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Minotaur(Second Stage-Conceptin', thinking )

polycounter lvl 18
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conte polycounter lvl 18
Hey guys, ok, here is sketch
How do u think, guys, armor is needed?
That variant sucks, i know, especially his back.
Can u give me some good photos of armor u think will be
better?
Thank you all very much, hope it'll be good piece of art at end.=)
P.S:Gauss, can u do lil overpaint to show how better places
for straps on armor plz? ^_^
minotaur_ideas.jpg

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  • EricElwell
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    EricElwell insane polycounter
    Hey Askhat, I really like the start, the bones on the collar, and the straps give him that tribsey feel. I think that's pretty cool. So.. I'm not gauss, but I did a little concept for you anyway, maybe it will give some inspiration. I strayed a bit from the tribey feel, which, honestly i think the tribe thing is a great way to get some character on him. anyway.. check it out
  • gauss
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    gauss polycounter lvl 18
    Sorry Askhat, I am currently in northern Japan and have no access to a scanner or wacom tablet. Luckily for you, Eric looks to have been on a rather inspired painting streak and has provided some good input on designing the armor and some coloration ideas. Nice paintover, Eric (keep running with it!) smile.gif

    I'll do what I can, though: one of the best (and easiest) ways to refine a concept is to think it through logically. Ask yourself (Ask Askhat laugh.gif ) what this Minotaur is all about. Where did it come from? Is it a dumb beast, or intelligent in its own right? Does it have a master? If you give yourself an answer to a few of these questions, you can make your concept a whole lot more interesting. Form follows function, right?

    Let's take an idea and then just run with it, see where it takes us.
    Let's assume that this minotaur is a spin on the ancient Greek myth about the Minotaur, placed in the Labrynth. Now, without getting into the particulars of the mythology and turning this into a Greek style monster, we'll assume this: there's a Labrynth where victims/"the hero" are trapped and the Minotaur kills them/tries to kill them.

    A Minotaur in a Labrynth killing stuff is cool, but it still doesn't give us anything interesting to go on. So we introduce a design constraint (often the best way to generate new ideas): in order to really make it difficult for whoever's trapped in the Labrynth to win, let's say the entire Labrynth is completely dark. Pitch black.
    But the Minotaur has great hearing and sense of smell, so it still manages to catch people in the darkness.
    We could also suppose, just for fun, that the Minotaur's hairs covering his body are very sensitive to heat--so if the hero or victim that's trapped in the Labrynth is foolhardy enough to carry a torch, the Minotaur will be able to find him even easier. Maybe this is just silly and we'll discard it later, but it's worthwhile to entertain different possibilities, especially in the beginning of this process.

    So let's look at what we've got now:
    1.) Labrynth where Minotaur hunts and kills people/hunts "the hero"
    2.) Labrynth is completely dark.
    3.) Minotaur has very good hearing, smell, and heat sense.

    Okay, that should give us more than enough to design the minotaur in an interesting way.
    One approach given the lightless environment would be to pull a "Gollum", and make the Minotaur like a slimey, albino cave creature with very little pigment. But that suggests a long time spent evolving in that environment, and frankly runs contrary to the strong suits and essential character of the Minotaur.
    So let's just assume that while the Minotaur hunts people in the dark of the Labrynth, it does get some exposure to light intermittently. Or maybe they just turned out the lights because it was getting too easy for the Minotaur to kill people!
    So the Minotaur isn't a cave dweller by nature.. the next natural choice would be for it to have a blindfold of some sort, or better yet, some blinders, like a horse. If you go with that, you can create a visually interesting sort of blinding-helmet, which functions to blind but also protect the Minotaur's eyes and skull. So that's an idea.
    Going along with that, the armor should protect him well in this dark environment. He's got a great sense of hearing, but he can't echolocate like a bat (or Daredevil), so let's say he navigates the Labrynth because he's memorized the entire layout, from years of hunting people in it before they turned the lights out. But even though he knows the whole layout, he still needs armor not only to protect him from whoever he's fighting, but also to keep him from injuring himself too much if he would happen to charge into a wall or otherwise run into an obstacle.
    So now you've got a helmet and an interesting possibility for armor. How about a weapon?
    If he's trying to kill something in the dark, he's probably not going to use a particularly precise weapon, either. This suggests maybe a nice big club or warhammer, something really big, blunt, and suitable for a monster in a maze to use. Something big and capable of withstanding an accidental striking against stone, like the floor or a wall. And it's left all dirty and nasty in the dark of the Labrynth, so it's probably pretty nasty.
    Or maybe it's ritualistically cleaned by cult retainers devoted to the care of the Minotaur, since a dirty weapon would interfere too much with the Minotaur's highly developed sense of smell!
    And finally, just to spool out an idea related to the heat-sensitive business, you could give him a really long pelt on his back or around his neck or something, specialized sorts of hair tufts that react to heat. Like cat whiskers or something. That's a pretty bizarre idea so you may or may not be able to do anything with it visually, but it's still a potential feature.

