Warrior Grrl
polycounter lvl 15
I think I MIGHT possibly be able to squeeze in the CGHub warrior challenge even though my schedule just became totally bombtastic with current paying gigs. Got a few months to do it, so why not... wrap that up a little early and then hit DW5 head on!
I wanna do a female for sure. Got too many males having man sex in my portfolio at the moment.
Going for a high tech tribal look. Good balance of hard surface and organic. I plan to make some pieces fairly ornate, age old battle worn tech, but not primitive. Throw in some call outs to certain tribal feels (amazon, head/neck dresses, etc.)
Still concept sculpting at this point. Pior, I love you, and I really want your help and assistance!
Need a name too.... something you wanna poor chocolate syrup over, but are afraid to because you might get kilt?
I wanna do a female for sure. Got too many males having man sex in my portfolio at the moment.
Going for a high tech tribal look. Good balance of hard surface and organic. I plan to make some pieces fairly ornate, age old battle worn tech, but not primitive. Throw in some call outs to certain tribal feels (amazon, head/neck dresses, etc.)
Still concept sculpting at this point. Pior, I love you, and I really want your help and assistance!
Need a name too.... something you wanna poor chocolate syrup over, but are afraid to because you might get kilt?
Replies
PeterK: Thanks man! I'm still not totally happy with them, doesn't feel like it flows too well.
Vinterdragen: Cheers! Any thoughts on how I can push it further? The contest looks to be drawing in some good talent, and I haven't done a friendly comp in a while that I'm just doing for kicks. Not really concerned about the prizes, or even winning. Just wanna do something fun and try to push my creativity.
From where I sit, it looks as if you're floundering a tiny bit, conceptually. This isn't a bad thing, good things can come from floundering. I just worry you'll tire yourself out on this model. If you ask me, it's high-time you step back and think a bit about where you'd like to take this model.
I'm watching your progress on this model, and I'm noticing you seem to place a heavy importance on your forms, shapes, proportions, silhouette; designy things. It's not bad. You've got some repeating themes and shapes. You're placing these patterns in different areas to move the eye around and are balancing them in a way pleasing to the eye. In my opinion, you've taken this concept too far, and the design is becoming busy, much too busy.
It is said, the most important shapes, are the largest shapes. Not the medium, or small. And I'd agree with that. If you're going flounder with shapes, this is the area where you should, in my humble opinion. The bigger shapes. Rather than the medium to high frequency details. Spikes can only to so much to a silhouette.
I don't think this figure is all that bad to move forward from though, honestly. It's sleek, and unique enough. If you are unhappy with it, and are feeling like you'd like to play with more abstract forms and shapes, I'd suggest pushing the larger forms around more.
Or, if you'd like to start refining I think you should consider two things that will help you gain some focus. 1. answer those questions you've asked at the start of your post. Give her a name. 2. Use reference. these shapes you're detailing with lack meaning. I find this helps bring my work to life. I'd suggest you do 3 things. The first, do an image search for whatever article you're working on; boot, glove, neck brace, etc. Second, pull up Piors work. You mentioned you like his work. Have some of his work up while you're working. Something that's similar to the one you're working on here. And finally, run a search on tribal gear, etc. See if that doesn't spark any ideas.
Less is, in fact, more.
-kp
Thanks for taking the time to write this awesome crit man. I'll post up some paintovers later on today. You are awesome!
am i totally hitting a wall here? this still feels too busy, specifically torso and calf regions.
I don't think any of the designs you've come up with so far are necessarily bad, but then again I don't really know what it is you're going after. When in doubt, simplify.
I'm liking the proportions, but if it was me I'd try to accentuate the long legs. The large boots on the new sculpt just don't really seem to fit.
Hope that helps! Sorry I didn't see this a month ago.
haikai: you are so right. I really started this project off on a bad note and should have fleshed out a 2d concept. I initially wanted to get used to the sculpting tools in Mud as I'm more used to ZB, and also see how I could handle sculpt design on the fly. I can not.
darbeenbo, PixelGoat: TBH, I was really loving this design as well. With some proportion tweaks an a little more simplifying, I was hoping to really flesh out the 2d of this one. Showed it to few choice people and got mixed reviews, so I scrapped it. I do have a 2d overlay I started for this one but didn't flesh out too much.
I have gone back and tweaked a bunch of stuff... but ultimately, this is going to be a project that I just work on when I can and not finish for the competition. I simply just don't have time for comps at the moment.
I want to be able to give this the right attention it deserves and I just can't right now. Working two jobs (one of which is very office management oriented) is basically killing my creative urges at the end of the day and I'm not making much progress. Once my plate cleans up a bit in the spring, I'll be able to revisit this and continue to develop the idea, but right now, gotta focus on other projects. I was really hopeful, but time is not on my side at the moment. Too much to do.