Sketchbook: kouotsu

kouotsu

Hello!!! I graduated with a Game Art degree early last year and went through all kinds of slumps and stuff, but something finally clicked and I'm back to having the motivation that I was starting to think college scared away for good! I have posted on here very rarely in the past, I may have even made a sketchbook thread long ago but even if I did it's probably only a post or two, so I'd rather start fresh.

Anyways, hi my name is Max and I really like drawing and modeling cutesy stuff, and dabble in cool/weird/gross stuff as well. I am aiming to get myself a job in Seattle/Cali/somewhere over there (currently stuck in Tennessee). I've worked at an iPhone game studio in the past, and I'm aiming at a similar job given my style of art is definitely in higher demand in mobile games. I also worked on a 2D fighting game called Skullgirls for PC/Xbox360/PS3. Currently I'm doing freelance for a client's game project.

I won't bother posting a bunch of work I've done in the past, I'll just start with my most recent character model and post new stuff from then on.

Thanks for checking out dis sketchbook! I am keeping myself motivated (please help I can't survive in Tennessee please call the police) from here on out so I'll try to remember to post here as well. I greatly appreciate any critique and advice you might have about my work.

kouotsu

This is an original character design I did for a client's game project. This is the first in-game asset we've created, so I picked an NPC to experiment with the style of eyes/hair/other details I want. I definitely don't have a fixed style when it comes to how I draw eyes, so I'll have a good challenge making sure all of the game's characters look like they're from the same thing.

I am not too well versed on the character's profile, aside from she runs a shop. She's not the main character, but she could possibly be a secondary/assisting character. I think I've convinced my client to start blogging about the project since my art for it has sparked some interest (currently he is the only coder, I am the only artist).

If you have looked at my old art you can tell this is definitely a character within my comfort zone. I figured it would be best to start with her since I hadn't modeled a character in nearly a year. I learned some new programs along the way (3D-Coat is my savior) and now I'm really excited to work on some other assets and non-cute girl characters, lol

I do need to do a bit of tweaking on her rig -- her arm squishes when you raise her hand up too high. I'll have to take another look at the joint setup in the polycount wiki

Just as a fun fact this character took around 33 hours to get from concept art to textured and poseable model. I think that's a bit long for me compared to my past models, but I had to rework my workflow a lot.

kouotsu

I was also wondering when I was putting the tri count on this pic: Should you count the backs of polys that need to be 2-sided in the tri count? In my clien't engine I have to actually duplicate and flip the faces that need to have backs, but of course that's not necessary in 3dsMax, so I'm not sure which count to put. In low poly threads I've never seen anyone mention this.