ArenaNet Internship Art Test- Mrandk

Mrandk

Hallo everyone! I'm gonna take my stab at the 2012 internship application test for character art.

For those of you interested in the internship you can find more about it here at http://www.arena.net/blog/arenanet-class-of-2012-internship-program-now-accepting-applications

I've chosen to do the elementalist for my test. Here is the concept I am supposed to go off of.


I finished my base mesh tonight for the most part.
She's sitting at around 7.3k of the allowed 7.5k so I'm gonna probably "trim" some tri's from her hair (cause its all sorts of buggered up) in order to save room for the staff.
(Not sure if its required for her test but I still wanna do it).


The hardest part about this gal was getting the sleeves and fur cards to line up properly for when I paint weights.

I'll start sculpting In about an hr and try to get an update before I go to sleep.

CRITIQUES ARE VERY MUCH WELCOME!

Funky Bunnies

really liked your brink bust in waywo!
Its looking good so far, the proportions are real nice. I'm looking forward to your updates

Mrandk

I was able to move my budget around to get myself the weapon in and with a little tweaking I managed to double the amount of my cards for the fur trim she has to get a little more silhouette. I am now sitting at exactly 7.5k tris and with that I will go to sleep. I have all day tomorrow to sculpt so I hope I can get pretty far with it.

@Funky: Thanks for the support man!

Jungsik

nice..is it gonna be zbrushed?

Fink

This is looking great so far! Looking forward to see how you do the texturing

Torch

Good start, look forward to seeing more!

dpadam450

The legs look messed up. They are splitting outward up until halfway down the dress, and then out of nowhere, they curve towards each other as if there are 2 bones in the upper leg.

stoofoo

HEY. Where is this? I want to see how it's going!

Mrandk

ALRIGHTY! so im REEAAALLY sorry it took so long to post an update! I'm trying to juggle this and my demoreel as I am graduating at the end of this month.

Here is where I am right now: I have made some proportion tweaks mostly with the legs and their warpyness, feet, and size of the head.

(The chain and other "missing" parts have been deleted as they are merely duplicates that I will place after the bakes are complete.)

I am pretty much finishing off with the sculpt and am in process of uv'ing I'm gonna have to kick it into top gear because I still have to finish my reel for finals. I hope I get this done in time!
Critiques as always are welcome!

Butthair

I'm not a character artist, and right away the hair and sleeves stuck out at me, but I realized you're going to alpha them out. Something I didn't think to do, then again, it's different for characters I'm sure.

You've got proportions nailed pretty well, it's hard for me to find any flaws. I notice some differences in the face area, maybe a little too long? I remember, for a better read, that a woman's chin to jawbone is more acute, rather than round. But hey, I'm an environment artist, and I've glaring back and forth looking for imperfections. It's hard to find anything without sounding too nit-picky.

Good job Mandrk! You does a good woman.

Oh oh, now I see something, the breast and stomach area is smooth, maybe some texture noise? Painted or modelled, I don't think it would matter. It looks like a soft leather or else cloth, be nice to have some subtle wrinkles, considering it looks skin tight.

Mrandk

Thanks for the advice Butt!

I turned in my test a few hours ago, I've been just awful at posting updates, kinda went into a work-frenzy to get this done in time. I'm not as happy with the final result as I would have liked to have been. Demo reel took up more time than i thought, at this point I am happy to have finished it on time. Tired to get the pose of the original concept for my presentation but due to a lack of time to properly rig it i couldn't get it as dynamic as the original. Anyways heres the shots:

Butthair

This looks good Mrandk. I'm aware that women are a bit harder, for most people, then male characters, even then if it's off a concept, I'd say they're both hard. But kudos for doing the female concept well.

These renders I don't find doing her justice, I know you were pressed for time, but maybe you could still get it to that little bit further completion. She's lacking some nice dynamic and mood setting shadows. Nothing fancy either, maybe a quick 3 point setup will make it look nice.

And what happened to her weapon? It'd be nice to see those bluish-greenish-turqoisy parts glow a bit, I think they have a subtle glow in the concept, but those would definitely push a nice dynamic balance.

Anyways, I hear birds, so it means I should sleep, good job man!

