Sketchbook: Oskar Reftel

oskarreftel · Dec 2011

Hi! My name is Oskar and I'm a first year student at The Game Assembly in Malmö, Sweden.

This week we had an assignment to make a lowpoly mesh with a maximum of 500 tris and a diffuse map of 128x128 px with a 1-bit alpha channel.

This is what I made. I was inspired by Rammstein, Quake, Berserk, Conan and so on. Please give me loads of feedback!

SSquir33 · Dec 2011

aw no spikes for the ball?

oskarreftel · Dec 2011

Yeah, I know.

The ball and chain came in when everything else was done, as I wasn't sure I'd be able to stay under the limit of 500 tris. Looking back, I realize I could've shortened the chain by a few planes and made perhaps two planes with some alpha diffuse for the spikes.. :P

oskarreftel · Dec 2011

Here's what I did in school last week. It was a hell of a lot of work and I was very confused about the new stuff we were introduced to (baking normal maps, using specular maps and stuff) so I would greatly appreciate any feedback on this.

The assignment was to make a weapon for use in a first person shooter.

I used a cgfx shader made by Kostas Gialitakis, one of our teachers at school, called Koddeshader.

davidosterlind · Dec 2011

Know you worked hard on it. Final results look awesome!

ErikNilsson · Jan 2012

Looking gooooood!

scottjrobertson · Jan 2012

Nice work on Gyllir, always impressed with what can be done on such a low poly and memory budget! How come you didn't stick with the colours in the concept?

Callesw · Jan 2012

Cool character!
also nice to see someone else modelling the ksg!
There's some tricky shapes on that one.

oskarreftel · Jan 2012

Thanks for the comments!

About Gyllir's color scheme, I think the change was a result of me playing around with selective color in photoshop and going "hey, this looks cool!". It might have been better if I stuck with the original colors, though, for consistency... :P

oskarreftel · Jan 2012

This is my first attempt at modular modeling. The model was made with reference of a cafe in Malmö called Gökboet. Diffuse was made primarily from photos of the actual building but also from other sites. Some geometry is altered to fit into a nice grid system.

Here's the reference.

Caspar · Jan 2012

ErikNilsson · Jan 2012

Haha b

oskarreftel · Jan 2012

tack, dudes!

Right now I'm learning head sculpting in Maya. Here's a fresh screenshot. Experimenting with hair..

Critique, flaming and bashing is more than welcome!

gillmeister74 · Jan 2012

thats some lovely topology there.

mr.AFK · Jan 2012

the topology is good, looks nice, one thing I'd take a look at would be working one edge loop around both eyes edge loops - imagine the loop like if you'd draw a cartoon criminals mask. you'll get better deformations in the face when animating. keep up the good work.

oskarreftel · Jan 2012

Thank you so much for your comments, guys! I'll definitely try to get an edge loop surrounding both eyes, as you suggested mr.AFK.

I'll post an updated version when I've modeled some of the hair as well. Seems to be kind of a tricky job, though?

oskarreftel · Jan 2012

Here's what I got from trying to do some hair planes.

I don't really know what I'm doing with the hair and I think I'll start over the modelling process tomorrow, but I like where it's going.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the updated topology around the eyes. I had to change some of the edges connecting to the back of the head as well.

All comments and thoughts are eagerly welcome!

oskarreftel · Jan 2012

Working on another head now as part of a school assignment. As usual, all feedback is much welcome.

SSquir33 · Jan 2012

brow seems tad high. but anime is like that i guess

oskarreftel · Feb 2012

thanks for the input! I was actually going for a more realistic style on the last head so i'll try to work more on the brows.

i'll post the completed character after next friday. your input on the completed model would be much appreciated!

oskarreftel · Feb 2012

this is where i'm at right now. the original concept was made by one of my teachers. what you see in my viewport is my own take on it. i should probably have posted the original as well, but i'm tired.. i'll do it later on.. :P

hope i get it all together until friday... :poly122:

any feedback is warmly welcome! am i taking the model in the right direction? is there anything i'm doing that's just down right wrong? i'm concerned about the feet... perhaps I should line them up more with the direction of the legs before i complete the model and start rigging?

the limit of tris for this assignment is 7500, btw. face modelling, hands and ears are required.

oskarreftel · Feb 2012

Luckily for me, our dead-line was postponed until this morning. I don't think I would have been able to finish in time otherwise.

Please, oh please, give me lots of feedback on this. I've busted my ass off, it's crazy!

I've learnt a lot on this assignment. I managed to successfully bake normal maps from hi-poly models and I've gotten a little more used to working with reflection and specular maps. Oh, and modeling faces! MAN... serious fun. Will definitely be doing that any chance I get in future projects.

oskarreftel · Feb 2012

Attempted to take the character of batman and mimic the art style in one of Jason Chan's illustrations. Would really appreciate some feedback! Thanks for viewing!

ErikNilsson · Feb 2012

Keeeewl stuff man!

oskarreftel · Feb 2012

Did some concept work for the main character of our new game project in school. It's gonna be a shoot'em up in the style of Contra. lots of blood, lots of explosions and a lot of bad ass attitude. Feedback of all sorts would be much appreciated!

ErikNilsson · Feb 2012

Nice stuff Oscar, do that in pixel style and he would fit right into any old contra/metalslug game

SSquir33 · Feb 2012

astro girl turned out good, for a general crit of the features probably , lower the eyelids a lil, raise jaw higher up so its a lil above the mouth line, and make it less square,ears can come out more.
but as a final low poly peice it reads good, maybe could have used the textures to really make the facial features pop. if girls wear make up in space idk

shall be expecting more humanoids from you so keep up the gewd work, dont forget your pencil studies will carry you to the next step

oskarreftel · Feb 2012

@ssquir33 thanks for the great input and encouragement! if i had more time, i'd go back and rework astro girl but as it is now i'll have to carry your feedback on to future projects instead. WIP model of my shoot'em up guy coming soon!

