Peter!
very glad to have you along. as i've been telling others, i'd like to see more thumbnails out of you, and particularly some more explorations following the track of that most recent sketch. verrry promising, if you ask me. not sure about the retention of the rat-like head features, but the overall pose and musculature is very dynamic and the weapons look like serious business. winner territory, if you play your cards right. good stuff, man. keep us posted.
looks nice without the arms.. so i guess they should look a bit more powerfull.. like tiger legs
or human arms but stronger than in the concept 1 bevore and with more natural proportions
.. so he can stand on the legs and attack but run on all 4
like the head : )
it's definitely a different direction in a very good way, but you might want to watch where you're going. right now it's got a very "ancients" vibe, not so evil as it ought for polycount, and also looking a little too cybernetic as well. personally i find the old guy's head on it rather disconcerting; while not a fan of the rat head, i was thinking more going with something more ghoulish or otherwise animalistic (rats just particularly scary). but hey, you've got a lot of interesting shapes here and a great stance, i think the key now will be refining him to be more in line with his supposed allegiances...
i'd like to challenge you to try and pull this design off using design details other than glow-y bits. i know it's an old standby for just about everyone for good reason, but i think if you put your mind to it you'd pull of something even more eye-catching and unique in the place of them. cause the glow-y bits, man, they're bringing me down. also, the planet that got blown up in the brief was the glow-y bits production planet, everyone's fresh out of them.
It looks awesome, my only concern would be that he might be perceived as being over the 20% cyborg limit. His armor looks more like replacement pieces integrated into the character. In the brief it states that we have to make it clear they are separate. I'm not sure how much they would relax that rule?
You could just make the fleshy bits a suit and call that problem solved.
Crits:
- Consider his arm blades hitting the back blade if he pulls his arms back.
- Think about adding a hinge to the back blade so it can be rotated horiz or vert, making more attacks available to him. You can also add movable parts that let him use it like a rudder on a plane.
- Switching out the glowing hover bits with jets could be a cool addition and would play into the blade/rudder aspect of things?
Spacemonkey: Thanks; I was imagining a sequence where he uses his back legs and kinda slices at the ground to get airborne, then comes down backward onto the enemy like an axe.
Gauss: Thanks for the useful crit, I really agreed with you about the rat head, so I went this way with it. The idea for the old man's head is based on character depth. I want to be able to convey a story through the design. As for glowy-bits, maybe you can suggest something to me? it's the first time I've used glowy-bits so it's all new for me. If you're saying they're out, maybe you could help me with a replacement idea.
Vig: Thanks for the compliment. Good point about the blades hitting each other; Maybe I can claim that hole in the back decoration is for this exact purpose? Good idea with the jump jets. The cyborg bits are all armor actually, so maybe I can try to convey that better.
worked on the concept some more. I'm probably going to move forward with this, and take into consideration the great comments and crits you guys gave. I'm going to add a few conventions to help show the evil nature of the character. Old Maya and Incan demons, laden in gold, were often quite horrific and cruel.
ZOMG. That is completely and totally awesome. I really heart those boots. Can't really tell whats going on in the body region. But i don't care cause the rest is fantastic.
Dur, The body kinda arches backwards and had some bone formations in the chest, the musculature is meant to be somewhat non-human.
Sectaurs, he actually walks on all fours, using the blade tips as his front "feet". I imagine they cut a bit into the ground , providing some stability.
still lookin' good, Peter. as to what i suggest that the glow might be replaced with, here's a short list: nothing (make it a physical hole), some sort of interesting mechanical detail (a vent, a plug, various doodads similar to glow in detail functionality), or to go with your theme, possibly filigree or otherwise fine metal-working type of something.
looking at it now i don't necessarily advocate killing the glow entirely--it would still make a lovely centerpiece for that big round bit on his back. removing, or at least, pruning the glow from his torso and limbs would help draw attention to where you want it. think of the glow to be used as bullet points to draw the attention of the viewer--it functions very well in that respect. so maybe just a little more sparingly on the feet and hands, if you're not wanting to relinquish it. good work though, you look more than set for modeling!
