The Emperor of Mankind
polycounter lvl 17
Hi people - thought I'd model a Space Marine; might as well start with the top guy. The model and textures are 100% finished and are not subject to change, but I'd like to pick your brains on what kind of environment he should be in. All suggestions are welcome. Cheers!
Replies
Hmm.. pose him on a stack of dead soldiers. What environment does the source material usually depict him in?
Damn fine texturing though
However I think the gold would read better as gold if you desaturated it a bit, and shifted some of the shadows a tad away from the red/orange they are now.
It almost looks like the head was done by another artist, in that there seems to be a large contrast in quality between it and the armor. kind of ruins it for me
but, as others have said, the armor is fanfuckingtastic
with normal mapping and a specularity map this would work really well
You've definately got to get some normal and spec mappage on that. Get it in unreal or something, it'd look so sexeh.
Phobos, i doubt theres normal mapping there eheheh...
The emporer should be in white armour as to depict his purity and godlike status. It should have a threadwork of red veins going around his armour to signify the blood lost to the chaos dominion and as a tribute to the fallen. He should also be in the rigonal power armour : terminator armour.
that's straight from the warhammer history books :d
Love the model, he looks a bit crazed though...would do well to have him on a pile of fallen chaos.
el.
The model and textures are 100% finished and are not subject to change
[/ QUOTE ]
I'd be curious to know why this is set in stone. Never fall in love with your own work! There is always room for improvement unless something has been handed off to a client or for a test or other purpose.
The naiively executed airbrushy face majorly lets down an otherwise highly impressive piece of work. It shows all the hallmarks of a face created from memory. Sorry to sound so blunt, I just think that's a crying shame. If there's no budging on this one, I'd definitely spend more time studying anatomy for your next piece. Dont have any ideas on setting sorry.
Now for a real critique.
The skin:
There's no evidence of war, 'cept in the sword - but that texture is so low res all the damage information is lost in a blur. He has a few scars, but like I said about the airbrushed look it makes it look muddy at best.
It looks like you're fighting with pixel density issues. Particularily his abdomen versus his forearms. The abdomen area looks more dense than the forearms. Usually this sort of difference is fine when its the heads vs. the rest of the model, but abdomen vs. forearm isn't needed.
On the close up shot of his head there's a seem on the red-jewel-bird-thing right below his chin.
The model:
His upper-body seems waaay to large when compared to the lower body. Also, his left hand is much larger than the right, but I'm sure (re: I hope) that was a design choice.
I take it by your 1 post that you've posted this for exposure and won't reply/post more work until you want some more coverage. Hopefully you'll listen to all critiques given and make the appropiate changes.
*shrugs*
Err... anyway, to the point. I quite like the detail on the armour. Not knowing what the character normally looks like or what his history is, it still looks great IMO. Good job dude.
-caseyjones
<--- Warhammer Nerd
I also am confused as to the lack of any real lightsource in this piece. It's too low poly for the model to light it, and there are no normals? Next time work out your volumes a bit more before making him so busy.
Nice work though. Keep it up.
Here is the image I believe Jon-Paul used as his source material.
Now in terms of actual improvements he could meet out for his model in particular, I'll agree he could probably do a few things that the work would benifit from. However in terms of capturing the source material I'll think you'll agree that he has achieved this is spades and anything else he decides to do in addition to this would be extra.
As far as an environment...its difficult to move past the last battle, but perhaps something like him anointing Sanguinus before the teleport would be cool. If your looking for something without any other characters I would say a throne room shot would be nice, but fairly expected. Another idea would be to have him looking out some giant, gothic window of a battle cruiser ("camera" outside looking in at him) with part of some space battle reflected against the outside of the window. A scene like that would allow you to strongly "frame" him in the picture.
Amazing job of capturing the original look.
I think this would look great in UT2k4.
But damn dude that armor texturing is top notch!
The creation of the Emperor's head and face presented me with some interesting problems, and there were two ways I wanted to tackle it. One of the problems was that the character wasn't strictly human (in our sense of the word), and I wanted to represent the image of someone from a much older race, almost Neanderthal in appearance. He therefore has an extremely heavy bone structure, with the eyes somewhat higher on the skull than Sapiens, and with many of the main facial features pushed to the fore. This was difficult to do, because all of my artistic instincts were telling me that the face was 'wrong' in some way, and needed adjustment until it was anatomically correct. Or at least, anatomically correct in the case of videogame male leads, where all characters look like Sam Fisher and Solid Snake.
I also had to make a stylistic choice on the detailing of his face - with many of the official illustrations, the Emperor simply looks as though he has been drawn by people with a fetish for Conan, and in almost all cases, the face is stern, proud, smooth skinned yet unremarkable - more a symbol of a face rather than the representation of a real man. This was what I went for with the first version of the face, and I have been unsatisfied with this.
The alternative was to really weather the face, to realistically show the Emperors age (immortality nonewithstanding), the effects of tens of thousands of battles in extremely harsh environments, and not least of all, the effects of thousands of years of care and worry, him being the custodian of an endangered species.
This alternative was something that, at the time of the first face version, I didn't have the skill for - I've only been doing 3D art for about a year now, and I'm still learning. But I've recently investigated skin techniques, and have learned enough to make an attempt on the second version.
The second face takes its inspiration from many sources - whilst keeping the Neanderthalic bone structure, I wanted to call to mind the seamed, grim features of Sitting Bull and Geronimo, and have the Old Testament strength of Heller's Major - de Coverly and Puzo's descriptions of the features of the Five Family Dons; that they were 'men with a belly, with features on the large size, heavy brows, fleshy lips and large imperial noses. I also wanted the Emperor to have the almost completely black eyes of an old Sicilian, Chinese or central African; eyes without any allotment for pity or mercy. I also wanted this face to carry the marks of battle in total contrast to his armour, which is polished and repaired to almost new standard before every battle. His face (and his sword blade) carry his battle history.
The second, aged, seamed and scarred face was my initial plan for the Emperor - that all previous images were flattering homages to the character, in much the same way that Jesus of Nazareth is promoted as a clean skinned white man today. This is the real Emperor, as Cromwell would have put it,:
"I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and all."
Texture sheets and wires on the way.
It did not.
It does feel dodgy and burning higlight too..
It doesnt look All that bad at the end, But a bit confusing, TOo much detail is like not enough i'd say..
As for that face, whoa that big explanation u gave was long to read.. Geez But still even tho if u wanted to give it some old race feeling or whatever, It still doesnt look very sexey. But also kinda dodge and burny. Sure Make it look like some Older race, but Hey Paint it well! use colors over dodge and burn, or Burn layer, or something..
Anyway Keep at it!..
b1ll
im not too hot on the head either, the quality of it detracts from the rest of the model - but i guess thats something to work on for the next model, since this one wont change :P
it isnt the tones of the skin that turn me off, its the lack of detail and lack of some anatomical accents, such as cheekbones, wrinkles, jaw line, lip detail, etc. it makes it feel like the rest of the skin was scanned from existing art, and the face done by hand and neglected (not assuming anything, just a observation)
and at the long description of the face... no offense but just make it look cool