Lil' Ghost Rider - CC2010 Entry
Hey all, I thought I'd start a thread for my Comicon Challenge entry. I'm not sure how much crit I'm gonna get over at GA since I'm not too much of a regular and the more crit/suggestions the better.
As some of you know I've spent the last 8 weeks or so really getting into learning anatomy as I try and direction myself into the character art specialization and this'll be my first character attempt since starting that. My last few have been somewhat terrible and hopefully this one will be a much needed improvement.
So the brief is 'Age of Legends' a variation on the typical age of known comic book characters. I've chosen Ghost Rider, I love the original character and the idea of a mini-Ghost Rider on a flaming Bigwheel seems like a lot of fun.
I haven't got a whole lot to post yet but here's some quick concept sketches to show the way I'm going with it. Crits are welcome, as are any suggestions/ideas.
As some of you know I've spent the last 8 weeks or so really getting into learning anatomy as I try and direction myself into the character art specialization and this'll be my first character attempt since starting that. My last few have been somewhat terrible and hopefully this one will be a much needed improvement.
So the brief is 'Age of Legends' a variation on the typical age of known comic book characters. I've chosen Ghost Rider, I love the original character and the idea of a mini-Ghost Rider on a flaming Bigwheel seems like a lot of fun.
I haven't got a whole lot to post yet but here's some quick concept sketches to show the way I'm going with it. Crits are welcome, as are any suggestions/ideas.
Replies
Nah, it looks to be a good start
Yeah I'll be sure to add some rippage, I think the origingal GR wore chaps, but somehow a 8-10 year old in chaps just doesn't seem right.
Secondly, remember that because it's a child, don't use proportions suited to older males, i.e., broad shoulders. You can show a smaller frame while still having the volume from the jacket, but right now he looks he he's pretty ripped underneath.
Looking forward to seeing this progress!
Ok I went back and tried to fix it in this super quick colour concept I did. I don't wanna get hung up on this stage cuz I need to make sure I have plenty of time for the 3D, so I'll revisit proportions on my base mesh before I get too far.
I looked at some proportion guides. Assuming this dude is about 6-8 years old then 6 heads should be right. He looks a little more 'mature' than in my original sketches but I guess I can play with proportions more in 3D.
Started working on the base mesh, using the younger proportion guide. Crits at this stage on form would be awesome as I wanna nail this before I get into sculpting.
http://th06.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2009/349/0/3/0377b7169bc02e6890c809e43cf7b5fd.jpg
it would make for a far more interesting character
to have in your folio, but that's just my 2 cents.
Willy - heh yeah it is kinda freaky, I'm trying to get a balance of childlike and menacing. The proportions need to be tweaked for sure to nail the childish look.
Miladen - is that Sean Galloways artwork? Looks like his style. It's a cool concept, I don't wanna deviate too much from the traditional, leather clad Ghost Rider too much but I'll look for ways to style it up a bit if I can.
A few things though. The arms seem a bit long on that body for it to be a toddler. I'd actually suggest shrinking the whole arm as well as the hand (they look a bit big to me as well).
And I would suggest increasing the size of the cranium a bit. Kids have bigger heads and smaller faces in general. I would also reduce the width of the neck, as little kids usually have little spindly necks. The size of the neck is a bit more accurate from that side view.
Keep going you're getting there.
don't try to balance between childlike and menacing. it's a kid with a skull for a head, that's menacing enough. so just sculpt a childs skull.
my biggest crit is... teeth don't all belong at the front of the mouth.
http://www.superherotimes.com/newsarchive/002991.php
Barnstable - Yep the arms were shrunk on the base after that pic, they were indeed to long and a bit fat.
Almighty-Gir - Good call. I've tried to make the skull more childlike now, making the features smaller and more 'grouped together' and also tried to curve the teeth round to the sides rather than just running along the front plane as you said.
Tanka - Cheers man, yeah the proportions are very cool on that figure. I'm still kinda torn on whether to go for a more 'realistically' proportioned figure, or super deformed and stylized.
Razorb - Heh very cool artwork, thanks for posting!
Here's todays sculpting update. Crits encouraged!
Added the pants, I'll add the belt/buckle/belt loops next.
And I think it would fix it if you just shrunk the hands about 10%
Ok todays update. Moved the eyes further apart, scaled the hands a little. I toned down the pants creases a small amount, they still might be a bit much but as I mentioned, they look a lot less pronounced with a flat material on.
Added gloves, shirt and shoes. The shirt will be hidden under the jacket obviously so I didn't spend much time on the shirt folds.
Also. bigger image.
Looking really solid so far though, keep up the good work.
Pant folds looking better then before.
I do agree he would look more appealing if he was more 'toddler like' but the reason I strayed a bit from that idea is because I want the trike to ultimately be a focal point as well as the character itself. I was concerned that if I made the character too small with short arms/legs, the trike would have to be scaled relatively and end up being tiny.
I'm pretty much done with the sculpt as far as I can see, but I'm leaving it open to suggestions from a more proffessional point of view as to how I could improve it. Also did a very quick and dirty colour study.
Dreamer made the excellent suggestion of oversizing the chain, for some reason it slipped my mind in my previous screenshot that a chain would not be that small on a kid.
you're making good progress !
gl on the lowpoly/textures
It is definitely an improvement over my previous attempts at characters, I've even gone so far as to take my old ones off of my portfolio website because they were pretty terrible!
