Weapon of the Black Knight
polycounter lvl 14
For a comp at deviantart:
Black Knight Weapon
We all have heard the legend of the Black knight. A powerful warrior known for his prowess in battle and his dark blackened armor. The Black knight is one who shows no allegiance to anyone. So this month, we will be using this legend as the base for the new weapon. You can do any kind of Black Knight, from the great knights of English lore to the ronins of Japan. You job is to create the weapon used by the black knight. If possible, come up with a story for the weapon and what kind of black knight uses it and so on.
Programs:
zBrush, maya, photoshop.
It's finished, but crits welcome.
Replies
I think you've got a good start, but I think you can do a lot more before you call this finished. But to start, you need to fix the way you've presented this. Your background is bothersome and just distracting, a solid colour, or mild gradient (e.g., one shade of gray to a slightly lighter/darker shade of gray- not black to white) would suit it better if you're looking for critiques. Secondly, your logo/copyright is gigantic and just as distracting as the background. Don't remove it, but do size it down and make it a little less glowy, probably. You don't need gigantic flashy letters for the text to be readable.
More or less my gripes with the model start with the texture/normal map. You say you used ZBrush here, but I see no reason for it to have been involved at all. You've got what looks like a basic noise bumpmap over the model in addition to some lines and those circle thingies on the axe head (plus the rings on the handle).
The normal map should probably contribute more to the shading than a metric fuckton of bumps, its should contribute to defining this model, granted that most of its bits are flat. So, what you could do is probably some sort of ornate engraving/embossing on the axe-head and whatever that pitchfork thing is (I have no idea). Absolutely get rid of the noisy bumps, they don't do anything to help your model.
Secondly, you should probably get rid of the blood. I know, it's an axe (and pitchfork thing) and it's used for hewing the limbs of foes, but don't you think a knight would treat his weapon with a little more respect? I assume he would at the least clean and oil (if I recall correctly) his weapon so that it doesn't rust. And if you really must have blood, consider what parts of it would have blood and what the blood would look like. Right now it's little splats and splashes that are not covering the entire area of the blade where a cut would be made. It doesn't really make sense, you know? Apply the same thinking to the pitchfork thing as well.
Lastly, I really have no idea what the pitchfork thing is for. I'm trying to think of how this weapon could be useful, but its design just says to me that it'd get about an inch in before the outer prongs stopped it from exploring an enemy's innards more thoroughly. Regardless of what it actually is, I doubt this sort of thing is at all practical. Exaggeration is completely legit, don't get me wrong, but it still has to look useful, and I'm not gettin' that vibe from this odd little device. If it's just supposed to be the end of the axe, then it's way, way too big and you'd probably hurt yourself trying to swing around a weapon with that sort of thing at the end of its handle.
END WALL OF TEXT
I probably wrote more than I should have. I need to work on how wordy I am. (btw: I don't normally write critiques, so yeah...)
It's okay, I honestly appreciate and consider all feedback.
"fools despise wisdom and instruction."
I was going for an evil mofo that doesn't really care about the wep. probably doubles as an intimidation piece.
I was going for a trident.