Gauss: Thanks, I'm going to do some of the things you suggested.
Here is a quick update, I've mostly just been playing around with mudbox, I just got it a little while ago. I might revert back to ZB for this model. I've identified some problems thanks to mudbox, and I am going to modify the basemesh. I should start working on the real model soonish.
gorgeous muddy work, im loving the concept. the dorsal blade seems a little plain right now. It takes a load of space and its just a flat color. i dont know how in love you are with the concept, but i would elaborate on it further. keep rockin.
I am considering adding designs and lots of useage detail to the dorsal blade. The mud-work is going to be redone, it was mostly a test since I'd never used the application before. I'm really glad you like it. Thanks for the great comments, more progress images to come soon.
I need to do the rest of the detail in other ways, it's too high poly to deal with right now. I'm also thinking about adjusting the length of the back fins in order to get a better effect.
i agree this is turning out very well. you tend to keep things fairly crisp and polished in your final models and i'm very much looking forward to seeing that on this entry. some of the edges of the high poly shapes on the legs look like they could be a little crisper, but generally looking good.
again, i'll caution against excessive glow-y bits! stick with the glow, it makes a nice contrast with the other colors you're working with, but limit the number of places that are emitting the glow. those legs could land miniature airplanes on them, they got so many lights. you want to put the glow on areas you want to highlight, and so you know what happens when you use the glow too much... that's right, when everything is highlighted, nothing gets highlighted. so exercise the kind of restraint that you've shown in formulating such an elegant looking character design, and you'll be in very good stead. keep it up man!
This is more or less the final version of my model. Ive pulled a couple all-nighters in the last few days to get this complete.
I think this contest was an amazing experience. I not only learned a lot about art while making the model, I learned a lot about myself. This is the second next gen model Ive ever made, so the experience was really amazing. Mixing mechanics and flesh proved to be a real challenge for me.
I learned I need to up my high poly game, and learn some new techniques for creating clean meshes. As it stands, a lot of my models normal complexity comes from post processing. I had to fix a lot of errors, and the first few iterations of the normal map looked really pretty bad.
I also think I need to investigate some new tools; Maxs default scan-line does not produce nice normal maps, even with 2.5 enabled.
From a personal perspective, I saw some of the other entries and I could basically just admit they were better than mine. I also found myself not giving a damn what the other forums came up with at all. I just felt like the serious competition was coming from the polycounters. I lost faith a few time too because my thread didnt seem to get any love from the community. Truth be told though, I never really put up anything cool for them to look at.
I want to thank gauss for his insights, I appreciate it. I also want to thank all the other artists on this forum who scared me into doing better work. Spacemonkey, Peppi, Vahl, Mop/Tully, you guys inspired me throughout the contest.
Cheers to everyone, and I hope the green reigns supreme!
Replies
Chances are he will go a bit more upright, a bit more skaven.
very glad to have you along. as i've been telling others, i'd like to see more thumbnails out of you, and particularly some more explorations following the track of that most recent sketch. verrry promising, if you ask me. not sure about the retention of the rat-like head features, but the overall pose and musculature is very dynamic and the weapons look like serious business. winner territory, if you play your cards right. good stuff, man. keep us posted.
or human arms but stronger than in the concept 1 bevore and with more natural proportions
.. so he can stand on the legs and attack but run on all 4
like the head : )
image removed , updated above
And he kills people by flipping around and slicing them up with his huge blade leg.
i only say this cause his non shadow leg kinda looks like a blade already.
updated at the top
i'd like to challenge you to try and pull this design off using design details other than glow-y bits. i know it's an old standby for just about everyone for good reason, but i think if you put your mind to it you'd pull of something even more eye-catching and unique in the place of them. cause the glow-y bits, man, they're bringing me down. also, the planet that got blown up in the brief was the glow-y bits production planet, everyone's fresh out of them.
You could just make the fleshy bits a suit and call that problem solved.
Crits:
- Consider his arm blades hitting the back blade if he pulls his arms back.
