Mr. Smiles

Warhamster

Hello all, this is my first post here. Or on any forum really for that matter.

My name is Brice Anderson and I am a Game Art and Design senior at The Art Institute of Portland. I graduate this December so I decided that it was past time for me to try to get my name out in the real world. I love creating 2D concepts, 3D modeling, and 3D animation all equally, but I feel I am strongest in my animation followed closely by modeling. My 2D abilities need a lot more work.

Mr. Smiles:
This character is the project that is going to be the main piece of my portfolio. The character himself has been floating around in my head for about a year now, and has undergone extreme changes through out his concept creation. I am going to do a finished 2D render, model, unwrap, texture, normal map(zbrush sculpt), and final fight animation using this character over the next couple months.

The main reason for me posting this is for feedback and input, so please tell me what you think and how I can improve! =D


So far i have my rough concepts and turn around as well as an almost finished model. When complete he should be around 15k triangles. He is not supposed to be a very low poly game model, I am more focused on getting enough geometry to support very smooth deformations for my animation.









Tell me what you think!

Isaiah Sherman

Hooray, Warhamster! Glad you finally made an account here

First thing I'm going to say again, is the helmet. One thing you could try to do to reduce its size is by narrowing the trapezius muscles. The neck is so broad when it goes into the helmet it doesn't seem to be realistic in proportion.

The second thing is I would increase the detail of the barrell, chamber exit, bottom of the handle, and hammer of the gun. Those are key areas that feel like they're way too low poly. The bottom of the handle is the worst part by far.

I've said a lot so I'll leave it to a few others to try and help you out

Warhamster

Alright, fixes to the low polyness of the hammer, pistol grip, and barrel. Tell me what you think.

Isaiah Sherman

That's a lot better. But besides the head / body proportions, the rest is looking pretty sweet

Warhamster

Alright, i made his neck a little narrower and the entire helmet smaller. I am not sure if it is because I've been so attached to this project from the beginning but the helmet this small still looks weird to me.

Isaiah Sherman

That's a bit better, especially from the back view. Keep it up

Warhamster

Here is just a really quick rough color study.

brandoom

Cool character Warhamster.

The hips area and legs in general are looking a little thin to me. Great job on the hands though. Looking forward to seeing it textured

Warhamster

Thanks for commenting. And yes, i agree with you about the waist. Now, he will have grenades and large ass bullets on his belt kind of like this. But i am not sure if this fixes the problem or not. What do you think? - I also tweaked his chest armor to be smaller for allowing more movement as well as trying to match my concept better.

Warhamster

Alright, i made some changes to the proportions. The waist and legs were too small so i made them wider. I also made the legs a little longer and moved his guns a little. Hopefully i get some feedback before i have it all UV unwrapped haha. What do you guys think?

Isaiah Sherman

Broadening the width of the waist was a step in the right direction. I think a final touch that can help is extending the length of the lower legs (from bottom of knee to bottom of feet) by a smidge... maybe 10%..

The only thing that sticks out to me at the moment is the length of the legs.

It's coming together nicely

Warhamster

Just finished the UV unwraps. I am making it 3 different UV sheets. His armor(including helmet and belt buckles) on one, his gun and other gear(grenades, bullets, holster) on another, and his body mesh on the last one.

Next step for me is creating the to smooth version for the hard surface armor details in maya which i will import into zbrush for my normal sculpt.

System

agreed with brandoom if that's a proper front view he looks stumpy because the legs appear to be too short. This is mainly, but not entirely due to the fact that they are the same thickness as his arms and should be thicker. Sort out the anatomical problems and you should have a nice base to sculpt on.

Warhamster

Another post! =D Yes i agree with you. I fixed that problem by making the legs thicker and longer, just have not posted the minor change. Here is a quick silhouette shot.

Warhamster

Alright, so i need some help with the color scheme. I played with a bunch of odd colors and i keep reverting to the yellow and dark grey/black. However, with the secondary metal pieces(his jaw, and pectoral plates as well as shoulder plates and gloves) i do not like. Any ideas?

Warhamster

Just another color idea.

Warhamster

So the final product for this character will be a clean polished animation for my demo reel. However, i would like to bring a 2D work to a finished painting to show that i can do the whole thing start to finish.

Here is a quick idea sketch for an action shot i could bring to a finished painting. Please tell me what you think! Thanks.

Warhamster

Alright, a small update to the first one and a couple other quick ideas.



I go the critique that the arched back looks somewhat feminine so i did a few others.



This one is a quirky pose which i think probably fits the character the best but probably doesn't translate very well.



