Dominance War 2 - Seforin
polycounter lvl 17
ok so Im reserving my spot and I need to figure out what sort of character to work on, Thinking maybe a theme of angel of death assassin with stealth pieces that make him invisible / can fly if situation gets bad (thinking backpack piece admits energy that turns into wings when situation becomes sticky and arm pieces conceal a multitude of weaponary that can launch gas to emp based attacks, and has hand to hand combat skills which include his arm piece to become a energy based chain saw (dont worry I have the idea in my head it looks cool!)And a energy based Sythe that he conceals on his side pouches that he can use when desimating larger enemies/forces (robots/ small military units)
more to come when I think of this design better.
more to come when I think of this design better.
Replies
After OC challenging with Polyhertz I dedcided to work on my own spin of warrior class
"Tech Mage"
These units have highten psychic abilities which through agumentation and mechanical inhancements to the brain can control small nano byte machines that live inside the body of the tech mage,
The nanobyte machines work in small colonies that can super heat themselves , freeze , or electrify or just overwhelm a enemy as they are slowly ripped apart nano byte by nano byte. This giving the feeling that the Tech mage is using "magic".
But due to the extreme amount of nano bytes and augmented surgerys gone to the user , control over the clusters of nano machines require high intelligence and concentartion, in which in the heat of battle most Tech mages fall victim of lost of focus or "Blinding the 3rd eye" as many Tech Mages refer to it, which can cause the user to have backfires with his nanobyte colonies or lost of control over the larger cluster.
I did a few sketches but I feel pretty happy with the design of this one, Any suggetions and crituqes are welcomed
my main concern at this point is that while the idea is strong, the execution at this point is a little too obvious, too basic.
what i mean is that it's clear from looking at your sketch--which is a pretty good one, by the way, nice job in illustrating how the weapon canisters work--that you've more or less gone with your first inclination, or your prevailing idea of how certain things are "supposed" to look. i made some very similar points in dejawolf's thread, if you care to read, about the same thing. dejawolf is doing an angel of death style character, which is awesome, but the way he's representing the character in his first concept uses all the same token artifacts you'd expect from the character. the skull looks like a skull, the big angel wings look exactly like the standard image of angel wings, the scythe is a scythe, etc.
in a very similar way, you're doing the same thing on your concept, albeit with slightly less standard (but all the more stock) imagery: glowing eyes, wires coming out of his head in the way you'd expect, glow-y canisters coming out of the arms like we always seem to see, for some reason, glow in the center of the chest. you see what i mean?
there's very little that's surprising. while it's still a good idea and you're presenting it fairly well, there's not a whole lot to interest the viewer because there isn't a whole lot they haven't seen before, especially if they play a lot of science fiction games or watch sf movies.
you can still do a tech mage, with wires, glowing bits, nanobytes and the whole nine yards, but you need to consider novel ways of representing these elements, and arranging them in an interesting fashion. glowing canisters are the expected route--how else might you incorporate that sort of thing? might you find a more interesting and novel way to fuse them into his body, same with the wires? does it really even make sense to have them glowing at all?
don't get me wrong, there's a damn good reason that even the best artists end up using glow-y bits in their designs...because it's an easy, great way of making something look cool. but if you do the glow-y bits in all the familiar ways, then the viewer's brain shuts off. so i think you can still keep with your tech mage idea (after all, General Corum basically looks like a high-tech mage), but you need to reinterpret the signifiers of the character in different ways.
if drawing a detail "feels right," or reminds you strongly of a design you've already seen, then you probably need to change it. genuinely new and different looking designs are little uncomfortable to draw, frankly, because you're breaking new ground. so don't be afraid to get beyond what seems comfortable while you're concepting--that's the territory where the greatest rewards still remain unmined, my friend. best of luck, and keep us posted with your progress!
*falls out of chair wow*
Well I can safley say this is the most indepth critique ive gotten in some time, well me and polyhertz where talking online today and figured to do a 2nd revision to our characters, and I got more into the grove today of drawing out this character, after looking at some armor references of table top games and some mech designs I decided to completely revamp the design to this character and give him a more infused tech to flesh kinda deal (but not boarder lining the whole cyborg deal) again the same concept of the nano machines but he has infused "Nano Centers" that build the clusters from raw material in his suroundings and body itself) OR the giant gem looking pieces, I figured to go more of a spin of a mage mixed with a futuristic matrixy/ ghost in the shell style body, My color schemes are to be changed soon but lets see what you think of this new character revision first, as always critiques and comments and suggestions and all.
IM NOT SLACKING IM JUST JUGGLING!
Oh well just going to have to dummy down the shape and fake it with textures when I model it, but heres the render anyway
but in the mean time heres some posts of the finalized concepts of this character, I have a final version thats a combination of the 2 different artists works that will be posted hopefully some time monday at the latest, well heres what I got
However, your latest might have you either looking at scrapping/reworking the idea or switching teams. Either way, we can't have too much 'cybernetic' stuff, and your guy is looking to be almost completely that.
look for the final design hopefully in the next day or 2
Cant say I know who that is, can you link me to the artwork so I could see (know what to avoid)
and for no added reason puss in boots
Working on having some more updates consistant during the week. so stay tuned , the Brush work is coming!!
edit: Forgot to update a bit
All thats left is the head and then z-brush to t3h end!
The last of the goodies Im waiting till near end to try/pull off.
Until then enjoy a update
and happy you dropped the crazy colors for rendering
first attempt and my head model as to date, not bad eh?
here you go
Well my computer nearly crashes every time I have the high poly render, so no more nice lighting like before =(
On a plus note all thats left is the hands and the lower cloth stretchings and I can start normal maping this bad boy, already got the head normal maped and it came out really well, im very pleased with the results
Next comes the body!
finished the last of the high, onto the low poly and more details in photoshop
all I have to do is the legs and the cape pieces and im off to texturing
Also I did a pass in z-brush on the head to get more defined features (pores and such) damn near destroyed my pc just importing it, thank god I didnt have to do anything other then render to texture when I imported it
Specular and glow maps coming soon
well heres where im at
He's coming along pretty well. Does he have a weapon or is he just going to be a melee kinda guy.
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no no those things coming off him are his weapon, there the best way I could visually show of the nano machines, just imagine a Crap load of those things all attacking you and ripping you apart from a molecular level (like you see your self literally melting away being chiped at)
When I do a beauty render im going to have more of those things swirling around attacking more at you if I can fit it in the poly limit
so heres the final version of this guy, just going to get some old props and get with a buddy of mine and render this bad boy out, in the mean time some shitty viewport quick renders
I would like to thank my buddy polyhurtz for constantly telling me anatomy points I screwed up on, I would like to thank my buddys cargill robernson and John (I will never learn his last name) for helping me with the inital concepts, and I would thank my buddy kris creco for riggin my character and nicely posing him, and I would like to thank my buddy joshua goteriez for helping me render out a nice scene. Ive really learned alot from this contest and hope to continue to be a active member of the polycount community in more challenges to come!
Now im in orlando now and Im going to kick it with mickey mouse for the weekend, so I'll catch everyone when this contest is done