[WIP] - Iris the Witch

JenLimson

Hello everyone,

I'm new here and yes I am a student and I would really appreciate as much help as I can get.

I am currently working on a 6 week project with a tri limit of 12000-15000.

Week 1 - Concepting
Week 2/3 - Modelling/Sculpting
Week 4 - Texturing
Week 5 - Rigging and Animation
Week 6 - Polishing and Final Submission


So I have been fussing between two characters but definitely locked myself with Iris.

A little back story on my character, Iris. She is a witch who can manipulate people with spider-silk. I didn't want to make her too spider-like and creepy because initially she was human and I want to retain her humanoid form.

Please note I am going for a slightly stylized form and I would really appreciate any motivating and constructive feedback.

Here are my sketches:





Iris coloured and with silhouette


Bust, doodles and body shape


This was actually the original drawing I started with and trailed off into colouring the background




Just a little extra. If anyone was curious about my other idea. I was going to make a forest fairy. Here are the drawings I made:

uncle

As long as I hate most animu I somehow really like the latter design. I'd give her slightly more defined hips, apart from that everything looks fine.
Iris overall looks very childish/insecure due to her expressions and anatomy, personally I think it doesn't fit this type of character - but maybe that's your intention. She reminds me of another similar character, not too original really (bat wings in hair!). I'm not sure if the purpose spider web wings is clear - does she fly or are they ornamental? Think if this could be improved.
Apart from that I think it's okay, cheers.

JenLimson

Thank you. Critique much appreciated since it's so hard to see what's wrong until you have someone else point it out. I have been told to work on the hips a little more and will continue to do so. I did intend to give her a child-like look since she isn't really evil but I might try fix her expressions some more to see what I can change. I am quite attached to the bat wings in her hair. Maybe I need more detail so she doesn't look too generic. The wings are ornamental because logically you can't fly with them. Still trying to work on the details and thanks again for your help

Liamodearme

I haven't seen the pixie one enforce! She is amazing I really like her too! Which isn't helping your decision making process I'm sure Can't wait to see the model you make!

JenLimson

I've been playing Professor Layton a lot lately and I really love their art style. I was inspired to play around with Iris' proportions a bit and a friend suggested I give her little cloak a pattern on it. I've grabbed some Victorian lace patterns for reference and played around with that and ended up making a new set of wings. Just a little doodle and some horrible cut and paste. Don't judge too harshly :P

G'roy Sheehan

I think the lace adds too many clashing elements. In my opinion the lace would look good if she were a Elizabethan era witch/Goth. Also, again in my opinion, the outfit doesn't look or 'feel' very witchy. You also might want to change the make-up and hair colour as it all blends with the skin tone and doesn't 'pop'.

Just my 5 cents.

Hatsya

My 50 yen in this thread.

I agree with G'roy. what if use the first wings, and incorporate those laces on the ends of her webbed wings?

JenLimson

Ah I see. I originally designed this girl for a story about 3 years ago so I don't really want to change her hair colour but I can do something about her skin and make-up. Perhaps are more darker shade around her eyes and a more blue-ish skin tone?

And thank you Hatsya, I will consider your opinion and try it out ^_^

JenLimson

Here's some modelling I started this week. Still a Work-In-Progress of course. Just chucked a flat colour on the hair so it wouldn't look plain.
Not everything is there yet and I'm still working on the details.
Feel free to throw out some ideas for things I could add.

Full body - Front, Side, Back


Face

JenLimson

Alright! Update time. I'll try to keep it short. Changed a few things in Iris.
This was the old fabric that covered her but I would have to agree that it was pretty plain. Boring, is it?


So I tried pulling it around and made a coat out of it. A bit better but I've lost her body shape since it covered it.


So I threw those things away and designed a whole new coat for her. Inspired by the main character from the game Disgaea 4.


I also changed her shoes a bit by curling them up. Her silhouette now looks like this...


And now she this is her. Got the little bow and what not. Not a huge difference but it's more detail than before

JenLimson

Quick updates with some experimented baked to verts AO


Ran into some horrible problems where some parts of the hair went black. I thought maybe the normals were reversed. Yep, they were. But flipped them to the right way and it was still black. So I selected my broken hair pieces and used "set to faces" on them since "conform" didn't work. Problem solved! No problems after that. Felt pretty derp for the whole day...

JenLimson

More updates! Been hand-painting my textures. Colours were too flat so I overlayed it with some up-close photos of skin and cloth. Still not perfect but I'm working on that whilst rigging. I recently saw a make-up applying tutorial for Emily from Corpse Bride and was inspired to paint as if applying make-up.




Note: lcShaderTools doesn't work on my horrible laptop so she doesn't look cool. Definitely getting a new laptop soon. I will take better screenshots in class when I get my spec map out and shaders set up nicely

JenLimson

Probably should've posted this earlier. Construction shots for model and face.



This is the oh so "lovely" rig set up with a dynamic skirt and coat, FK arms, IK legs, SDK wings and a facial rig.


Not the best rig in the world but it mostly works and you can pose her at least.

My laptop is kind of old so it doesn't like lcShaderTools much but I got this toony look out?

Derp!


Just finished animating her movement, attacking and death. Hoping she doesn't explode when I get her in the game engine or try to render her out...

ptree224

Curse your brilliance, Jen! *shakes fist*

njc6425

came out looking really nice

JenLimson

Should've had this up last week but I've been busy. Got it rendered in Marmoset.
Got out a turn around video. But I'm still gonna polish this up and when I do I'll post the updated render and I might put the video up. Here's what I've got out.
Done but could still definitely use more work

Wex

Really nice work with the texture! My main critique is the proportions are very different from the concept art and a bit awkward. The shoulders are a little wide and the waist is super narrow, giving her an hourglass shape even though her breasts are small.

EDIT: The face is also very different, but that's mostly a matter of preference. I think it might look good to shrink the whole head just a bit.

uncle

Mixture of semi-realistic nose and anime features of the rest of the face and sort of abnormal proportions donn't work well really. I'd suggest sticking to one philosophy.

Skin and hair textures look good, while clothes somehow lacks. Too plain maybe.