[DS2] Axe, Hang10

Hang10

Alright so here goes nothing. I know I'm way far behind everyone but I've had some struggles coming up with a design and I'm no concept artist so there was a lot of trial and error.

I'm down to 2 look that I like. They're similar but different and ya... Anyways they probably won't be round 2 contenders but here we go:

The first one is a standard angelic theme Axe. Pretty basic with the wings being the blades. I got as far as to sculpt the feathers but scrapped it and came up with another concept.


This is just a mockup but it get a gist of what I want. Basically an archer drawing a bow with huge wings out the back.



I'm elaning towards the second one since it's not so cliche but I don't know how to add "pizzazz"

TehSplatt

that archer axe is a very awsome idea

Hang10

@TehSplatt: Thanks!

I've decided to run with that but change it once again. I played some darksiders and realized that there aren't any bows! So. I added a sword and shield, fancied up the hadnle transition, and Made a large eagle head with the blade coming out the bottom. I'm not sure if I should keep the blade round of give it a flick at the end. As for the eagle head I thought the top looked bare so I added spikes but again not sure about them,





I do plan on adding a head on the statue but I'm wrestling between a helmet or a hood

SgtNasty

I think you could exaggerate the proportions a bit more. There are also some small details you have that might mess up your polycount, remember we only have 1500 tris roughly.

Sigma7

I think you should add like a Valkyrie Helmet because thats the feel im getting from it

Hang10

@SgtNasty All of this is just blocking out to bringing into zbrush to wrap and sculpt. Thanks for the advice.

@Sigma7 I thought so too, they're are a few helmets I have stored somewhere, just a matter of putting them together to fit nicely

XRevan23

the angel with bow is a cool idea, interested to see where this is headed.

Hang10

The only thing I'm not sure about is if I go with a bow style, I don't think it would fit in the darksiders world. Don't remember there being any bows :S

Hang10

So back by popular demand, I made variations of the bow. I still have the old version but I tried to spice it up a bit. Tell me if I'm headed int he right direction or not.





I'm working on a Valkyrie still helmet, gonna try and match the ones fromt he first Darksiders as much as I can.

Hang10

Almost forgot about the Pommel. I copied the accent pieces at the top and put them around a sphere so its the same but different :S

Hang10

So I think I have the Low poly down now. After reading on some psots I've come to know that 1500 tris is a soft budget and going above is ok. I'm assuming a 1650 tris would be acceptable so I've set that to be my hard budget.

Here's the low poly. It sits at 1478 tris and leaves me a 172 tri budget for the valkyrie helm.

Hang10

If I come under budget with the helm I can mirror and shrink the large axe head over to save uv space.

Hang10

So I got the helmet in but not optimized. I just copied the wings from the back which is why my tri is count is so high. here's the update

Sukotto

I would worry about getting a solid base mesh for sculpting first, you seem to be going about this in the wrong order. Right now your mesh would not smooth nicely in zBrush. You want to do
Base mesh--->high-poly sculpt-->retopo to low poly and UV-->bake and texure

Hang10

I have a quad(ed) base mesh that I'm trying to sculpt right now but I've been working on my laptop recently and therefore I've been working on the in-game mesh. So yes I am following the pipeline you've laid out but because I'm on the road on weekends I can't sculpt.

Hang10

SO I did some changes, again, I felt the axes weren't big enough or too flimsy so I made it bigger and mirrored them. When I was sculpting the wings they didn't look right based on their angelic theme so I'm going with a more angular design. It brings the tri count down closaer to 1500 and easier to sculpt :S

Hang10

I played around some more with the overall design. I finally got it fitted into the template. All that's left is to finish my sculpt and texturing :S

Here's the update: