Teenage Demon
'k so, i thought of posting a WIP of a character that i just recently thought up (a teenage demon) and, i thought of showing the rough sketch that i made of him so i could get some comments or crits about any changes needed. He's going to be a low poly character, so im trying to figure out what the limits are for RPG games of these days (eg Fable: The Lost Chapters).
here it is:
(i know that the quality is really bad... sorry about that)
apart from looking for general comments, i had a specific question: the anti christ ornament (key for the gates of hell) on his side... is that offensive in any way to anybody out there? Should i replace it with a pentagram or something? By the way, proportions are supposed to be messed up...
model updates coming soon...
thanks...
here it is:
(i know that the quality is really bad... sorry about that)
apart from looking for general comments, i had a specific question: the anti christ ornament (key for the gates of hell) on his side... is that offensive in any way to anybody out there? Should i replace it with a pentagram or something? By the way, proportions are supposed to be messed up...
model updates coming soon...
thanks...
Replies
is the drawing that bad?
well... anyways... decided to go ahead with the modelling. And here is the model after 3-4 hours of work intertwined with playing quake4:
how does it look?
the only way you're going to get better now is by studying better artists. That's a two-fold approach: you'll need to study anatomy so as to model it accurately, and you'll need to study modelers' with good geometry so that you get a sense for good meshflow, good polygon distribution and so forth.
take for example a problem that was very clear from your first model but is still present in this one as well: you draw the pectoral muscles in sort of a blobby, blocky fashion. and so, surprise surprise, they come out looking the same way on your model. which is why, concurrent with improving your drawing skills, you need to model from better concepts. I was serious about that
if you want to model a demon-type character, give this one a shot. http://gauss.cottages.polycount.com/req/demon_sheet.jpg
it's an old one of mine, but i think it fits the bill--your concepts aren't quite detailed enough right now to give you much of a challenge/improvement for modeling. consider that your homework
Hey, how about one of you uber Model creators start a sticky homework thread to help out us noobs
anatomy is key, observation is key. It is very hard to sell a character design when there are problems with the anatomy since we, as people, are so innately keyed into our own appearances.
I can tell youre taking influence from an anime style for the face, which is a BAD idea. Good anime artists are only good because they learned correct anatomy and abstracted from there.
Id suggest 2 areas that would probably benefit your drawing style the most. First, try to study the body in 3d and draw it in perspective. Try to do some excercises of breaking the body down into simple 3d shapes. Check out Bridgeman or Loomis for some good reference. www.fineart.sk has some loomis examples for free dl.
2nd, try to keep weight in mind when drawing. Youre trying to trick us into seeing your sketch as solid character stading in a 3d space somewhere beyond the paper. Determine what leg your char is leaning his weight on, and try to adjust the rest of his body to appear as if it's balancing correctly around that leg
check this example: http://www.siggraph.org/education/materi...ontrapposto.htm
dont get discouraged with this stuff though. the trick is to just chip away at it from different angles and before you know it you'll see some major improvement
@Gauss - Im sorry to hear you feel that way (no taking the advice). I am trying to take the advice you gave me earlier, but occasionaly, my 15 year old mind drifts (sorry). As for observing other modellers; i downloaded some video tutorials from poopinmymouth's website, and i think they will help me to figure out the mesh flow stuff. I try to go through some art books that show the anatomy, so i'm trying to learn to draw out figures first. Also, thank you very much for the drawing/concept/orthos (it is really awesome) and i would like to work on that, but at the moment, i want to see how far i can get with this. Maybe with crits, (like urs about the pecs) i can actually get this model to work? I hope u dont mind my decision, and i hope that you still offer your extremely helpful criticism.
@Xaltar - thanks for the link, i think its gonna help me too, and thats a good suggestion(homework thread)
@ChaosEidolon - thank you for your advice. I am, honestly, using a manga/anime style face, (but i have a zoomed in image of the face which is not manga, and is a bit scarier) so i guess i should stop doing that. Thank you for the links; they are great resources. Also, i notice that your crit on weight distribution is a good point, thanks for bringing it to my notice.
Thanks for all your comments and crits, i will post up an update this evening (indian standard time) and am looking forward to more. don't worry about discouraging me, lol, harsh criticism tends to make me strive harder to get better.
