still VERY VERY WIP, but I thought I would post to see what people thought fo the idea anyway Spent most of the day gathering reference, and started throwing some shapes down.
DESCRIPTION:
My character infused his katana with Darkness/Void magic. He had been a formitable warlord prior to the infusion, but his new weapon drove him bloodthirsty with power. We was unable to control the powerful magic unleashed through his weapon and quickly noticed it spilling forth into his own body ... grotesquely mutating his arm and torso. He continues to weild the weapon, uncertain of his own fate.
Going to keep working on the concept drawings until they are solid Crits greatly appreciated (but keep in mind its like ... 2 hours of drawing)
So I started painting the head ... started exploring some shapes and such. I thought he was looking way too much like a stereotypical samurai, so I revealed the lower half of his face to show some messed up jaggedy teeth. I also want him to have a slightly dead feel, so I am probably going to make some sick looking skin and throw some scars and battle damage on there for good measure.
I also want his face mask to have some sort of cool design or pattern on it...going to explore that later. Moving on to the body and arms next
ok, so my samurai concept was not as well received as I had hoped it to be, so I sat down and played around in photoshop today to see if I could comeup with something new. As luck would turn out, the following happened:
thoughts? better than the crazy samurai? should I keep going with this one or go back to the drawing board?
Better than the samurai - because the samurai in Darkstalkers was undead and had a mouth/face on its chest/belly. This is a bit more original. Makes me think of a Rhinoman trying to be a triceratops.
Yeah I definantly agree. I was also told it looks like a character from Soul Calibur and also like Shao Kahn from Mortl Combat. So ... add Darkstalkers in there (I can't find a pic for the life of me to compare) and that is enough reason for me to stay clear fo the whole super samurai theme. I would love to have some sort of asian theme in my character, but I don't want to come that close to the ripping off someone else's work line.
I'm going to mess with both, but I am still not in love with anything I have produced thus far. I want to spend as much time concepting before I move to 3d ... failure to preare is preparing to fail
k, combined. thoughts? I think I like this quite a bit more than the other concepts...I feel slightly more origional. I worked off the rhino trying to be a triceratops thing and threw in the samurai influence I was hoping for. Crits / suggestions / you ar eont he right or wrong track would be greatly appreciated
If your going to combine, I would change the overall proportions. I would try maybe making him bulkier on top, maybe even somewhat fat and a large back. Making him top heavy would emphasize the brute force aspect of the Rhino, and with the right kind of armor would fit well with the Samurai part of him. I actually dug the original samurai sketches, but I can definitely see a medium between these too.
i like the rhino idea better than the samurai. i dont think you necessarily have to combine the two. i think the first rhino concept u did was cool. i would build on that one and give him a nice bulky weapon. but i'm sure if you tweak the rhino/samurai combo, something cool will come out of that too. good luck!
maybe toss some sort of armor on his left leg to counter balance the stuff on the fore arm. and you are missing a great chance to play with unique helmet designs. you could come up with some awesome stuff for a rhino.
and last, maybe make it less "rhino", think rhino-esque, but right now it looks like a ninja turtle toy.
messing around with helmet designs ... not sure if I like any. I want him to rely on his weapon more than his horn, so I was trying to make it look more like it would suck to get impaled ... and he'll do it if he has to ... but that's not his thing. worked from conervative to ultra protective.
I like #1, but i also like how you have gold rims on the horn armor ornaments like in #2. Maybe do a combo of 1 and 2. You could also run a leather strap around his chin to help secure the helm down, similar to how you have the armor wrapping around the chin in #3.
I am digging the rhino idea. The weapon seems a but bland, maybe placing an ornament on the end of the grip, or curving the blade to resemble more of a katana since you seem to have a samurai theme going on. I also like his piercings :P
Maybe try some more extreme proportions, like short legs, big feet, small pelvis and HUGE chest and shoulders? Dunno.
Really nice work though. Keep it up, can't wait to see more!
4 is cool, but I think 3-ish works best. Maybe combine it with something like...
You might also want to start thinking about your materials. Right now you've got quite a few: bandages, metal, gold deco, skin, horns, straps, chains and chainmail. I think the chainmail works least with the burly, bulky character of a hippo. The bandages make him feel weak, and the straps could be heavier and more prominently secure (like with a ring as in the kink image above) to support the weight.