    So there you go: starting with just a few basic "how about" sort of scenarios, we've been able to come up with a potentially novel approach to a minotaur design. This methodology (one of many!) is also nice because it suggests a whole scene, complete with the Labrynth and the hero character, and possibly even a game mechanic. Maybe the hero has a torch, but has to throw it around in order to mislead the Minotaur? Maybe the hero uses the Minotaur's memorized knowledge of the Labrynth against him, and uses something to trip him unexpectedly?
    Blinder'd creatures aren't particularly new in games (those wolverine guys in RE4 come to mind, for instance), but it could still make for something beyond just another well-made, but fundamentally uninteresting Minotaur character.

    So I apologize for the lengthy posts, but it'll do in the place of my inability to give you a paintover. Maybe even better, since you're able to draw just fine yourself it looks like smile.gif You can take or leave any of the ideas I suggest in this thread, but I hope this idea-generation technique proves useful for helping you flesh out this character and future ones.
  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    google brought up this guy's work which could be really inspiring
    http://pum.cgsociety.org/gallery/384062
  • Thegodzero
  • gauss
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    gauss polycounter lvl 18
    Chris and TGZ post some cool refs, but especially when working on an established beastie archetype like a minotaur, try not to draw from existing examples of the same thing. We've already got enough minotaurs that look the same--try and draw from different sources of inspiration.
    Minotaurs are anthropomorphized bulls, or even just dudes with bull heads--try looking up ref pics of bulls, not other peoples' takes on minotaurs.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Great post Gauss, that's the same way I try to look at a concept - form follows function, and try and make the function as interesting as possible smile.gif

    A character always looks better when people can get a sense of its history and background just by examining the details.

    Nice start Askhat, keep it up smile.gif
  • LordScottish
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    LordScottish polycounter lvl 18
    Yes, very interesting thoughts Gauss! Art people need more of this way of thinking
  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
    Woah guys, thank u so much for attention!
    Yah, today did basemesh of that bull:
    basemeshbeast.JPG
    BUT after that i'd thought what that is just very banal thing.
    I have idea to do Viking like dude, and his name is Minotaur=)
    here is concept, how do u think, guys, armor looks out of design?
    concept.jpg
  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
    Gauss, thank u very much!
    EricElwell, woah! cool concept dude! thx for it
    Mop, LordScottish keep your eyes here, friends=)
    cholden, thanks, looks inspirationful!
    Thegodzero yes, Narnia=)))how could i forget about that film=)))
  • Japhir
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    Japhir polycounter lvl 16
    go the human style! i really like that! and it is more original than a minotour (i even did a minotour in the very beginning of my modeling works)
  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
    I meant minotaur beast is not very banal, after i ended
    read gauss's post.
    Japhir, thanks.
    Hmm, i am really confused, guys, how do u think that human direction is nice or we should go with old way?
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    both laugh.gif human on top , but lower legs like minotaur , leave from belt up like a human , and lower like a minotaur smile.gif
  • Japhir
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    Japhir polycounter lvl 16
    that last one is called a satyr and is already some sort of mythical creature... there actually is one in narnia.
  • SyaPed
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    SyaPed polycounter lvl 18
    I like your latest drawing the most. A really hairy, scary viking dude with a huge bull head over his own. Him and his buddies terrorizing people from their longboats. Rumours spreading of halfmen half bull beasts...
  • jgarland
    The concept is looking really cool. I can kind of see him as a vagabond, who lives with other clans of minotaur, like he was disowned or something as a child. He's very savage-like.

    Keep it up. I'll be watching this thread. wink.gif
  • Pedro Toledo
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    Pedro Toledo polycounter lvl 17
    The humman is way cooler than the minotaur!!

    Really nice concept smile.gif
  • Lord McMutton
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    Lord McMutton polycounter lvl 17
    I think he might look good with one of those cape-like things that they drape over one shoulder.
  • poopinmymouth
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    poopinmymouth polycounter lvl 19
    Is Barbarian! I like your human in Minotaur-ish armor. I'm not sure I've seen that before. One mistake you need to make sure you don't make again, is too shallow of a design. That zbrush base is ok, but build up some other primitives that overlap it, or extrude some stuff. It's looking too smooth. You have a tendancy to never make things deeper in Zbrush than they were in the base version, so try to get some of those interlocking and overlapping shapes in the base before you do any sculpting.

    poop.gif
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