UPDATE:
heres the chest, modified...
is it looking any better? what other changes should i add to it?
thanks
as of now, i have worked on the upper torso alot more, and hopefully, have given a more organic look and feel to it...
how is it?
any comments and crits are welcome, especially on meshflow, and anatomy
well, i've been working on the model alot, but due to some problems with the net, i wasnt able to log on to the net, let alone post any updates... so now i've reached the stage of texturing, as im pretty happy with the model (will post image later).
A few questions i had were:
1) wat exactly is relaxing UVWs?
2) are there any (free) softwares out there to make the UVW mapping process easier?
3) wat's the best way to minimalize texture stretching?
apart form this, any tips on UVW layout or painting maps using photoshop would be very helpful.
thanks
2)I dunno about free ones, but the new relax and pelt mapping in max really help. Deep UV is nice too (costs money tho).
3)I'd say using relax and manually adjusting problem spots is the best way.
as i finished mapping the character, i realised that there are a few more problems that might come up. First of all, here is the layout, yes, it is a bit messy:
1) now, as u can probably see, i have set up alot of things for symetrical mapping. What i did was in 'body01' i deleted those parts which would be symmetrical, mapped it then mirrored it, and in 'body02' i only kept the symmetrical parts unhidden. After i finish painting the textures, i will attach and weld them. This should work out, right?
2) As for normal mapping, i want to get alot of detail, but my comp. can only support less than 1 million polies at a time. So i decided to take the model into ZBrush 2 in parts (head, torso etc) then bring them back and normal map through the projection modif. But, in ZBrush, when i apply "Geometry > Divide" the seams get all wavy and improper... how do i fix this? or are there any other ways of normal mapping the parts separately?
thanks guys...
man, you need to start simple.
I dare say you should be rigging models, before you are normal mapping them. Its a talent that will serve you better in the longrun.
Thanks guys, looking forward to all the help i can get...
PS: rendering is done with Anti-aliasing turned off, and material self-illumination set to 100 and no lighting set-up (dont have bump map or spec map to show... yet).
So make sure to spend extra time on things to get them down pat before moving on...Much the same way you decided to stay simple and not do normal mapping this time around.
Good start,but I think a 1024*1024 map can hold a LOT more detail. Take a look around at b1ll's website, he has some great step by step mini-tutorials how to put a lot more detail to a fairly low-res map.
Keep it up!
Rota
And thanks for the site reference...
Now... I suppose its been a long time since i posted an update, so the work i've done looks minimal, but i had made a lot of mistakes while getting to what you see now. I mainly improved details on the arms, torso and leg... i guess i'll have to focus on the head a bit more, but i need to think up some detailing for that...
tell me what you guys think... i feel it's getting closer to completion?
once again... just looking for some general comments and crits...
thanks
I'm not saying give up, i'm saying you owe it to yourself to better yourself in other areas first. Try modeling something high poly using edge loops and good topology practice. Human/organic figures tend to be very difficult to start out on. Humans are built to be able to distinguish between real and unreal humanoids.
For your next concept, try using someone elses orthos, there are a lot out there in tutos and such, your drawing skills are not up to snuff enough for you to be doing your own concepts yet, practice your drawing skills and try spending some time on your 2d artwork. Tutorials are your friend
First of all, thank you guys for the advice.
Now, for the next concept, which is actually in progress right now and is also humanoid (unfortunately?), i have drawn a real basic sketch of what i want and have given it to my friend to build on. He's a great artist, and he wants to be a concept artist when he grows up, so this way... he gets to make some artwork, and i get to model MY concept off of a better artists drawing (that sentence confuses me too!)
well, anyways... this post is supposed to be a sort of bump... so:
:BUMP:
I just wanted some more comments/ideas/suggestions to spice up the model. I will start rigging and posing him soon, so i wanna check if there is anything i should add.
Thanks again...
Construction:
There are too many polygons for that level of detail.
The texture you have wastes UV space and is way too damn big. If you shrank that texture down to 256x256 you would see very little detail loss. That is because you used the paint bucket more than the brush.
The scale of the UV pieces is all wrong. The eye takes up as much texture space as the face!? 90% of that eye you will never see as it sits facing the back of the head.
The Mouth:
What is with the "I'm giving oral mouth"!? Is he a blow up doll? I don't see that mouth on the concept where did it come from? Poor construction or last min design change? Either way it needs to be fixed it is sucking the life out of the character.
