Concept Character - Holy Smoke

mukuluppal

Hello fellow artists,

I was working over a friend's (Ankit Thapliyal) sketch concept over the last few months,squeezing in whatever time I got after my job/commercial works.

The concept -
In our country we see many tantriks who show their pleasant side to the people and earn a lot by hiding their evil side, so here I tried to make a bold looking character that only shows the evil sides of many saints here. Her arms have stylized tattoo and she is holding a pistol in her hand to show her evil edge. This character is not supposed to look hyper-realistically as a real female would do.I have sticked to the concept as close as I could with my current skill-set

Renders :






Wire Frame :



Thanks!
Mukul Uppal
mukuluppal@gmail.com
cgsoul@gmail.com

haikai

I really like her face and facial expression. I think the hair could be improved if it was thicker (not the individual strands, but it seems like there should be a lot more hair coming down).

The pose seems kind of stiff, and it's weird how it doesn't look like she's looking in the direction that she's pointing the gun at. Proportionally, her lower arm looks too short compared to the upper arm.

The model has a very interesting blend of stylization with fine, realistic textures. Nice job on it.

Will Faucher

The poly distribution seems kind of uneven, here on the dress you have tons and tons of edge loops, and yet on that piece of cloth in her arms, there is clearly not enough to maintain a smooth flow. Try removing some of those polies on the lower dress and distributing them along the cloth. Alot of those edge loops around the dress contribute nothing to the general silhouette, so you could definitely remove some of those. You could get away with easily half the amount of tris on that dress and use a normal map to fake the folds even more.
What's the tri count?

Other than that, it looks great! I love the style and proportions!

mukuluppal

@haikai - Thanks a Lot. Yes you are right about the hair.Will note that one down for sure for my next female character. Yes the pose is definitely not something which even I wanted to look like in the end.But becoz my rigging skills aren't that good I managed to somehow put her in this pose without deforming the mesh much.I guess becoz of this reason only the two arms differ in size.

Thanks for appreciating the texturing.I wanted to try my skills specially with it on this model.

@Prophecies - Thank you. I started this model way back but kept adding little tweaks to it coz of a regular job until recently when I started freelancing and found more free time.
I had no poly count in mind for this one.I just used 3dsmax and no other sculpting for modeling it.The lower poly count was 14k and then I applied a single mesh smooth on the model.

Thanks for the appreciation regarding the proportions and style.These compliments would motivate me a lot for my next personal work.

mukuluppal

More C&C welcome

3DRyan

Your texturing work is DYNAMITE! Love it! Maybe add it bit more of a curvature to the hair (Not the long strands coming out), but the actual geometry on her head. I can see the liquify tool in PS helping this out.

mukuluppal

Thanks 3dryan . Cool tip.Would try that.

BradMyers82

Hey man. Where is the concept?

How do we know if you followed the concept closely, if you don't show it?

To be honest, I feel like this character might have been rushed. The anatomy is almost like a stick figure in areas, and the proportions seem to be all over the place. I hope I'm not coming off too harsh here, I just want to give you my honest opinion as a character artist myself.

If this is for a portfolio piece, I think you should really go back to the anatomy and iron some stuff out. I really wish you started a wip thread here much earlier, because you are already texturing, and you will loose a lot if you go back to the anatomy now.

Def, stick with it man and don't be afraid to re-work things, that's where the real learning takes place!

Good luck!

mukuluppal

@bradmysers82 - Hey man I dont mind your harsh comments.Harsh veterans only teach me good. thanks for ur feedbacks. I can then learn better.Well this was not made in a rush.Actually this was derived from my friend's concept.I already mentioned that.The concept was -



So Basically I kept in good touch with him while modeling the character and kept moving with the model as long as he was satisfied with each and every proportion.The model got completed good 6 months back i suppose.But the texturing was done recently.

I really hate her hands after I tried rigging and posing her.The bad rig - as I don't know how to rig well - ruined her arm's anatomy the most.Here s a screen shot of her in T position.



