Dominance War II - seth81

seth81

lil background story:

'The high courts and upper echelons of Polycount society have grown perverse and decadent over their century long reign. Still, the blood of killers runs in their veins and they thirst for the blood of the weak and wretched. Out of these appetites ‘blood-theatre’ has arisen. Great spectacles of horror, torture, pain, and death have become social events for the wealthy and powerful. The greatest killers, able to take life with the greatest flair for the brutal, and depraved have become celebrities. Now the curtain is about to part upon the greatest performance of these killers’ lives. A great war is beginning and will be the perfect opportunity to ply the grotesque and morbid trade of these dark troubadours.'


I'm thinking of mixing the joker(from batman), court jesters, gladiators, and assassins all into one nifty package. With a little bit of goth and sci-fi thrown in for good measure.

I threw together a few bits of reference to indicate my general direction. I might start sketching some stuff up and maybe tossing around some primitives in maya. we'll see.

Oh, and hats off to Gauss... first for helping everyone out once again with the dominance war... and for being the seed of my inspiration for a decadent and perverse court of nobility

pure awesomeness

gauss

haha hey man, glad to be of service
i think of all your reference images, i like the lower left hand corner the best. he's so obviously dopey, but next to all the more serious customers he actually looks sinister. nicely compiled set of images, by the way.

and even better on the description. i think it's actually the best written of any of the description/backstory bits i've read so far for the Dominance War, and that includes the fairly turgid descriptions in the official briefs.

all i can say is that i'm (obviously) rather keen on this sort of approach, and i think especially with polycount's current top dog status, that it should work very well. the description of "blood-theatre" is truly as evil as polycount seems to be made out to be in this compo, so i'm very keen on seeing how these decadent, theatrically-minded killers turn out. if i was at home, i'd take a crack at depicting a blood-theatre even! keep us posted, man.

Vailias

I dig this idea. I mean you could practically use the guy on the right by himself, just add a knife and an evil grin. Gives me ideas heh. Can't wait to see what you come up with out of this.

Honolulu_Ninja

The descriptions gives me the feeling of Kefka-like character.
And that's very nice! ^^

ninjaPenguin3d

I like the idea you came up with Seth. It reminded me of movies i've seen where theres a guy entertaining people with his knife throwing ability. Like bill the butcher in gangs of new york. Like having a person standing there with a target behind them and just missing them or hitting apples off of their head. But your guy could entertain by hitting exact organs or arteries in people, while blind-folded or from great distances. Anyway think throwing knives, and torture utensils, and such. Great backstory man.

seth81

Thanks guys.

gauss - thanks man, I hoped you would like the idea. It would be awesome to see your take on the whole blood theatre thing.

Vailias - hah, you're right. I grabbed another batch of photos from the same guy/model this time around too... and guys in corsets = creepy, but I think that's what I'm shooting for.

Honolulu_Ninja - awesome, thanks I didn't even think of Kefka when I was coming up with ideas... now to go find some more reference shots of him.

Penguin - hmm, throwing utensils you say?


now for the update:

I feel fried this morning so it might only be this small update for the day. Did up a couple of thumbnails in maya and now I can't decide between a male or female character. Hmm. Maybe I'll combine the two? gah, perhaps more caffeine will get rid of this feeling of stuckness.

rollin

long scissor fingers are realy nice.. or even sharp metall blades.. love the one on the lover left and the one above.. mjam..

Jaco

A female would be nice, that bottom left picture of the ballerina has some real potential. A dark and twisted dancer of death sounds like it could be a very unique approach to creating an assasin.

ninjaPenguin3d

I think I know what direction your headed in...
The first ever transvestite soldier in the War.
eeewwwww..... my bad I just crossed the line didn't I.

- FredH -

Hi seth81, please change your thumbnail on the dominancewar page. You need to show work that is yours or people will follow your example and post non relevant images. You have a few hours to fix this before I will need to remove your entry and you will have to start again.

seth81

huh? seems to be a little confusion here. that is my work... it's a paintover of this guy that i'm working on here:



i was waiting to get past the blocking out stage before posting a proper wip shot.

- FredH -

Oops.... Sorry for the confusion. Your all good to go hehe

Really nice modeling man.

seth81

hah, an update finally. still blocking stuff out on this one but almost all the general masses are in there (sort of).

Japhir

cool stuff! you should get her dressed though.. i thought nakedness was forbidden? and one crit: the shoes could use some work... they look like ballet shoes with stiletto heals. other then that it looks great!

Snowfly

cool idea, technically sound, but at this point unexciting...where's the concept?

rollin

the body realy looks nice.. and yhej.. some concepting might help to loose a bit of the "normal"-look

keep pushing

gauss

don't mind the haters! i may just be flattered by my own referencing in this entry, but i think i see where you're going, and it should work out great. but i see the cautions others are putting forward, too--you need to make sure at every stage to step back and evaluate that she's kicking as much ass as possible. i think she will (obviously, those are meant to be stiletto'd ballet slippers, which is pretty awesome), especially if you work up the rest of the costume with as much thought as i know you can. time for an update!

seth81

Hah, thanks Gauss and thanks for the replies. I understand the cautioning too... but I'm having fun on these models and it seems that I'm on a totally different tangent than everyone else for this comp. Hmm.

I'm job hunting right now and if I get one more art test I probably won't have time to finish. So here's the girl update and also one of my original ideas brought up to speed a bit. Most of the modeling is done low and high poly but untextured so I'm just dropping the current silhouettes in. The screen grabs just have my first normals pass and some base colors thrown on. both are very wip

rollin

love the faces.. especially the first one , realy cool !!

gwad

"ma qu

gauss

quality work, man.. i don't think my cautions will prove necessary after seeing what you've got so far. really hoping you get the time to finish these in time, though! keep postin'!