The Legs:
Hooved legs normally means skinny goat legs with a weird backward knee thing. The legs being so big and bulbous as they are they steal strength from the torso. It doesn't matter how ripped you paint the texture if the shape of the mesh doesn't say powerful. Check these out, see how the chest is huge and the legs feet are smaller? That shape says power, the reverse does not. What you have is the reverse. I can see you're going for the baggy pants look but with legs made out of flesh instead of pants. It doesn't work. I see two options for the legs.
- Slim them down, give them the double joint but keep the hooves pretty big but tapered not bulbous. Check out horse legs, goat legs, and other hooved animals for reference.
OR Put pants on him.
Tan Khaki cargo pants would work nicely OR the cliche black goth EMO pants. If you go goth EMO, you'll have to put cut marks on his wrists and 4 years of black eye liner around his eyes, don't for get to smear it down the cheeks as all EMO cry.
Lastly paint some detail on the hooves, right now they are black blobs of nothingness, you can't tell what they are. Check out some hoof reference and paint what you see, because using the paint bucket isn't getting you detail. And for the love of all that is pure and holy don't start chopping photos to make up for the lack of painted detail, learn to paint first.
See what I did there? I hunted up reference, please do that before starting the next model, it will help it really will.
now... um:
this guy will be having no pants, so i will redo the meshwork on the legs and hooves.
as for the 'im giving a blow job' mouth, i just left the mouth open so that if i rig it with bones, it would be easier (i felt). But if it's a bad idea to do it like that, then good that i found out
now, one thing that has been bothering me:
what exactly makes a "hot" concept. I'm not suggesting that my one is that cool, but what is it really that gives a piece of concept art the extra "coolness." Is my IDEA simply boring, or is the DRAWING very static and boring? What should i do to improve in this field (concept art)?
thanks for the comments and the help.
Artistically the concept you have is ok. I would like to see a better scan and some Photoshop loving done to it to polish it up. Check out some of Mike's art and tutorials about how to do this. It appears the concept was done on a small scale and is smudged? Draw your concepts big, everything looks good at thumbnail size but blow it up and you find it lacks detail. Don't concept on post-it-note size paper use a full (and by full I mean full) sheet of paper, feet at the bottom, head at the top. "Ahh vig that means I have to actually draw details like hands" yup get some books and get used to it. Knocking out a few thumbnails and rough sketches is fine, but not for a "final concept".
Examples of detail lost due to small sketch size:
- The nose. It looks like a single pencil mark. Is that a normal human nose? Is that an imp nose? Is it an anime/Michael Jackson nose? Is that a "I don't have a nose"? Can't tell...
- Is that a goatee? Can't tell concept was drawn too small.
- Hands? long claws? 3 fingers or 4? Can't tell concept has blurry hands posed in the classic "I can't draw hands" fists.
- Ear? I see an ear ring, but is that an ear? is it pointy like an elf? Is it normal like a human?
- the horn looks to be coming out of the temple just above the ear? While I really like the horn bending like that, awesome detail, its not a good place for it.
- Is that an eye scar or a smudge? If the concept was bigger the scan would be better and I could tell.
As for the mouth on the model. It seems small, hard to tell with it gaping like it is. Normally you want to build your models as close to the standard pose as possible, with some small adjustments for rigging. Modeling with an open mouth seems silly to me as I keep the upper and lower verts on separate selections so rigging is easy, this selection goes to that bone, the other to that one, paint weights and your done (not that easy but you get the picture). closed or near closed is easier on the eyes and gives you a look at what everyone else will see, a non gaping character. More than likely you'll get some stretching or pinching if you model the mouth that open. Ask yourself when is the character going to be giving oral like that in the game? All the time? Ok leave it, but if not close it up a bit.
It's hard to think something is cool when its in a dorky or odd pose, such as mouth hanging open... Which will lead to a lot of knee jerk reactions of "ya-ouch that hurts my eyes".
This paint over isn't really up to standard but given the time I had to work on it, it gets the message across... kind of... ok poorly. Hopefully you'll get something out of my 20min of wierdness.
- Neck, he needs one. The head looks like a blob sticking out of the torso. He needs a jaw line and he needs shadows under that jaw line. It looks like his mouth is gaping becuse it is fused to his chest and he couldn't shut it if he wanted to.
