Surreal Sculpture
polycounter lvl 7
Experiment G52:
I am creating a surreal monster which will be animatable. I will create an idle animation for it which will be used for the turntable.
The general storyline for this character is it is an experimental creature made by a mad scientist. It is meant to be an animal which can exist in the wild. The crank for the jack in the box is what gives it life. As that turns it is able to move and live.
The abstract speaker/jet engine sphere on top is the brain of this animal. It moves around by lurching forward and throwing its weight so that it can lift of the ground, basically a hop. I may or may not animate this.
With this piece I am trying to tie together many very different aspects into one:
- Humanity/Childishness
-Animality/Monsterness
- Sensory Input
- Kinetic Energy
I hope to tie all these features together in order to create a monster/abomination which is relatable and gives a feeling of being an animal that is "coming at you" so to speak.
The humanity comes in from the human teeth, tongues, and the jack-in-the-box.
The animality comes from the center part of the mouth, fleshy gums on the crest of the wave, shark fins, and the cobra shaped back part of the wave and the snake tongue.
The sensory input part comes from the mouth, tongues, eye. The eye is an abstract object composed of parts from what would be a speaker and a jet engine. This creates a sense of "loudness".
The kinetic energy comes from the wave and the fact that it is coming out of a jack in the box.
I hope I can cohesively tie all these aspects to give an odd feeling to the viewer of an abomination which is psychologically coming at you and creating a sense of danger, while still creating a feeling of being distant by its other worldy appearance. The sensory input aspect will bring it more to life and create a sort of metaphor for the fact that this monster is quite an attack on the senses.
Another interesting aspect I have tried to portray is the question mark shape of the wave. I hope to psychologically manifest the questionable feeling cause by looking at the abomination.
I am also aiming to give the abomination more of a chaotic feel by creating a sort of double focus. While the mouth is the main focus of the piece, the eye is a sort of side focus which creates chaos in the piece. I have made it so that the wave is always being thrown out away from the eye. In other words as you look farther away from the eye (no matter what angle you are looking at the monster from) the wave is being sort of thrown out from it as if it has some sort of anti gravity. This gives more kinetic energy to the piece and sort of melds it all together in to something that seems to be constantly moving.
Current Progress:
I am creating a surreal monster which will be animatable. I will create an idle animation for it which will be used for the turntable.
The general storyline for this character is it is an experimental creature made by a mad scientist. It is meant to be an animal which can exist in the wild. The crank for the jack in the box is what gives it life. As that turns it is able to move and live.
The abstract speaker/jet engine sphere on top is the brain of this animal. It moves around by lurching forward and throwing its weight so that it can lift of the ground, basically a hop. I may or may not animate this.
With this piece I am trying to tie together many very different aspects into one:
- Humanity/Childishness
-Animality/Monsterness
- Sensory Input
- Kinetic Energy
I hope to tie all these features together in order to create a monster/abomination which is relatable and gives a feeling of being an animal that is "coming at you" so to speak.
The humanity comes in from the human teeth, tongues, and the jack-in-the-box.
The animality comes from the center part of the mouth, fleshy gums on the crest of the wave, shark fins, and the cobra shaped back part of the wave and the snake tongue.
The sensory input part comes from the mouth, tongues, eye. The eye is an abstract object composed of parts from what would be a speaker and a jet engine. This creates a sense of "loudness".
The kinetic energy comes from the wave and the fact that it is coming out of a jack in the box.
I hope I can cohesively tie all these aspects to give an odd feeling to the viewer of an abomination which is psychologically coming at you and creating a sense of danger, while still creating a feeling of being distant by its other worldy appearance. The sensory input aspect will bring it more to life and create a sort of metaphor for the fact that this monster is quite an attack on the senses.
Another interesting aspect I have tried to portray is the question mark shape of the wave. I hope to psychologically manifest the questionable feeling cause by looking at the abomination.
I am also aiming to give the abomination more of a chaotic feel by creating a sort of double focus. While the mouth is the main focus of the piece, the eye is a sort of side focus which creates chaos in the piece. I have made it so that the wave is always being thrown out away from the eye. In other words as you look farther away from the eye (no matter what angle you are looking at the monster from) the wave is being sort of thrown out from it as if it has some sort of anti gravity. This gives more kinetic energy to the piece and sort of melds it all together in to something that seems to be constantly moving.