- Think about adding a hinge to the back blade so it can be rotated horiz or vert, making more attacks available to him. You can also add movable parts that let him use it like a rudder on a plane.
- Switching out the glowing hover bits with jets could be a cool addition and would play into the blade/rudder aspect of things?
Gauss: Thanks for the useful crit, I really agreed with you about the rat head, so I went this way with it. The idea for the old man's head is based on character depth. I want to be able to convey a story through the design. As for glowy-bits, maybe you can suggest something to me? it's the first time I've used glowy-bits so it's all new for me. If you're saying they're out, maybe you could help me with a replacement idea.
Vig: Thanks for the compliment. Good point about the blades hitting each other; Maybe I can claim that hole in the back decoration is for this exact purpose? Good idea with the jump jets. The cyborg bits are all armor actually, so maybe I can try to convey that better.
This kicks seven different kinds of ass.
No idea how he stays aloft, but thats secondary. Lots of cool shapes going on. Huzzah for you!
Dur, The body kinda arches backwards and had some bone formations in the chest, the musculature is meant to be somewhat non-human.
Sectaurs, he actually walks on all fours, using the blade tips as his front "feet". I imagine they cut a bit into the ground , providing some stability.
looking at it now i don't necessarily advocate killing the glow entirely--it would still make a lovely centerpiece for that big round bit on his back. removing, or at least, pruning the glow from his torso and limbs would help draw attention to where you want it. think of the glow to be used as bullet points to draw the attention of the viewer--it functions very well in that respect. so maybe just a little more sparingly on the feet and hands, if you're not wanting to relinquish it. good work though, you look more than set for modeling!
Here is a quick update, I've mostly just been playing around with mudbox, I just got it a little while ago. I might revert back to ZB for this model. I've identified some problems thanks to mudbox, and I am going to modify the basemesh. I should start working on the real model soonish.
I am considering adding designs and lots of useage detail to the dorsal blade. The mud-work is going to be redone, it was mostly a test since I'd never used the application before. I'm really glad you like it. Thanks for the great comments, more progress images to come soon.
I need to do the rest of the detail in other ways, it's too high poly to deal with right now. I'm also thinking about adjusting the length of the back fins in order to get a better effect.
again, i'll caution against excessive glow-y bits! stick with the glow, it makes a nice contrast with the other colors you're working with, but limit the number of places that are emitting the glow. those legs could land miniature airplanes on them, they got so many lights. you want to put the glow on areas you want to highlight, and so you know what happens when you use the glow too much... that's right, when everything is highlighted, nothing gets highlighted. so exercise the kind of restraint that you've shown in formulating such an elegant looking character design, and you'll be in very good stead. keep it up man!
I can't shake the feeling that some of the shapes are slopped together. I'm going to do a final quality pass once it's all done, that's for sure.
UPDATED BELOW
i´m realy interested how this turns out normalmapped
keep up the hard hard work
I think this contest was an amazing experience. I not only learned a lot about art while making the model, I learned a lot about myself. This is the second next gen model Ive ever made, so the experience was really amazing. Mixing mechanics and flesh proved to be a real challenge for me.
I learned I need to up my high poly game, and learn some new techniques for creating clean meshes. As it stands, a lot of my models normal complexity comes from post processing. I had to fix a lot of errors, and the first few iterations of the normal map looked really pretty bad.
I also think I need to investigate some new tools; Maxs default scan-line does not produce nice normal maps, even with 2.5 enabled.
From a personal perspective, I saw some of the other entries and I could basically just admit they were better than mine. I also found myself not giving a damn what the other forums came up with at all. I just felt like the serious competition was coming from the polycounters. I lost faith a few time too because my thread didnt seem to get any love from the community. Truth be told though, I never really put up anything cool for them to look at.
I want to thank gauss for his insights, I appreciate it. I also want to thank all the other artists on this forum who scared me into doing better work. Spacemonkey, Peppi, Vahl, Mop/Tully, you guys inspired me throughout the contest.
Cheers to everyone, and I hope the green reigns supreme!