- The pupils in the eyes are small black dots. The eye is more than a tiny dot in the center of the eye. That black dot is normally covered up by the eye lids. That black dot carries a huge weight of emotion which is based on size, shape, where it is located. Check out some eye painting tutorials. If you're going to have a 1024x1024 texture I expect to see more detail in the eyes than one click with a 3 pixel brush.
- Bring the horns and the goatee back, they add character.
- More anatomy tweaks, much better than what I knocked over hopefully.
and thanks for taking the time out to do that paint-over.
now, i've done some of the suggestions, and i think i should post an update before i get too far, considering that i might make another blunder.
i still need to start work on the hooves btw...
so, how is it:
still looking forward to as much criticism and suggestions that i can get...
i just have a few questions about tablets (drawing tablets)
I was thinking of buying a Wacom Intuos3 9" X 12". Its in my price range, and its available in india. Now, im thinking, is it a good option or should i wait, get more cash, and then buy a larger one?
Plus, the Intuos 3 works with photoshop CS2 right? Cuz that is the main reason i would be buying it.
thanks
And yes, it works with photoshop cs2, and tons of other applications.
1. You want to paint as much ambient shading into the texture as you can, and in the "standard" case you'll have shading under the head, so that the head doesn't look like it has no neck.
2. Blocking out more and more shapes, more shading and stuff, shadows under the nose, shadows onto the eyesockets, bones sticking out beneath the skin.
3. Studying the mouth does wonders, and you could generally change the shape you currently have there, once again, shading under the upper lip, shading under the lower lip, and since the lips are usually wet (maybe not with hot demon) they might also have a bit glossiness to them, and beneath the glosiness they are darker than the skin.
4. Try hiding the teeth by shading them, the further in the teeth are, the more shaded and darker they will be, or something, practice!
5. eyes are like the teeth, wet and a bit hidden, so they have a darker colour than the bright white, but have small specular highlights from pretend-lights in the scene.
6. play around with having different colours in different areas in the texture, like more gray-red in some areas, more purplered in others, depending on what the material is like there, like bloodvessels, bones, etc.
7. HAVE FUN!
PS. I might be wrong in any area.
Eld brings up some great points, especially about the ambient shadows being part of the texture. You came a long way in seperating the head from the neck and just a few defused shadows in the right places would sharpen up the transition nicely.
Try to think about a light above your models head, like a bright sun or spot light. Places that stick out on the face will shade some areas. These shadows aren't alaways sharp but often soft and defused.
Areas that cast shadows:
- Forehead, casts shadows under the eyebrows, around the eyes and on some people the bridge of the nose. Eyes are set back in the head and almost always need to be shaded.
- under the nose. Nose sticks out, casting a shadow that almost never disaprears on the upper lip.
- Upper lip hangs over the lower a tiny bit and casts a very defused shadow.
- Teeth, like Eld said, never catch that much light so are almost always shaded. They are also hardly ever pure white. Demons aren't known for thier spotless oral higiene and teeth whitening treatments.
Pst... everyone one on TV goes to great extremes to get their teeth that white. Most of the time your average joe has slightly dull/yellow tooth color. Demons might have down right nasty brown/yellowish teeth.
- Same goes for thier horns, check out some cattle horn ref. Personally I like the knobby horns of goats for demon horns. Any time you can imply some subtle evil/demonic animal theme like goats, bats, ect... try to squeeze it in but so it won't be noticed right away.
Think of the horns more as boney protrutions that are growing out of the skull. Horns start out thick around the place of origin (the skull) and start to taper toward the end. You might want to add boney protrutions coming out of the cheeks, eye brows. Check out this scupture for some ideas. I wouldn't go that over the top, but you could slide in a few tiny details and punch up the demon factor a bit.
once again, thanks for the advice on the model. over the past few days, work rate has slowed down cuz i've got exams coming up (from tomorrow actually) and so i've been studying. However, i've got a bit of work done (mainly on the head), and thought i'd post it up to get a few more comments.
I've added a scar on the left eye, given him the ear ring, and started work on his lips (they're still far from complete).
Also, according to the comments im getting, i dont think its clear what the nose is supposed to be like. I was trying to make a nose only upto the bridge, with the cartialage portion 'missing.'
Thanks, by the way, and looking forward to any comments whatsoever...
g2g study... got a science test on my b-day tomorrow... nothing could be worse, lol...
::bumpity, bumpty BUMP!::
hehe...
pls post some comments guys...
thnks