Machimera - original fantasy creature
Hi guys!
Here's my newest offering for community viewing. It's a chimera creature of unicorn-like grace. This time I setup in Unreal3 for the first time on personal work. Also it really comes to life in a scrub/turnaround video, but having a hell of a hard time capturing + cropping + compressing without issue somewhere along the way.
Still some minor tweaks to do, but it feels finally presentable. Hope you like.
As usual, here's the long fake lore around it (feel free to skip) :
The Machimera :
A transient and mysterious creature of the deep woods, forest tribes refer to it as Machimera. 'Ma' is their word for God, the term 'Machimera' suggests a chimera created by god, not borne from science or magic. This also reflects tribe beliefs that refer to this creature as a demigod of the wilds.
People hopelessly lost in the woods are said to find themselves judged by this creature. Tales say it will lead the pure of heart back to their village, and the cruel deeper into perpetual wilderness. It will never approach the lost, simply appearing within eyeshot until they choose to follow it.
Like mother nature, the Machimera is neither friend or foe. It can be a savior or executioner, beautiful or terrible. Whether you should follow it when it appears hinges on what kind of person you consider yourself to be.
Whether this is indeed a sentient demigod or merely a naturally breeding creature remains unknown as no bodies have ever been found. It has always been reported to appear alone, and only to lone persons.
Here's my newest offering for community viewing. It's a chimera creature of unicorn-like grace. This time I setup in Unreal3 for the first time on personal work. Also it really comes to life in a scrub/turnaround video, but having a hell of a hard time capturing + cropping + compressing without issue somewhere along the way.
Still some minor tweaks to do, but it feels finally presentable. Hope you like.
As usual, here's the long fake lore around it (feel free to skip) :
The Machimera :
A transient and mysterious creature of the deep woods, forest tribes refer to it as Machimera. 'Ma' is their word for God, the term 'Machimera' suggests a chimera created by god, not borne from science or magic. This also reflects tribe beliefs that refer to this creature as a demigod of the wilds.
People hopelessly lost in the woods are said to find themselves judged by this creature. Tales say it will lead the pure of heart back to their village, and the cruel deeper into perpetual wilderness. It will never approach the lost, simply appearing within eyeshot until they choose to follow it.
Like mother nature, the Machimera is neither friend or foe. It can be a savior or executioner, beautiful or terrible. Whether you should follow it when it appears hinges on what kind of person you consider yourself to be.
Whether this is indeed a sentient demigod or merely a naturally breeding creature remains unknown as no bodies have ever been found. It has always been reported to appear alone, and only to lone persons.
Replies
great work.
I think that's the post process i setup in unreal making things red out, I'll see what i can do about that and also throw in some variance in the texture, see what i can get.
As for the chest being pointy, that's by design. I realize that it's a little perplexing, on this piece i wanted to focus on the silhouette above all else, and that's what worked.
Also it makes evolutionary sense, having a plated chest shaped like a boat hull helps it cut through the dense woods. Just happens that in the end it doesn't visually seem to jive well with belly scales. It's a lesson i'll remember in the future.
I think the head is by far the best part, any way of getting some blue/grey scales on the upper portions of the legs?
Otherwise it's great work. Really got the feel of a good fantasy creature.
The only thing that really bothers me is the front paw/hoove on the ground. It feels like it is pointing in the wrong direction and wouldn't be able to hold weight naturally - unless it is supposed to be some sort of knuckle-walker, in which case I would expect the feet to be far less dainty.
Really great job though, I'm a sucker for interesting fantasy creatures.
really cool design man, nice silhouette!
id also be curious to see how marmoset compares
Definitely aware those feet are strange. I wanted it to look alien and almost dysfunctional to add to the delicate feeling to this creature. It was also to give it a certain surreal feeling like those Salvador Dali things.
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~fishwick/ac/2008/Dali_Temptation_of_St_Anthony.jpg
As for the joint, the protrusions are bone under the skin, they serve to lock the ankle joins from overextending in the wrong direction. This is because everything past the ankle is solid hoof/horn and clearly it doesn't have a lot of muscular strength in that area.
All that being said, I am aware these feet wouldnt really 'work' in reality, which is why i chose to keep it. So if you saw one of these in reality you'd keep looking a it wondering how it can exist. Kind of like a duck billed platypus i guess.
Sure message received, i'll be playing with gradients today to see what i can get.
Though i really like Marmoset for its quick setup, I'll be sticking to U3 now until they iron out the bugs and missing features that were really holding me back too often. There's a lot going on in this shader that marmoset doesn't offer (Falloff with colour map, SSS with colour map and intensity mask, easy light/fog editing, etc). Not to mention the 2-sided and alpha problems when you need it.