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

Here's a screenshot of my progress on the shoot'em up guy. I'm trying out Maya's sculpt geometry tool and Diamant Tools' re-topology thingy tool.

The game it's gonna be used for will be in 2D with mostly pre-rendered 3D so there's no restrictions on how many tris I'm allowed to use or anything. Still, I'm hoping I can keep it below or around 15 000.

topology... damn, it's so much work.. :P

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

today's progress.

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

started working on the head today. almost finished!

feedback is much welcome. feedback is always welcome, btw, don't know if i've made that clear.. :P

SSquir33 · Mar 2012

careful that nose bridge isnt too small like a girls nose.

make it manly. and keep that supraorbital eminence low and strong. the brow will pretty much cover the eyelids.

are you extruding the form out?? seems like a long ass way of making a character. specially if your going for that square-ish look, will need to pay attention to the head shape so it reflects the drawing, i.e flatter planes for the head n jaw etc. at least to begin with.

idk about topo soooo. yeah. cool topo.

keep it up and show more progress pl0x

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

thanks for the feedback, ssquir33! indeed, I am extruding edges. I saw it in a tutorial and so far it's the best and most effective way I've seen of getting a good base for the topology. Not everything has been extruded, though. The skull is made from a cube that I've used Mesh->Smooth on a couple of times and then deleted faces, moved around verts and then attached to the face. If our school had zbrush licenses for their first year students, I'd definitely try that out, though.

I totally get what you mean about the nose bridge and I had to look up what supraorbital eminence is but I totally get that too. Thanks for pointing that out!

I'll make sure to make things more square once I've added the hair and ear as well.

Will post more progress tomorrow!

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

todays progress. Should i make the eyebrows even lower? I'm hoping I can try out some facial animations so maybe it would be best to leave room for frowning? idk.. :P

Gonna move on to texturing now. Probably won't do any normal maps for now. depends on how our (my game project group at school) shaders will turn out.

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

Laid down a base for the diffuse today.

ErikNilsson · Mar 2012

Nice that texture looks sweet! Rendered with kodde shader?

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

thanks! actually, it's just a lambert with a diffuse and no lights in maya software. AO baked and burnt into the diffuse. almost all of the values stem from the AO. so far there's almost nothing hand painted, just mixtures of selective color layers and mask layers. :P

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

we've got a new concept art assignment in school. small one, due til tuesday. There's a company called Junebud in Malmö who's the creator of an MMO game called Milmo. From what I can tell their target group are young teenagers. Here's a link to their website showing of their graphical style http://www.milmogame.com/media/.

The assignment is to create a character concept that would fit into the world of Milmo. I chose to do Shane from The Walking Dead. Here's where I'm at right now.

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

finished!

Callesw · Mar 2012

That character model looks really cool

Good job. Could be a bit less polys though!

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

Thanks!

Here's some sketching just for fun!

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

wtf.... imageshack removed my sketch?? anyways, it was a sketch of a woman standing in a normal pose only she was naked and seen from behind. nothing explicit at all..

oskarreftel · Mar 2012

one more try..

pNjpxuFokK-d1nGCPw_78VSMCJ6hcGmfCzt7X9RLJilzCMGQQ_lQYjkrH7rSVVlpDPMhMOC4woWpk6QCpBuxUZrUxg

EDIT

sigh... i'll just use filedump.

critique is much welcome!

oskarreftel · Apr 2012

We have an assignment in concept art due this week. It's based around the popular concept art book The Skillful Huntsman. The assignment is to make two concepts; a character and an environment with at least five thumbnails each to accompany them. This is my version of the huntsman. One of my classmates thought it would be douchy to present it the same way things look in the book but another one thought it was an excellent idea, so I went with it. No douchyness intended!

Please give me lots of critique and stuff, that's why I even bother posting things!

oskarreftel · Apr 2012

Finished my environment concept.

oskarreftel · Apr 2012

Recently I've gotten to do some texturing. This is the final boss of our current game project in school. It's a 2D shoot'em up. This character is rendered with no lights in maya software using only diffuse maps.
All the modelling was done by three of my classmates, so unfortunately I can't take credit for that.

All feedback and critique are much welcome, as always!

oskarreftel · Apr 2012

We have a new game project in school. It's going to be centered around squad based combat in indoor environments. The player will be in control of three squad members; a heavy soldier type, a medic and a hacker. This is my concept for the hacker character.

All feedback and critique is much appreciated as always!

oskarreftel · Apr 2012

thank you! i've started them all off by baking ambient occlusion of the meshes and using that as the base for the values in the diffuse. after that, there's a lot of layer effects like selective color, hue/saturation combined masks and so on. :P

EDIT

hey, i just saw that you gave the same comment to something up to 50 people here, some who didn't even have textures in their sketchbook. not cool...

oskarreftel · Apr 2012

today i started to model my hacker character.

oskarreftel · May 2012

She's got a face! I know it's ridiculously hi-poly for a turn based 2D game, but the details are for myself and done on my own time!

uneditablepoly · May 2012

Hey, Oskar, I am loving your sketchbook. That huntsman concept is really inspiring and the topology on all of your models is really great. I learned a lot just looking at them for a while. Just a quick question, feel free to brush it off. My weak point in character modeling is heads. Can you give a little bit of insight into how you approach modeling a head? All of your head topology looks really solid.

Feel free to just give a quick blurb about your technique if you don't want to go into too much detail. Once again, love your stuff! Cheers!

Sketchbook: Oskar Reftel

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