I LOL'ed myself when I saw your pic, shotgun. You guys were super helpful! Gonna revamp the design tomorrow and see what comes out.
I totally agree ... gonna mess with the proportions like Arix suggested and also try to cut back on materials to make him feel more consistant. Thanks again guys!
got some time to mess around with shapes and proportions. did a couple silhouettes to try and figure stuff out. I enlarged the horns on his chest as well as the ornamental thing on his back. Shortened his legs and chopped some of them off ... also raised his shoulder pads up a little. I am shooting for silhouette B. A is where it is currently at. I am getting frustrated with 2d space ... might move on to 3d space where i am way more comfortable. Have a pretty solid idea as to how everything is going to fit together, so I am fairly happy.
B sounds great.. I can jus imagine how it will look in 3d. cant wait to see it, I think u can give a more thicker sword too, somehow the thin one doesnt seems to fit in.
so I started roughing in 3d forms -- pretty happy with how it is coming out. I was concerned about the chains -- I didn't want to use cards (they stick out like a sore thumb) so I experimented with them quite a bit. So far I have used a little over half my budget with sloppy geo. I can totally crank this thing and make it look killer, methinks.
Hopefully you guys like the new proportions Still have to play withthe head -- I think I am going to lower it a little so the shoulder pads look ultra football padd-ish.
Wow, that is a very wide rhino! I think his legs should be a bit longer.
The design of the amor is cool but i dont like the horns on his chest, they dont make much sense. Without them he could be able to use the horn on his head for fighting. Maybe put a horn on his arm shield thing.
I combined some of the elemnts I liked from my samurai helmet and heavily relied on "C" from my dome studies. I like how it turned out, but I am very open to feedback. I also lengthened the legs a little (might need to widen them now?) and messed with the armor a bit.
gah ... harder and harder to find time to work on this -- I think I am going to hammer on it for a few days while I have the chance!
did some sculpting on the shoulder pads I need to add battle damage and clean the normals up in Photoshop, but this is where it is headed Im using this arrow frog and some cool imprints i found online as a color scheme / reference.
spent the day working on the helmet and head. I think the head itself is at a pretty decent spot -- not too much cleanup to do. All the craptastic faked anatomy in the neck is going to be covered up by armor, so you will never really see it unless it is through armor seams. Helmet still has quite a bit of work left -- going to sharpen up the edges and add some micro-detail. Experimented with some colors ... thoughts? Still going with the arrow frog color scheme
Hopefully tomorrow I will have some base chest plate sculpted + normal mapped + base colored.
k, started pushing forward torso is all laid out. I am sure most of you have figured out by now that I do not work in the standard way ... lol ... Most of my work happens in photoshop instead of making one big contiguous high res sculpt. This clocks in at around 3K tris, but many of the tris under the head are un-used ... so deleting them + other hidden faces brings it down to 2.5K. Right on track, methinks.
To do list:
fix top arm pads (they bother me)
refine normals
make spec maps
FIGURE OUT COLOR (maybe once whole thing is in 3d?)
so I had an epic fail moment today ... whole file corrupted. Hacked and slashed to get my stuff back ... was able to recover most of it with minimal editing only to write over my new file with the corrupted one. *slaps head*
Anyway ... was able to work on the back ornament. The text reads (or is supposed to) "conquest - legion - victory". Or at least I hope it does ... if anyone can verify that for me it would be awesome
I have house guests for a few days, so I have to take a break. Hopefully when I come back I can power through the rest!
OK i'm back! Time to finish :P Threw some base color on the arms for now to make sure the bandages look ok. The right arm is going to have armor and plates on it, but I duped the left one to make sure nothing looked wonky. More to come soon > : )
Nice work
What is written on that big sign? Looks like its something very important
The texture looks noisy and dirty to me, Rhinos have an interresting skin i cant see it in your textures http://www.wwf.de/fileadmin/fm-wwf/filme-alt/Weisses_Nashorn_WWF-Ulf-Doerner1024x768.jpg
To make it less dirty looking it helps to put more color in the shadeing and dont put you screens on a black background.
thanks for posting Davidson! I was starting to get lonely with so many posts and no replies *cry*
the billboard reads "conquest - legion - victory" (Legion is the character's name). Thought it would be funny if the last thing you on this plane of existance was was a smiley face on a charging rhino with an overconfident slogan plastered over his head.
anyway ... here's the post for the night. top pads, billboard and shield to do ... then touch up, spec map and posing!