The main reason i used Marmoset over U3 was because I didn't want to go through the steep learning curve of lighting/scene setup in U3, and thought SSS was complicated to make in U3. Now that I'm past those humps, I'll be sticking with U3 for a while, I really like it now. Marmoset is still a very cool solid tool for hobbyists and students or folks that hate technical hassles. I'm just spoiled on game engines & want access to all the tasty features I'm used to. :poly142:
I might go back 50% to the old post process, after looking at the original again, I feel this one has gone a little too much towards the dark Gears Of War side. What do you guys think.
I agree with pushing the constrast in color between the fur and the chest scales. Cause right now, it looks to me like red-orange fur and yellow orange scales blend togheter.
I really like the edgy/stylish poly distribution, id leave it that way. The silouette rocks!
i'll sum up: looks like you desaturated rather than address the problems with monotony. more colors, not less!
i really dig this critter
Anyone feel free to overpaint with proposals regarding the colours.
As for the blending colour betwen the scales and fur, it's deliberate. I found that making the scales stand apart too much makes it look like less of a harmony between snake and deer (Snake and grayhound is closer to the actual anatomy)
Keep the comments coming.
Ballin stuff like the character and the story behind it tho if im not mistaken the whole mythos of the creature is the same as the unicorn? also i realy like the colors how you originally had them.. they popped and were fantastic like the creature. the only part of the design i would change would be the feet, the bone spur feet seem a bit too round to me, i feel like this fella would be sliding all over. also on the texture side, i think the hooves should be a more disticlty different color from the fur. o and the spots on the upper back where the scales fade in could be repeated along the whole back i think.
you said you were focusing on shilouette, and you killed it, looks great man esp the sweeping horns. your fur and scales are quite amazing in this piece would love to see flats <cough, cough> :poly142:
-Woog
If you know more about the lore let me know and i'll change mine if it really is that close. Were they said to take an active part in punishing the wicked and saving the good?
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l175/wizo5454/Untitled-1-1.jpg
FF mog inspired
Achieved the highlights by sampling from the head and using the "color" blend mode and just sploched it on. Then a second layer and a "color dodge" blend mode and painted just above the other layer if you wanted to add a little of this to your texture art machine.
just some white edges to the fur and some green. looks kinda moldy... no clue what i thought
The white version does look pretty rad though and i could definitely see it as another variation of the creature if this was in an rpg style game. I might make a white version sometime if i get bored.
crazyfingers thanks for rounding out the shapes which i just noticed. It actually convinces me that the sharp angles were a good choice, the round version loses so much of the edge and distinct stylishness if you ask me.
I think I'll sleep on everything tonight and call it done tomorrow if it still feels ok as it is.
It does look great and you can see the care taken in posing the animal in regards to the hard edges, but again as a "polycounter" it's painful to see texture distortion and hard edges, intentional as they are.
Regardless, a very unique and artful piece!
This also is a little hint to the look of my new folio site that I'm working on finishing today and should be up by tomorrow.
Even just a HINT more 3d on the leaves would help a lot, i'm thinking the light affecting the leaves could be placed directly on the animal's head to keep or even enhance the focus. Obviously the light would effect only the leaves.
Looks amazing, if this suggestion doesn't go over i'll just shut up
I don't mind the idea/suggestions at all, I just like to go about thing in interesting ways that may be weird at first glance. I always consider things you guys say and adopt them when they match with the intended end.
your current background would make a cool rpg char selection screen.
I think that the fog is a little to obvious of were it ends. Might be worth to go into photoshop and touch that up so that the fall off works better.
Really good presentation.
I agree that the fog ends abruptly. It looks like it should be obscuring his hooves, at the very least
I always like that your fantasy stuff has an oily opulence to it, it probably reminds more people of Frazetta and Boris than can put a name to the origin of that familiarity.
It works well for you though, theres always a rich sense of mythology that comes through, I expect the prose helps the visuals as much as the reverse ? I've found this to be true for my own work.
Theres also something about the beauty shot and the creature itself I guess that reminds me of a horror comic I read when I was about 7 or 8 maybe, it had a story about some sort of evil or posessed horses that killed people in some remote land.
I'm rambling at this point... HEY! did I mention I like it!?
Wow thanks Kevin, you always make comments that stand out, being compared to those guys is awesome. Though taking a fresh look at their work, I can see that you liken it in feeling more than "omgwtf" technical awesomeness. And oily opulence, wow I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that describer :P
And if prose isn't a typo and you mean the back-story, yeah absolutely the visual and story feed off each other and both evolve as the piece develops. Initially all i had was the image of the horned snake headed deer, and that striking silhouette. The more i worked on it, the more its personality and mythology developed in my mind until the final product emerged. That's one neat thing about spending days working on something, you have time to 'get to know it' more and more as it grows.
Also zombie horses, awesome.
I went and reread a bit once I spotted the saturation concerns..... stick to what makes you happy, I think your first instincts were stronger, rich saturation still has a big role in game art, lower saturation work is in vogue right now but that doesn't mean we all need to bend to that.
Nice work!
But not so much that I think any less of the badassness that is this creature.