[WIP] The Bear-coon
polycounter lvl 4
Say hello to the Bear-coon (Also know as Bear Buddy). I'll start logging some progress here in this forum :-). I like to do a paint over before I get really into painting UVs in case I hate the colors I choose. Please tell me if I have anything wrong in the wireframe, I've never made a bear before!
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Some progress Ive made workin on my little guy
1. nearly 90deg edge where the honey drops out - this must be a pretty thick honey, but none of the liquids will create that look when pouring out
nice project you have here, looking cool!
I did an overpaint below ( sorry for the messy quality
by reducing the contrast where two different materials meet ( for example the pant of his backpack, as it touches the fur ) you can guide the viewer to areas, where there are more interesting stuff happens, for example on the face! using contrast only at areas of interest is a great way to make the viewer quickly understand what they are looking at!
I would also try, and add soft shadows to parts, where they make sense, for example below the armpit, that way further reducing contrast in those areas!
another cool thing to try is to give form, and a sense of light to the texture, by making the up facing surfaces lighter, and the down facing a bit darker, for example on his arms, you can emphaize its cylinder form by giving a soft light to the upper side, and soft shadow to the bottom part!
emphasizing form on handpainted textures is a cool trick to sell your model a bit better to the viewer, try and imagine a lightsource above the character, and paint the whole model accordingly, see how that works!
you are doing great, I hope the shitty paintover ( sorry again
I love your hand painted style. The design is very fun.
I have a couple critiques, but they are only suggestions and very much a matter of opinion/taste:
The coloring and shape of the face is closer to a rodents, IMO, than a bears. Feels more like a racoon. Which has a very ornery, rascally quality to it.
Not saying you can't have an ornery, mischievous bear character, but I think a slight shift in shape may really tamp the character down as a bear rather than a chonky racoon.
To me, bears have a bumbling, simple earnestness that makes them very endearing. I suppose its the big head, small eyes, big boo-boo lower lip, big ole nose. If I was going to tug some vertices around on your model, I might make the snout a touch slimmer and longer, and adjust the dark parts of the fur to give it more eyebrow definition and less racoon-like eye rings. But again, JMHO.
Thank you so much for all of the advice! You made my painting look 1000x better! Normally I slowy, slowly build up contrast but I should really just go for it. I really appreciate your draw over too, that will help me out a ton. Thank you so much for taking to time to do that for me!
@BIGTIMEMASTER
Thank you for your critique! My guy is a sort of bear-racoon hybrid so I can work on bringing in some more bear elements! I'll mess around with the snout shape, because I do want him to look more like a bear! My main goal is to just create something kind of in the middle of a bear and a racoon so your advice is helpful :--) Thank you!
The bear-coon is now on sketchfab!!
I can't say exactly what you did with the face, maybe just a little expression, but it looks a lot more bear-like and endearing to me now. But still has the raccoon in there as well. Super cute mash-up.
One small suggestion : given the cartoon nature, I wonder if X's on the fish eyes might be a nice detail. For some reason they feel alive to me, like if it was animated they'd be flopping around. Which makes bear-coon seem kind of morbid.
Keep it up! These are really motivational for me because I want to do some characters like this in the future.
I don't have too much of a reason for his outfit design, I guess I just thought it looked cool! I do agree with his cuffs, I think I need to tie that into his outfit/color scheme more so it melds better.
Glad that I can be motivational! The hardest part for me is starting from nothing, but you can do it! Get a solid idea and go for it!!!