Please be carefully with green color on the armor. I would prefer pure metal instead of other kind of materials on it. The sculls could be matt metal and rest of the armor more glossy with slightly different color temperature.
Hey r4ptur3, nice work, I really like the main shapes! The rhino is a great idea.
Here's a small crit that could hopefully push the model further.
Like I said, the main shapes are cool but I think little subtle curves should help out your model. Heres what I mean:
Maybe just by pushing verts in those muscle intersection to help give them more definition could make the model seem a bit more dynamic. And maybe make the green more saturated as much as the polycount logo if you want. But in general, the texture is coming along well, materials are reading well, keep it up!
Thought I would post the final pics here since they are not viewable by the public after I submitted them Think he turned out allrite ... learned so much while doing it + had a lot of fun. Was awesome to watch people progress through the contest and I hope to do it again next year!
Replies
still VERY VERY WIP, but I thought I would post to see what people thought fo the idea anyway
NAME: (undecided)
CLASS: Warlord
ARTIFACT: Darkness, Void.
DESCRIPTION:
My character infused his katana with Darkness/Void magic. He had been a formitable warlord prior to the infusion, but his new weapon drove him bloodthirsty with power. We was unable to control the powerful magic unleashed through his weapon and quickly noticed it spilling forth into his own body ... grotesquely mutating his arm and torso. He continues to weild the weapon, uncertain of his own fate.
Going to keep working on the concept drawings until they are solid
So I started painting the head ... started exploring some shapes and such. I thought he was looking way too much like a stereotypical samurai, so I revealed the lower half of his face to show some messed up jaggedy teeth. I also want him to have a slightly dead feel, so I am probably going to make some sick looking skin and throw some scars and battle damage on there for good measure.
I also want his face mask to have some sort of cool design or pattern on it...going to explore that later. Moving on to the body and arms next
thoughts? better than the crazy samurai? should I keep going with this one or go back to the drawing board?
I'm going to mess with both, but I am still not in love with anything I have produced thus far. I want to spend as much time concepting before I move to 3d ... failure to preare is preparing to fail
Thanks for the suggestions guys!!
So ... add Darkstalkers in there (I can't find a pic for the life of me to compare)
[/ QUOTE ]
Just as an FYI: Bishamon
Valandar: AHH! bad joo joo magic! No more teeth in chest plate for me.
k, combined. thoughts? I think I like this quite a bit more than the other concepts...I feel slightly more origional. I worked off the rhino trying to be a triceratops thing and threw in the samurai influence I was hoping for. Crits / suggestions / you ar eont he right or wrong track would be greatly appreciated
maybe toss some sort of armor on his left leg to counter balance the stuff on the fore arm. and you are missing a great chance to play with unique helmet designs. you could come up with some awesome stuff for a rhino.
and last, maybe make it less "rhino", think rhino-esque, but right now it looks like a ninja turtle toy.
Drawings to follow soon
messing around with helmet designs ... not sure if I like any. I want him to rely on his weapon more than his horn, so I was trying to make it look more like it would suck to get impaled ... and he'll do it if he has to ... but that's not his thing. worked from conervative to ultra protective.
Suggestions much appreciated
I am digging the rhino idea. The weapon seems a but bland, maybe placing an ornament on the end of the grip, or curving the blade to resemble more of a katana since you seem to have a samurai theme going on. I also like his piercings :P
Maybe try some more extreme proportions, like short legs, big feet, small pelvis and HUGE chest and shoulders? Dunno.
Really nice work though. Keep it up, can't wait to see more!
You might also want to start thinking about your materials. Right now you've got quite a few: bandages, metal, gold deco, skin, horns, straps, chains and chainmail. I think the chainmail works least with the burly, bulky character of a hippo. The bandages make him feel weak, and the straps could be heavier and more prominently secure (like with a ring as in the kink image above) to support the weight.
I LOL'ed myself when I saw your pic, shotgun. You guys were super helpful! Gonna revamp the design tomorrow and see what comes out.