Please tell me which you think works best, or if you have an idea that i could try! =D

Forgottenhero

The character looks cool, I like the concept The poses are a bit too static in my opinion though. It looks like hes sort of a "jester", but with guns. The poses imply something a bit less quirky and spontaneous. Maybe try one with him flipping through the air or doing a handstand whilst shooting??

Warhamster

Ah ya i see what you mean they are pretty static, although a handstand may be a little TOO quirky for what i have in mind for this guy. Clumsy or not terrible fast too react may be a better description.

How about something like this?

-So, the story is he is jumping just out of an explosion over one of those cement barricades in some street or something, with smoke tendrils streaming off of him, drawing his guns. I like this one, what do you think?

Forgottenhero

I like that one a lot better A lot less static.

Warhamster

Alright, so i have everything unwrapped and built my low poly to smooth before importing into zbrush. I JUST started the zbrush sculpting. This is the first pass on the body sculpt, it will see probably another two divisions before i'm done.

Isaiah Sherman

The first thing I notice is the front of the pants are way too wrinkled. The reason parts of clothing have wrinkles is because the underlying structure (leg in this case) is not pressed against the material.

This is very rare in the case of the front of the pants. Your character is wearing some pretty tight pants so he should have very very few wrinkles in front.

You should also sculpt more wrinkles at the sides of the legs at the knees. Since knees are a protruding surface, they cause several wrinkles to spread out in a half sunshine fashion along the sides.

And the easiest thing for you to change.... when you take screenshots, turn off the gradient in the viewport. It looks very ugly for presentation's sake when you keep the gradient on.

You can do that by going to Document > Range. Grab that little slider and move it all the way to the left (to zero).

Keep it up!

Warhamster

Sweet, that is all amazing input. I will make those changes asap. Thanks again haiasi

Warhamster

Alright, some changes to the pants and the gradient thing I flattened out all the wrinkles where i thought the pants would be pressed against the leg, and added more around the sides and back of the knees.

Isaiah Sherman

MUCH better! Good job on following the crits to the tee!

Warhamster

Thats what i like to do

Warhamster

So, the finished product for this character as i have said before is going to be a polished fight animation. This means that i have to have amazing rigs and a good scenario for the fight to take place in. Fortunately i am extremely lucky to have some good friends who are very talented class mates who have agreed to help me out. So, this is to show what my classmates have been doing for me so far! Thanks again you guys are amazing! =D

First, my friend Royal Sybrant who also goes to the art institute of portland with me is doing the entire rig for my mr.smiles character. Here is just a quick screen grab of what he has done so far, but it looks sick and fancy. With blends to different parent constraints between hands, holsters, belts, grenades, and all kinds of coolness. I cannot WAIT to animate with this thing.




Secondly, for a quick scenario i just drew up an idea on some of my brakes at work and then scanned it in, built a quick model with one piece of each thing duplicated over after being quickly unwrapped, and sent it to another friend of mine who specializes in texturing. Gabriella Suseno who is also a classmate of mine is doing all the textures and probably lighting for my scene.

Here is the quick sketch i did.



And here is what Gabriella has already done so far. This is just after a day work in progress. She plans on making the pillars have more then the measly one shared texture space i gave them. I love it so far.

Warhamster

OK. So, unless someone gives me some good critiques on what to change this will be the final sculpt for the main body. Going to start working on all his armor pieces next! =D

I dented up his shin and forearm gear to hopefully look like he has been using them to block with.

Tell me what you think!

Warhamster

Alright, did more Zbrush work tonight. Here are some armor shots of what i have so far.

Warhamster

Alright, so no one really commented on it. But as i kept sculpting i thought that the elbow pads did not match the rest of the armor, OR my original concept.

I think that they were over sculpted and too "fleshy" looking. So, i revisited it and came out with a much simpler design which i think works better. Please tell me what you think!!

Warhamster

Front armor sculpt.

Warhamster

Alright guys, here is the finished body and armor sculpt. Finished being unless someone gives me some critiques i can make changes on.

Warhamster

Hello everyone. It has been more then a couple months since I have made a post on this, or even checked it to be completely honest. I JUST graduated from The Art Institute of Portland with my Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Game Art & Design this last Friday.

As well as working on my portfolio and everything that graduation entails, I landed an internship AND contract work at a 3D animation studio in Oregon city. I worked there a lot, and it was awesome!

So, here are some Mr. Smiles beauty renders and... AND
THE FINISHED ANIMATION!

Please feel free to look at my portfolio site and ALL input is welcome!
www.briceanderson.com

ANIMATION LINK
http://www.briceanderson.com/movies/FightAniQT/FightAnimationQuickTime02.mov
ANIMATION LINK