WIP: "Druss The Legend"

cw

Anyone read the book by British author David Gemmell called "Legend"? This is going my reimagining of the character.

Anyway, I've not posted here (or anywhere) much for a while, so here goes nothing!

first rough noodling to get a feel (and lose some rust)

cw

ok some costume design and brainstorm for armour:








I've done the brainstorming after initiallg running for a bit with the top armour design. Something was somewhat amiss though in the sculpting so I am stepping back a bit for some more concentrated design, then I shall rework the sculpt.

cw

sculpt where it got to before I backpedalled.

yes I know it is a crease-fest, but creases, are so.. well.. fun! I will get some better sense of form in there during the rework.



Critique and ideas welcomed! I haven't done a personal project for a good while, been mired in all sorts of gnarly technical or spreadsheety tasks at work

cheers! - cw

gauss

my only crit at this point is that, from what i understand of the wikipedia entry for Legend, is that it's a high fantasy type of novel, and what you've got here, while very wel modeled, has some very ambiguous cues to it regarding time period/place. the mostly black close-fitting stuff ends up looking like a modern military garb to some degree... at least at this stage. once you detail through i'm sure any of the ambiguity about the period and theme should disappear.

other than that, the main thing will be for you to emphasize the characteristics of this legendary hero, past his prime but very well seasoned, coming to the aid of his people one last heroic time. the peppery beard looks great, but you're going to want to have several design elements both in the character and his armor/weaponry to suggest just how experienced and, well, legendary this guy is.

gimme a second and i'll up a few suggestions via paintover

cw

ooh that would be tasty.

there is a definite air of generic-ness at the moment, but as you point out some stronger design elements which reinforce his character will do wonders. I should find some time to address it this week, and I will post my results.

If you do fancy a paintover feel free, it will be fun to see the thoughts of a seasoned pro such as yourself

gauss

seasoned meddler, anyway.

here's a poor justin sweet impression for your troubles.


not great, but i think it emphasizes stature and maturity, which is something you want to do.

also, in that first image of yours, the profile sketch on the right hand side is spot-on for the kind of build and poise this guy should have. keep working with those kind of fluid shapes.

cw

ayup, nice one gauss. I do love that posture, and I should push it more I agree. So my next mission is to rearrange slightly the proportions and posture, and get armour *designed* rather than doodled.

I will tackle this tonight, I forsee a busy day of technical wrangling, but I might be able to squeeze something in at lunch. Tend to keep getting interrupted in the office though, tricky to focus for very long without masses of caffeine.

cheers for the help, it's much appreciated. (I'm fast starting to prefer polycount to any other game-art places on t'interweb)

I shall try to update soon.

cw

aesir

I feel like the beard needs a little more "flow" to it. Right now it just seems to jut straight out. Let gravity affect it a bit more.

cw

cheers aesir,

im going back a step atm with this project, so I shall bear this point in mind as I rework.

cheers.
cw

frettchen

There is a graphic novel of Legend and he looks fairly similar to some of your sketches, he doesn't wear big heavy armour and just wears leather stuff really... your interpretation of Snaga is lovely as well, I actually modeled a Snaga for myself to use in Morrowind based on this reference:


I think I'd prefer to see the character a little more stylised and caricatured, just in the proportion to make him more a bit shorter/wider, but thats just personal preference. It's looking really nice though

cw

nice snaga!

i tried a shorter-wider proportion right at the star, problem was, his beard and axe combined with those proportions to make him look a bit like a tolkien rip-off dwarf. seing as he's often referred to as a 'massive' man i figured he can be tall. i might try it again though with my base model in zb, for the sake of completeness.

cheers!

frettchen

Yeah in the graphic novel he did look a bit dwarfy

cw

ok guys, ive had a bit of a hectic week spare-time-wise, so I haven't progressed as far as I'd hoped.

I plan to catch up friday night, and will post then.

cheers for all the comments so far!

cw

right i tried to get a bit more of his poise and suchlike in the pose, and proportions. I will draw up armour tomorrow, then on to the modelling again

need to get it moving, its gone stale this week cos of busy times elsewhere than this project.



more to come soon!

cw

rough base clothes - armour comiing today i hope



need to don my skates to get this bugger done.

cw

just noticed his silly little arms, need to tweak them longer - oops

cw

ok here it is. im going to go with it now i think, or there's a danger I will go off of it and not finish

feel free to criticise away though, its all good for my brainmeat to feed on.

cw

new base mesh - more to come -

Jaco

The new concept's looking awesome, I liked gauss' red cloak thing though, and the bulkier armour on the forearms. The model is looking good so far, the biceps look a bit deflated though.

cw

ok had some zb problems, was crashing all the time - pixologic forums eventually told me whhat the problem was - so i got an hour or so of progress -

conte

something strange, with his hands in biceps area
i can't tell you exactly- my language not so good

cw

bit more work on this -


need to finish it soon!

hobodactyl

Looking really cool, I like it! You have really good definition, and I like the character. It'll be cool to see this guy done

indian_boy

wow some really great work man! its looking nice, but, i'm just thinking what ur planning on doing for breaking syymetry and whatnot.

can't wait to see the progress

MatOaf

I agree great work, what I love here is that you have almost taken us on a journey with your first image showing us the rough drawings you initially started taking us along until you ended up with the W.I.P model you have there.

Quality work but more than that I liked how you showed us your workflow here.

cw

i finally got it done. had to scrabble arounda t the weekend, so theres some things im not too happy with, but I can fix them now at my leisure.





so there we go. could have been better, must try harder etc. but It's been a while since I did some sort of personal work, outside of me job, so I'm glad that it's finally finished.

Must try to fit more personal work in. It was fun to do!

tremulant

Wow, man, I really enjoyed seeing this one develope,Turned out really nice!

And you learned tons, it seems from start to finish.

My only real crit, would be the anatomy of the bicep. looks like it comes down to far on the arm.

Nice though, I'll look foward to seeing more stuff from you.

cw

cheers for the comments, yeah im glad its done now though I was starting to get a bit bored of it :P

nice to 'keep my hand in' though.

maybe I shall do some more stuff soon.