I totally agree ... gonna mess with the proportions like Arix suggested and also try to cut back on materials to make him feel more consistant. Thanks again guys!
got some time to mess around with shapes and proportions. did a couple silhouettes to try and figure stuff out. I enlarged the horns on his chest as well as the ornamental thing on his back. Shortened his legs and chopped some of them off ... also raised his shoulder pads up a little. I am shooting for silhouette B. A is where it is currently at. I am getting frustrated with 2d space ... might move on to 3d space where i am way more comfortable. Have a pretty solid idea as to how everything is going to fit together, so I am fairly happy.
so I started roughing in 3d forms -- pretty happy with how it is coming out. I was concerned about the chains -- I didn't want to use cards (they stick out like a sore thumb) so I experimented with them quite a bit. So far I have used a little over half my budget with sloppy geo. I can totally crank this thing and make it look killer, methinks.
Hopefully you guys like the new proportions
The design of the amor is cool but i dont like the horns on his chest, they dont make much sense. Without them he could be able to use the horn on his head for fighting. Maybe put a horn on his arm shield thing.
The legs need some work on the shorter version, would be ridiculous to see him running around.
I combined some of the elemnts I liked from my samurai helmet and heavily relied on "C" from my dome studies. I like how it turned out, but I am very open to feedback. I also lengthened the legs a little (might need to widen them now?) and messed with the armor a bit.
gah ... harder and harder to find time to work on this -- I think I am going to hammer on it for a few days while I have the chance!
did some sculpting on the shoulder pads
low-poly screen grabs woo!
spent the day working on the helmet and head. I think the head itself is at a pretty decent spot -- not too much cleanup to do. All the craptastic faked anatomy in the neck is going to be covered up by armor, so you will never really see it unless it is through armor seams. Helmet still has quite a bit of work left -- going to sharpen up the edges and add some micro-detail. Experimented with some colors ... thoughts? Still going with the arrow frog color scheme
Hopefully tomorrow I will have some base chest plate sculpted + normal mapped + base colored.
k, started pushing forward
To do list:
fix top arm pads (they bother me)
refine normals
make spec maps
FIGURE OUT COLOR (maybe once whole thing is in 3d?)
crits / comments would be more than helpful
so I had an epic fail moment today ... whole file corrupted. Hacked and slashed to get my stuff back ... was able to recover most of it with minimal editing only to write over my new file with the corrupted one. *slaps head*
Anyway ... was able to work on the back ornament. The text reads (or is supposed to) "conquest - legion - victory". Or at least I hope it does ... if anyone can verify that for me it would be awesome
I have house guests for a few days, so I have to take a break. Hopefully when I come back I can power through the rest!
OK i'm back! Time to finish :P Threw some base color on the arms for now to make sure the bandages look ok. The right arm is going to have armor and plates on it, but I duped the left one to make sure nothing looked wonky. More to come soon > : )
grinding ... here's latest WIP.
still grinding -- got him all on one map (WOO!) and started painting diffuse + final cleaning of normals. gonna cut it real close ><
What is written on that big sign? Looks like its something very important
The texture looks noisy and dirty to me, Rhinos have an interresting skin i cant see it in your textures
http://www.wwf.de/fileadmin/fm-wwf/filme-alt/Weisses_Nashorn_WWF-Ulf-Doerner1024x768.jpg
To make it less dirty looking it helps to put more color in the shadeing and dont put you screens on a black background.
thanks for posting Davidson! I was starting to get lonely with so many posts and no replies *cry*
the billboard reads "conquest - legion - victory" (Legion is the character's name). Thought it would be funny if the last thing you on this plane of existance was was a smiley face on a charging rhino with an overconfident slogan plastered over his head.
anyway ... here's the post for the night. top pads, billboard and shield to do ... then touch up, spec map and posing!
Keep going, I believe it goanna be very good.
Here's a small crit that could hopefully push the model further.
Like I said, the main shapes are cool but I think little subtle curves should help out your model. Heres what I mean:
Maybe just by pushing verts in those muscle intersection to help give them more definition could make the model seem a bit more dynamic. And maybe make the green more saturated as much as the polycount logo if you want. But in general, the texture is coming along well, materials are reading well, keep it up!
finished him up tonite + posting final images