further but no one needs to see those stages 

MisterWolfen

Second batch of WIPs, but for the body instead these are all a few days/weeks apart as i'm squeezing sessions in between full time work

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

HAIR UPDATE! Yay
Between the previous image and this one i spent time refining the positioning of the hair to make sure it would blend into each other, and Annies scalp, I think I also changed her eyes to look less shocked :P

MisterWolfen

Suit time For the suit I simply extracted her bodies mesh out, and used ZBrush layers to add in the details

MisterWolfen

Big update
Figured i'd show a full body render, I also changed how her suit joined at her neck to be a little more streamlined. At this point her suit is finished and i've moved onto her jacket

MisterWolfen

Our girl has her jacket now   

Got the main forms and details down so going to move onto the large,overall details in the jacket and then it's onto retopo 

apollo580

Looking good! Althought I feel like her stomach/chest area seems a little bit too large for a female compared to the legs

MisterWolfen

apollo580 said:

Looking good! Althought I feel like her stomach/chest area seems a little bit too large for a female compared to the legs

How so?

kanga

Real nice! Love the face and hair.Yeah the clothing is adding quite a bit of visual volume.

BagelHero

Mm, I think the actual issue is that the jacket isn't thinner and fitted like in the reference. Check out some similar sporty/athletic womens jackets and spot the darts and seams to see where they cling to the forms of the body. A lot of womens clothes are made to be somewhat fitted; right now this has no indication of that and fits like casualwear/is a bit too chunky, even for the stylisation.

I think the hips and torso proportion are fine. They match the concept pretty well.

I would like to say though, it would be nice if you rounded out the face a little more maybe? The ref has a really appealing low cheekbone/rounded look to her, a kind of softer nose too. I think capturing that would be a boon to the piece even if some of it is down to the artists style-- checked out his other work and yeah she has a particularly rounded face even for him. Her upper lip, and lips in general are also softer and rounder pretty consistently, I'd personally recommend aiming for lips with a less prominent cupids bow, "flat top" or "fuller" lips. something like this?

Just my 2c! looking great for sure, cant wait to see more progress.

MisterWolfen

@BagelHero thanks for that chunk of feedback!

Yeah i was always a little on the fence about how i should shape her face, spent a lot of time pushing and pulling, was always a hard balance between the soft/round look and what it is now. I'll give it another go and see if i can push it just a little further to try and get it just right. Once i finish the jacket i'll go back and take another look at the face to see what i can do.

Thanks 

MisterWolfen

Alright and jacket is done Going to start retopo, shouldn't take too long considering the majority of her model is a body suit

slosh

I think your proportions need work.  Her upper body looks too thick in general.  I think her neck is too short.  Too much bend in her forearms.  I would give her hips and upper legs a bit more mass as well.  Feet might be a smidge small as well.  With the jacket, don't let it go that straight.  Shorten and taper it in at the waist so you don't kill her silhouette.  Right now it just completely negates her nice hourglass shape.

MisterWolfen

@slosh Thanks for the reply ^_^ Sorry I only just saw this now as I haven't been back on Polycount for a bit

Although I agree on some points, I didn't want to go too intense with the stylized proportions, and I feel like your edits push things a little too far from the look I was aiming for. I appreciate the edit and feedback though, I need to learn to push things a bit further sometimes haha

MisterWolfen

Here's some more progress shots , i'll post some more below to update the thread on the work i did over the last few months  

MisterWolfen

Here's the retopology, she's around 20k tris, i could've pushed it up to 25-30 but i'm pretty happy with this

MisterWolfen

I did the bake back in late April so this is a little old, but it came out so nice

MisterWolfen

This was my first WIP of the textures, I basically just blocked in the colors and did a base texture for the eyes, wasn't really happy with it at this point but it was a work in progress

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

At this point I was still kind of struggling with the textures, and trying to get a good balance of stylized and textured, I re-did the eyes which came out way nicer, and I think i stripped back a lot of the suit/jacket stuff to give it another try

MisterWolfen

And here's how she is now ^_^ she's come a long way and i'm feeling great about where it is at the moment, i'm basically just making some final tweaks to her skin and suit, and working out how i want to do her earrings ;___; Once that's done I'll need to do some effect, rigging, and posing/animating. Almost there 

MisterWolfen

More texture progress ^_^ this is from a few weeks back so i've changed a couple small things here and there, but ovrall these are basically done, I've been doing some research on rigging so once that's done i'll rig her, make a couple extra assets for rendering and then we're ready for posting so keen to finish her up and move onto the next project

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

MisterWolfen

Yaaay, she's finally finished  I've worked for a while on this project in between my day job, and i'm absolutely stoked with how it's turned out Have learned a lot and can't wait to see what comes next

MisterWolfen

model

I tried posting a sketchfab link but it's broken, i'll just leave it here in case it fixes itself :P