I'm really looking forward to texturing this, and really not looking forward to the retopo/unwrapping!
The UV's are temporary because I'll need to include the trike on the same sheet eventually, but I wanted to make sure the low poly baked ok. I think the bake turnd out pretty well. It's standing at just under 8k tri's right now, it could probably be even less but that still leaves me 4k for the trike which should be plenty.
The joints appear to be deforming ok, not too much stretching and no problematic areas from what I can see.
Obviously nothing like the pose he'll be in, but close to the extremes of how his joints will likely be going.
I'm not sure what you wanna know specifically about the pants but it kinda went like this;
Extract them from the sculpt and get a nice shape at a low subD level, work the overall shape up the levels so they have a good shape throughout and don't end up looking too blobby.
Add some big folds and creases at lower subD levels, and use some light pinch/flatten brush as the mesh gets smoother.
Add some finer creases at a higher subD level and pinch/flatten again. Usually to do creases I'll just use the standard brush to get the shape then smooth the crease out on the ends of the stroke so they flow into the pants rather than start/end too visibly.
For the seams, I used two methods. For the outer seams where the fabric meets, I just masked off a thin strip down the side of the leg, pushed it in using ZSub, then pinch the two sides together. Then for the seam where the fabric is kinda folded over and stitched, I masked off a slightly wider strip, pull it out using the standard brush then on one side of the strip smooth it out some. Then I just used a brush with stitch detail, I can't remember where I got it but probably just Pixologics download centre.
Then finally just a denim alpha pattern all over just to subtly add a bit of texture.
Having massive problems rigging this guy into a decent pose to sit on the trike.
This is mainly down to my lack of rigging experience but it's bloody hard.
Obviously his legs need to be pretty outstretched, which means his crotch area needs to deform well which it kinda does, but I have no idea how to properly rig the belt. Do I do a rigid bind kind of rig? It doesn't need to deform obviously but it should have some kinda twist in the middle I think.
Either way, I'm struggling!
Trying to nail the pose too, not easy!
[ame]
Low poly is currently at about 3500 tris but still plenty of optimisation to be done.
Gonna take a couple days break from this before I begin the textures, pretty happy with how it's coming along though.
Only thing I think you could is pimp the trike a little bit more in order to make it more like the original Ghost Rider bike:
Yeah I wanted to do a few more things on the trike for sure, namely the skull as seen in that pic, as well as front and rear fenders, and more spikes. I just couldn't fit any more in my budget without losing a lot from the character, and since really the character is the focus of this comp I thought I'd leave them out.
When the contest is over I may revisit it and boost the count on the trike by a lot and give it its own texture also and spend some time pimping it some more.
I started on the textures today.
Skull is pretty much done. Jacket is about 50% and jeans need redoing as I've noticed the scale of the denim texture is clearly wrong.
The rest is all just base color.
Personally I'd spend a few more polies on the front wheel (21 sides? and one plane per spoke) and some to smooth out the top and front corners of the seat. If you're running low, you could compensate by lowering the rear wheels a bit (15 sides?).
Also what happened to the chain? And the spikes on the wrists?
Ah nice tip, thanks. I'm gonna have to revisit the tyre unwrap anyway as I noticed today i haven't straightened it out properly.
I'll see how it looks when it's got a texture on it. The wires make it look deceptively blocky and without the wires it looks a little better. But yeah I may boost it some if it still looks too blocky.
SHIT!
SHIT!
I completely forgot about both of those!
The spikes are easy to add obviously but the chain, I'm not sure how best to approach that.
I know there's various ways of doing a low poly chain, IIRC the Gunslinger Spawn from a previous Comicon Challenge had chains on the pants which came out nice. I think they were just links baked down to planes.
The only issue with using planes is that because it loops over his shoulder and off of his waist a little, I'm not sure if the silhouette would break the illusion of a baked chain. But then again, there's no way I'm gonna be able to add the chain using complete geometry.
Each link would need to be at least 24 polys, ideally 40 if I rounded the curves out, which means 80 triangles per link and I think there was about 22 links when I blocked it out in the high res. So even if I deleted hidden faces on each link I'm still gonna be looking at an extra 800 triangles which I would have great difficulty freeing up now.
I want to include it but I want it to look good, if anyone's got any suggestions on how I might be able to go about creating it that'd be awesome.
Anyway, I made some chains a while ago:
each shackle uses 20 polies, and the alpha'd strips are 16 polies per 6 shackles.
You could also connect some verts on the character and extrude those polies, but that wouldn't be a good solution at this time since it'd require extensive reworking.
Also another idea for the tires:
You should use 9 or 11 sides (ends up as 5 or 7) and 21 or 24 segments. This would give you 210(5x21), 240(5x24), 294(7x21) or 336(7x24) triangles. And ofcourse you'd use a different offset angle.
If you're running really low on polies you could take out one of the loops on the sides of the rear wheels. And possibly one or two of the center loops coming from the eye, going over the cranium(but that might mess up the texture ever so slightly).
Good luck.
I changed up the wheels as per your suggestion and not only do they look better, but I saved about 150 tris.
This allowed me to mess with the chain ideas and the only possibility to stay within budget is going with the bent double plane option and it looks so bad.
I'm getting huge alpha sort issues which may or may not get much worse once inside of UDK, and it just looks pretty terrible in terms of silhouette.
I may have to revisit the chain later if I can think of an alternative way of approaching it.
Yes indeed, I need to fix them for definite...
push modifier ftw!