Mrandk

Yeah i really fucked up those renders, I dropped it into UDK a couple mins ago and re-made my presentation shot. The jpeg compression is all jacked up so ill probably have to redo it again but im not sure how I'm gonna resubmit this test. I guess ill put "revised" on the email and pray for the best

I really appreciate your input

chrisradsby

I like the presentation, would be nice with some kind of fill light coming from the right though, but yeah, really nice work

Butthair

Tiledshot should be double your final size. (usally 8 or higher is good ^^).
Half it down in fotoshoppe and it'll get that nice fakes AA, no annoying stair steps.

Mrandk

Thanks guys I attempted to reduce the stepping but it wasn't working even halfing the size or blurring didn't seem to work. With the final hours I had I ended up having to deal with it or not get it in. I did however manage to fix that messy jpg compression problem i had and brightened the light to her right, but almost missed the turn-in lol.

Turns out my email submission kept failing due to the size of the compressed file and was never actually turned in. Which surprised me since the folder was only 6mb.
When it failed it sent the message to my spam so I never found out till I got paranoid and checked the spam box, Way to go internets XD

but it's hopefully in now, havent gotten a failure email from the inbox yet and i can get some sleep finally, I appreciate the feedback you guys have given me.

Butthair goodluck on your environment submission. I loved how you did the environment test, it has a ton of character to it!

[EDIT: I dunno whats up with my image hosting, the actual image is much crisper. Heres a link to it : http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UcXjc1mrbeo/TnuHsi7U1HI/AAAAAAAAANY/I8aj9amU2fU/s1600/Presentation_Shot.png ]

Mrskullface

nice work! i think all the dead space on the right side of the image could be just cropped.

yeman

She looks great Mrandk! As one of the few doing character for the test I can certainly relate. I would have a couple minor critiques if I saw this yesterday but it's ok, you did an excellent job! Good luck!

I got a failure warning too after I first submitted mine, but this time Yahoo actually had the decency to put it in my inbox~

Mrandk

Mrskullface: Thanks, I dunno why I left all that negative space, I think i was trying to do a rule of thirds thing but I just noticed she would still be following the rule even if i cropped it. I'll definetly crop it for my website since it's already turned in.

That means alot yeman, you killed us all with your entry. If you don't mind i'd still like to hear your critiques so I can learn from them.

I dunno what caused me to look at the spam box for the failure notices, if i didn't I probably wouldn't have ever known I had not turned it in.

yeman

Yet you are still breathing, so stop exaggerating~:D

It's just the shape of the skirt makes here look somehow less attractive from the side view while the front view looks great. I understand it's how the skirt occludes a big part of the legs. I think one way to fix it is to use those metal plates around the side of the skirt to your advantage. Use it as weights to drag that part of the skirt down thus creates an angle to the skirt and pops the hip. Also exaggerate the curvature from neck down to the hip and abdomen, and add a little form variance around the back part of her knee and upper shin should help enhance her silhouette from the side.

Just my two cents. Hope it makes sense.

Snader

You have conflicting visual directions. Her arm and spiky thing point to the left outside the image. This leaves an empty gap on her right. It's good that you have her facing into the image, but it needs a bit better steering.

Try something like this (excuse shittyness, only have MSpaint here):

Mrandk

Thanks for the great input guys, I am going to fix the model and textures before I get into the composition of the shot I will be redoing. I will however be using the advice on the composition of the shot when i finally get back to presenting the changes.

yeman, is this what you were talking about?



Snader Thats some pretty baller ms paint editing, i agree with you on the direction of the shot. when i get back to presenting my changes i will be sure to keep what you have said in mind.

yeman

Yep, you got it~

Mrandk

Coolio, I'm in process of re-optimizing my UV shell for the dress so I can do another pass on the texture, I realized I could double the resolution of the dress by mirroring the legs and fill the empty space with the dress shell since I wasn't doing anything unique with the legs anyway, I should have an update later tomorrow.

Mrandk

Hey, I ended up taking a day to rest and now im back on revisions. I deleted one side of her lower torso and mirrored the other side over since I wasn't doing anything unique with the space anyway and the seam will be hidden by the dress. I used the empty space to make the dress shell bigger since I didn't give it enough resolution the first time around.

I also am doing another texture pass to try and get her tones more close to the concept and to soften up the face since it was a bit blotchy the first time around.

more changes to come in the next few days as I have just gotten back to re-texturing her dress and legs.

Critiques as always are welcome!