Roland of Gilead - The Gunslinger
polycounter lvl 19
edit: I worked on the first images some based on critiques (I can't believe I didn't notice the neck!)
After a year or so of being a lead I realized I haven't really made any art at all and the folio was getting a bit thin. I've also been listening to the Dark Tower audio books by Stephen King over the last couple of months and have gotten into the characters.
My plan is to model, zbrush, texture (including normal, color spec and transparency maps), and maybe rig this character. To get started I did a concept illustration and a head study.
To those who have read the books, the illustration is of Roland tracking Jake and Gasher into the city of Lud.
After a year or so of being a lead I realized I haven't really made any art at all and the folio was getting a bit thin. I've also been listening to the Dark Tower audio books by Stephen King over the last couple of months and have gotten into the characters.
My plan is to model, zbrush, texture (including normal, color spec and transparency maps), and maybe rig this character. To get started I did a concept illustration and a head study.
To those who have read the books, the illustration is of Roland tracking Jake and Gasher into the city of Lud.
Replies
good to see you back posting. this has the makings of an excellent personal project.
looks good man, really has your style all over it..
i want to see you model and texture some of those cool environment bits in the background too..
dark horizon did a model of him, check it out at his site www.horribledeath.com
i got up to the third book, need to finish the series
didachum didachak
Model should be good!
I like your concepts so far, but I liked the face and head in the first concept more than the study. He is supposed to look weathered, but I don't really imagine him quite as gaunt as he looks in the study of his face. I hope you keep the stylized proportions, though, I'm liking where you're going with it! Make sure to spend some time thinking out the guns, too, since they are so important and distinct.
One thing I would reccomend is to get some photos of stephen king and use some of his facial proportions. I won't spoil it for any one who hasn't read the series but it will make sense
King has stated that Roland is the idealised version of himself in many respects and so it might be good to tie in some of the key proportions but make him less goofy looking
Low poly is next, I'm going to try and rough it in with Polyboost.
bah, there's an error with the normal map on the pants, I'll fix it later.
Zbrushing is also nice, I'm glad you finally got into it, my only crit would be that the zbrush detail feels more of what you would do with a bump map, but at such resolution you could use those polys to do alot more, like maybe sharpen some of the creases on the bottom of the pants, if you're going to texture this badboy, and I have a feeling you're going to do that (you should
really cool stuff
another trick if they are seperate chunks is auto assign uvs, export an obj. import into max with holster in place and use bodypaint or someother 3d paint program to paint in where the straps overlay the leg. apply that map in zbrush and use it as a guide for making your masks. then sculpt the fabric tucking under and spilling over where the straps are. i really like this dude, expecially the mass you got going on in the forarms and hands. i feel like he could crush a skull with those hands..
bravo!
Either way, you've pretty much pinpointed how I saw him. Great stuff.
I'm with Arsh on the pants bunching, and Rockstar on the details.
I love that backpack!
take that meat and put it on his groin, poor man is hung like a hampster
Damn those hands are nice.
As far as crits concerned it looks like his belt gets wider just where the buckle is. Looks a bit weird if it wasnt intentional?
When I was working on the shirt I discovered using the Deco Brush in Projection Master, and it's how I learned to lose my tendency for blobbiness. I'm thinking about going back and redoing the hair now that I've got a better technique.
The hands are big. I'm trying to retain some of the stylization in this guy, and the big hands let him hold the massive guns (which are way larger than normal revolvers).
Sectaurs: yes, I've got to go and chop a couple of fingers off his right hand. There's a couple of other details to model and some tightening up to do as well.
I'm digging the stylisation on the hands and face here, it works very well.
The crotch area looks a bit weird, looks like it needs some deeper folds, and/or some sort of zip or button fly. Then again you said something was lost with the normalmap of the pants so maybe that's doing it.
Head is maybe a tad smaller than I think suits this style, but that's your call. The shirt could do with some thickness and detail around the neckline.
