Superhero Anatomy
polycounter lvl 4
Hi Guys! I'm fairly new here. This is my third attempt at nailing the comicbook anatomy (first two are god awful), I'll gladly accept your comments and critiques.
I'm planning to go for a full pipeline with this character, meaning pieces of clothing in Marvelous, some hard surface stuff, and textures in Substance. I hope that I can rely on you guys if I run into some problems. Anyways, now I'd like to see your thoughts on the base body that i did.
Sorry for my english and thanks in advance!
And an ugly matte pass from Keyshot:
I'm planning to go for a full pipeline with this character, meaning pieces of clothing in Marvelous, some hard surface stuff, and textures in Substance. I hope that I can rely on you guys if I run into some problems. Anyways, now I'd like to see your thoughts on the base body that i did.
Sorry for my english and thanks in advance!
Here is the character so far:
On Artstation
Replies
Then my advice would be for you to actually pause/stop the sculpting and move on to all the technical things you'll eventually have to figure out. For instance, this "relaxed cupped hand" setup, while popular amongst some sculptors/character artists, can actually cause issues during armature building/posing. Now I am not saying that it *will* necessarily be problematic - just saying that it *may* be, especially if the armature is built as an afterthought. So now might be a good time to use your lowpoly lvl0 mesh to start placing your joints, determine bone orientation, and so on.
So overall, try to figure out all the technical issues in advance (that is to say : work with a pre-production mindset) instead of merely tackling them as they appear. The planning stage will definitely be long, but ultimately the overall time spent with the project will be much, much shorter.
I'll be honest, I haven't really decided yet which direction I'm going with this guy regarding the overall design. So far everything I've got is this:
I've never truly made it to the "end", so I am really interested in rigging and posing the character myself.
But, anyway, regarding what you said: do you think I should already concern about rigging/posing? Should I retopo right away and make all the clothes/gear later?
So yes indeed, now is a good time to think about rigging and posing. The bones are literally the structure of your character, there is no reason to not deal with them as early as possible.
But ! If you are not sure about the design itself, then this is a whole other story. Meaning that first and foremost, you'll have to go back to the drawing board and establish/lock the design. The fantasy of CG artists improvising stuff as they go miiiiiight work in some cases, but in most cases it is a bit of a recipe for disaster.
In short : plan ahead ! There is already a bit of a mismatch between the original intent of the thread (superhero anatomy) and this last picture (the beginning of a hero costume design). You'll have to pick your battle, as both are two different yet admittedly intertwined subjects.
Take movie previz for instance. To establish shots there would be no point spending months building a hero model - therefore they use very crude proxies. Similarly, if you want to make sure that your model articulates well, you could use something very rudimentary instead of spending hours on a clean retopo.
http://www.artofvfx.com/PAC/PAC_MRX_ITW_16.jpg
What I am getting at is that if you want to do a powerful piece fast, your best bet is to work differently from the usual "sculpt - retopo - pose" grind. Why not start by thinking of the final pose that you want your character to strike ? The more accurately your targets are established, the faster you will reach them.
So first, finish your concept/design phase. Then build it roughly. Then start working on the armature, to check if the pose functions well. And only then, do the details. I know this is more of a juggle than the way many people do things, but I can guarantee you that you will get better and faster results that way.