Sketchbook - Scythe's Lair
greentooth
Hi there ! It's actually my first time registering a posting something here, i hope it'll be a great experience.
Onto the main dish ! I've been a real fan of starcraft for ages and I always told myself i'd do some kind of fanart when i'll think i'll be good enough in 3D.
I present you Manah, she's part of the Ghost division. This is still a wip, i need to finish the texture and the facial rigging. I hope you like her.
I still need to do the sniper rifle and find a way to make a cloaking shaders, but things are going along nicely,
Stay tuned
Onto the main dish ! I've been a real fan of starcraft for ages and I always told myself i'd do some kind of fanart when i'll think i'll be good enough in 3D.
I present you Manah, she's part of the Ghost division. This is still a wip, i need to finish the texture and the facial rigging. I hope you like her.
I still need to do the sniper rifle and find a way to make a cloaking shaders, but things are going along nicely,
Stay tuned
Replies
A few things-- Anatomically nothing seems too out of place (glad to see you didn't go the super tits & ass route that most like to) besides that her hands look to be a little small. However I do think kylehorne is right in that the suit itself reads more like it's from crysis than from starcraft, which has mostly to do with the ribboning that you're using. I'm not a blizzard/starcraft guru by any means, but when that pattern is used in starcraft it's usually as metallic plating or piping-- you're using it in a much more organic fashion, emulating musculature/muscle fiber a la crysis. Your color scheme fits with the starcraft universe, but the suit pattern doesn't as much.
I think the overall composition suffers from being too busy, especially in the front. While the space marine designs tend to be very greebly, the ghosts, especially female ones, trend more towards large, streamlined patches with bits and bobs on the side. Look at the rightmost concept or the video of kerrigan from sc2-- see how the center mass is a large, solid patch with more heavily detailed extremities? What I'd recommend on this concept is either smoothing out the stomach/chest area or doing the inverse and building very clean, streamlined forms along the arms and legs to complement a detailed torso. Either way, you might also want to change that U-shape running from the sternum to the neck. I see that it's the same motif from the concept art, but here it's so large and rides so far up her neck it looks like she'll choke if she bends her neck forward at all.
oh, and what's the red mark around her eye? Is that face paint? Exposed muscle? It's an ambiguous read and distracting as a result-- I'd either resolve it more clearly or remove it entirely.
Anyway, glad you decided to post. You've done a good job with this, and with a little more work I think you'll have a solid piece. Keeeep posting.
here's the kerrigan video for you convenience:
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Thanks for the crit's and comments ! It's really important and helpful for me. I see what you guys means by the crysis looks, and to be honest i also have this kind of impression. At first I designed her as a pure sniper character, so in my mind, she'll have to lay front.
Laying in that position for quite some time is unconfortable, so that's why i made this strong yet supple look on the armor. I certainly will go for more detailled arms, as you suggested.
The front part, between the neck and the shoulder is way to pixellated, and i will have to redo it entirely.
For the Mark, it was supposed to be some kind of red paint, or maybe blood splattered with her finger to look like paint. I know it looks confusing on the face shot since the nm map calculated it like it's digging in, but i planned on correct that too.
Now that i look to it again, the front crysis like suffer from too much shadow.light information from the diffuse, i'll have to change that !
Thanks again for the wall of text and the critics
taking a break from texturing a little, i finished the complete rig (facial and body) and worked my way through some animated texture to represent the energy stream. The result may not be the final but it's looking really good
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See you real soon !
This is also my participation for the Blizzcon fanart contest.
Not much of an update right now, still working on my next stuff but I'm taking my time, trying out various way of texturing and stuff.
Anyway, Caldria sent me a message, he wanted to know how I handled the exoflex on my ghost, so I thought I might as well do a mini tuto for everyone, since that could help~
First and foremost, I had to look back about what is the exoflex, and it's purpose. What is an exoskeleton :
An exoskeleton is the external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to the internal skeleton (endoskeleton) of, for example a human. In popular usage, some of the larger kinds of exoskeletons are known as "shells". (taken from wiki~)
Ok, so exoskel are basically a both protective and vital. But as in crysis and in Slipgatecentral's Nox, I wanted it to be flexible, so that in wouldn't hinder the characters movements. It should look flexible, as well as robust and strong...Not the easiest thing to do !
I start back in zbrush, by sculpting the body of my female character. Then, when I feel happy with the result, it's time to start working on the suit. I tried various methods, such as masking my skeletons area and the extracting it, but it doesn't work. Even at the lowest level, the extraction doesn't work well when the area masked are really close. Time to find another way.
while watching the making of nox ( Check it out, it's amazment material, Part I : http://vimeo.com/5738519 Part II : http://vimeo.com/5734031 )
I see that he actually painted a rough idea of his exoflex on the body, and then retopologized it in zbrush. I, after trying numerous ways in zbrush, thought too that it would be the best option to get the equivalent of an extract but with tight close area. Turns out it worked wonders !
(If you don't know how to retopologize within zbrush, you have to append a Zsphere within you subtools, and down the tools menu you have a retopology tools.
After finishing you topo, just clic on "make adaptive skin" and append the newly created topology to your current work)
I have my base mesh, time to start the heavy thing. I quicky realized I could'nt go where I wanted with Zbrush for now, so I decided to get back in Softimage XSI (but that might work with any other soft)
Here's what I started with
Good start, but not sufficient enough. In the Crysis and Nox exemple, each of the lanes are kinda round, and that what i wanted to achieve too.
In order to create that, Obiously I had to extrude everything first. Note that through the whole process, I kept looking at my mesh with the subdivision up ( + and - on the numpad for xsi, 1, 2 and 3 for maya. As for max, you can put a Turbosmooth on top of everything).
Why you ask ? Because eventually I will get everything back to zbrush for the final detailling, so I had to check that everything looked good when I will subdivise it in here.
I then selected my mesh and applied a push modifier, so that everything would be closer than before. It's important because when you'll be subdivising it everything will be smoothed up and taken away from each other, and for good result I needed them to be quite close
After that, it was a lot and lot of moving vertices so that the would be in the perfect places, so that they would intertwine really good with the rest of the suit.
When everything seemed fin to me, I exported the whole mesh back to zbrush and use the move tool to stick it to the body, like a skintight suit. I then proceed to finish the char, create my lowpoly topology and then bake everything
Hope that will help Caldria and everyone that are trying to create some exoflex like Crysis's one. There might be some better method out there, but this one worked pretty good for me
See ya around~
The other is a futuristic alien guy, basemesh was provided by a friend of mine (Florian "chokmah" Delarque), I then zbrushed the shit out of it and designed the armor Still a lot to do since it'll be a game char, but it's in good way !
Stay Tuned
anyway, here it is, big res inco :