Current Progress:
Replies
heres my mesh that i will import into zbrush and detail.
With the eye-like object on top, it might be worth concentrating on how that will attach/be placed on the object so it doesnt look out of place, especially with how it will be resting on a lucid subject.
SCB: yea, that water material is going to be difficult to pull off lol. Yea im thinking of having the optical cables that eyes have hooked up to the back and going into the wave. im thinking of having them be multicolored like wires youd hook up to the back of a TV.
here is the progress on the sculpt so far. just started. each of those bumps is going to be a tongue. im just sculpting out a template of where they should be first.
Other than that
Im probably going to grab 4-5 unique tongues, detail them, and duplicate them around so that they can have matching UVs and not take up so much texture space and time, like you said.
this will allow me to have more texture space and it will be way less time spent. I made the tongue look more like a dog tongue because of its interesting shape.
they will come of biological looking holes in the wave and will surround the mouths i was talking about earlier.
Im deciding I will make this into an animatable character that could be a boss or miniboss. the tongues will stick out straight in the sculpt and model so that I can rig them. im going to make a quick idol animation for it when im done to show it off. it will involve the tongues flopping around and it moving up and down like its breathing. its mouth covering will open and close as it breathes.
a new addition is the fins on the back which are going to be shark fins.
and keep in mind the tongues will be rigged for an idle animation so they are sticking straight out to make that easier.
Questions:
Is the wave shape in the previous pictures too much? Does it look better and read more as a wave in this simplified version i have posted here?
Are the dog tongues too much and unreadable? Should I use human tongues to simplify that aspect of it so its less of a focus and in turn tie it together better with the human teeth that are around the mouth?
keep in mind some parts are floating for baking purposes.
there are two new parts which i will add to the sculpt, the drool and the eye lashes. the game model will use alpha planes for the eye lashes which will be antennas.
still have a lot more to do in texture and more to do in sculpt like creating the stand for the eye.
the background environment is made by crytek and is being rendered in cryengine 3.
The saliva on the tongues could use more work. It's very uniform and opaque. You should probably do that as poly planes with alphas. Create a few and dupe them around.
Your topology is also looking inconsistent. Some areas are very blocky and some are very smooth. For example: The tongues have nearly as much geo as the "cobra hood" area despite being tiny in comparison. Also, the cable running from the box to the eye looks blocky at the bottom, but has a ton of edge loops around the area with virtually no deformation (the flat center). I don't know how it would animate, but I'd still suggest adding loops to the bottom/top parts.
@uncle: thanks! yes much more is going to happen in the diffuse
@achillesian: I have toned down the colors in the jack in the box so that the monster pops more. is this better?
@jmt: thank you for all your suggestions. the saliva is very early on, i havnt even sculpted it yet. itll be semi transparent and have bubbles, etc. the previous wireframe isnt accurate, i have more edge loops in the cobra hood and have added some in the cables as you have said.
@Joopson: you mean my UV's are stretched too much? everything is perfectly sized to what it should be. where do you see this specifically?
Looks good in-game, disregarding the bit of stretch.
ive added an environment map to the shader, though i dont have a slider in shader params for turning down the intensity of the reflection. the cryengine development documents say it should be there. also i cant find a slot for a reflectivity map since i need to turn down reflectivity on the flesh parts.
the problem im having is that im pretty sure flesh isnt that reflective but is high specular.. maybe i should try tightening the amount of specular that it is receiving to give it more of a wet look? or maybe i should try moving this to UDK for more material control?
edit: made modifications to make it look like wet flesh in the specular. any suggestions to make it better? keep in mind i still have not really done anything in the diffuse for variation, these are just material tests.
still waaaay more to do. ie, more diffuse variation in the flesh, interesting translucency in the diffuse of the wave, white foam parts on the wave, more grunge on the metal parts, gross particles on the teeth, subsurface scattering map, and more stuff that i cant think of.