I'm diggin' those revolvers. Kickass.
All round good work here. Keep it up
i like your render colors too
i like the thick hands also, i think the thing with their size is simply inconsistantcy. the bones are real thick, and the skull, for example, is relatively thin. maybe if the shoulders were more broad it would make things more balanced.. he generally looks more well proportioned to me in your first painting (at the top)
I agree with many of the existing comments. Sharper folds, on both the pants & the shirt. The shirt cuffs seem to clip into the arms on the back, thats weird. And yeah, the belts & such need to pinch the fabric, and it needs to billow out from that pinch.
Some parts of the Pistol look a bit underdetailed. Some rivets or something would help with that. The shoulders could be made more muscular to help the believability of the forearms/hands.
I really dig the sculpted hair!
I started texturing. I'm using J.I. Styles max viewport translucency shader - diffuse, spec, normal and translucency maps. I'm upping the translucency depth in order to soften the lighting. Instead of trying to create a realisitic fake SSS effect, I'm using the shader to stylize the lighting on the character. Everything, even metal, will have some translucency.
Styles, if your reading this, the shader rocks!!
Critiques are welcome, it gets hard to see bad areas after a while.
One tiny nitpick - his irises don't seem circular? They appear to be stretched vertically a tiny bit.
edit - oh and one other thing... max is a bitch when it comes to doing shadows in shaders, but it's something that really bugs me because it's just so obvious that it's missing... does anyone with shader authoring knowledge have any idea of a good way to go about doing shadows in shaders for max? I think it might just be one of those crap limitations since I haven't seen any working code for max that produces clean results.
still looks awesome.
minor minor crit, teeth look sorta clean, with those bloodshot eyes and all u'd imagine his teeth looking a bit darker.
other than that its looking really awesome
http://www.ufo-bg.com/Production_Stills/Graveland/DSC_0279.jpg
http://www.vulkon.com/images/TonyAmendola.jpg
Tony Amendola is great for really worn skin.
Also
http://www.alanmercer.com/edwardjamesolmos.htm
Has great skin as well.
I always thought this shot of Eastwood was great ref. for that weatherbeaten 'spent a lifetime squinting out in the sun' look:
http://www.daz-art.com/eastwood.jpg
Mr Styles, nice job too. Any chance of releasing a recompiled .cgfx version of your .fx shader? Us Maya 7 users can use it straight out of the box if you do. Apparently, there's a tool to let you recompile it on the NVidia site, but I'm sure you know about it already, and I don't have a clue about all that coder nonsense :P
edit: oh yeah ans @ J.I. Styles i found a guy who made fx shaders that self shadow, but you need another map, its called a horizonmap. not sure how it works but he has more info on his page and more shaders http://www.humus.ca/index.php?page=3D&&start=24
To those who have read the books, the illustration is of Roland tracking Jake and Gasher into the city of Lud.
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Hah! That is EXACTLY where I am at in the books.
This is looking cool, Doc. Nice stuff!
Thanks everyone for the great critiques. I think I applied every single change suggested.
Mop, you were right about the iris.
Styles, I was going to email you after it was done, I swear
Daz, the grey was a good idea. I wish I had that photo of Clint when I was modeling
Arsh, I've been tweaking the settings a lot, remind me later and I'll tell you what I settled on.
I'm pretty happy with the head texture now, thanks again for all the comments. On to the body.
The little goblins that make these shaders for me have mentioned that they've actually already done exactly that. The specular maps alpha component is a glossiness controller.
quick edit too: the whole texture controlled settings + multiplier number is a system simply to confuse the process and make it harder for people to juggle all those numbers... not really. It's a bit easier to tweak it when you have all these dependancies in your textures screwing the end result, it becomes such an ordeal to balance the effect that a multiplier was introduced so it could be ramped independantly of the texture controllers (it sacrifices a few instructions and makes it a little slower but gains an extra level of control over the whole thing).