Basically she is wear heals and her Saare(an Indian women wear) was supposed to be spread out at large.

When I resumed texturing the model after few months (I couldn't in between coz of regular a job) I did fix few of her organic elements like ears/lips etc which really sucked before.But as I was with this model for so long now I really wanted to finish it off.

But thanks for your feedbacks.I loved your works-the scary dog in particular,I saw them even before you commented here and saved your whole website for inspiration My next organic model - which will be in zbrush -for the very first time - I would post all my WIPs here and would keep pushing you for your feedbacks :poly142: :poly124:

BradMyers82

Hey man, sorry it took me so long to give feed back here.


Well, I can see where you're going now that you posted the concept art. Here is the thing, while I do like the concept, I'm sure you can tell there are many anatomical issues with the concept itself. You did indeed follow the concept well, but where it differs it appears to be more on the side making it look less realistic than even the concept, where in reality, you need to take the concept and make it look More realistic.


It can be hard to sorta get your perspective back on this piece as I'm sure you have been staring at it for ages as you have been working on it. That's why fresh eyes are so valuable with critiques, even if it's just a random person giving you a critique. But yeah, I feel like you're learning things on the character art side of things, and to approach this piece as you have, is extremely difficult. Personally, I wouldn't have done it the way you have either, as it would be incredibly difficult for me.
What I'm trying to say is, it looks like your workflow for this has been, build low - unwrap - texture - rig - pose.

I would approach it this way... build base mesh - sculpt (spend a lot of time here, and get the proportions down. Make sure you nail it before you move on, get critiques about proportions) - build low poly - unwrap - bake high res - texture - rig - pose.

You sort of skipped out on some really important steps, and to not take these steps you either have to be a machine who has an incredible talent for getting form and function right off the bat, and to top that, incredible painting and texturing skills (as you would have to paint the Ambient Occlusion (lighting/shadows), with no high poly and create a straight diffuse map). For a guy getting his feet wet with character art, I feel like your work flow is sort of setting yourself up for failure. So def. re-evaluate that. And if you want this as a portfolio piece, I would urge you to go back to the beginning and follow the workflow I have outlined. I know it sort of sucks to scrap the work you have done, but treat it as a test run and learning experience. The end result will be much better trust me!


P.S. You need better hair alphas, here is a tutorial: (check bottom of the page) http://www.tylersart.com/thor.html


Good luck!

mukuluppal

Thanks for the wonderful feedback BradMyers and hey its fine if your feedback was late.Your reviews would help me a lot even if they come late. I am very aware of the way of approach you mentioned above but I couldn't follow it because even at this moment I am not confident about sculpting my models in zbrush/mudbox only.I have gone through much of its interface and tools but need to explore it artistically more.That's why I said that my next character will be in zbrush :poly124: .And realistically this model does have proportional flaws but that was done deliberately (mentioned in my first post too) as my friend (the conceptualizer) wanted me to keep the proportions as they are.Obviously this piece is crap if I compare her proportions to a standard female but that was not the case here.But I really don't like her hands since I saw my first test render. :poly103: But didn't work on them much coz I really want to move and start sculpting proportionally accurate models in zbrush now.I lag big time in sculpting as modeler right now. But yes I should have worked more on her hair.Can be improved a lot.Thanks for the link and the feedbacks again. :thumbup:

BradMyers82

No problem man. Sounds like the next course of action might be to just start a new model then and call this done for now.

I suggest you do something realistic.

On the surface realistic can sound sort of boring, but if you do a really good job with it, you will find its awesome and rewarding! Example awesome art:

mukuluppal

yes.That's very true.And WOW!!!! What an insanely detailed human character in limited poly count.That's why I want to do sculpting - Normal map rocks! I was thinking of starting with some popular faces as my first sculpt.

OH MAN!! This guy is a mind-blowing artist ---> MASHRU MISHU!! :thumbup: