2010 Comicon: Valkyrie [Big Pics Ahoy]

[Hazardous]

Hey dudes, heres my entry for comicon this year over at GA.

I picked Valkyrie, but decided 2048 and 12k poly's was an opportunity to cram in way more shit than a viking chick with a braid and spear, so i overhauled her from top to bottom in a style that I enjoyed more.

I took inspiration from Aion, Genzoman's wicked illustrations, Shunya Yamashita's female face illustrations.

Shes under budget at around 11,200 which I was really surprised with at the end, I should have used those extra tris to round out some more of the armour pieces but i didnt really know how heavy the wings were going to be before I actually started blocking them out, in the end they are barely 100 tris each!!

By that time I had literally no time to go back to the mesh and start cutting stuff back in.

Beauty Shot

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/287/e/8/2010_comicon__valkyrie_wip_42_by_hyperdivine-d30s4si.jpg

Presentation Shot

http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/290/b/9/2010_comicon_valkyrie_frontbac_by_hyperdivine-d30yad5.jpg

Textures

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/290/6/1/2010__comicon_valkyrie_texture_by_hyperdivine-d30y71b.jpg

( Am working on a decent wireframe and a 360 spin to post up so you can get a real sense of scale from her wings etc)

Everything is hand painted except for the light dirt overlay on the metal. And i havent used any renderers for any of these shots - just straight viewport grabs from max using xoliul's badass shader which is totally free for both max and maya.

For my beauty shot I painted smoke using a photoshop smoke tutorial I found on the web, and for the 'particles' I simply found a pic of a night sky with bajillions of stars on it, scaled them up to 3 different sizes and erased which ones i didnt want to help give that illusion of depth.

After working until 4:00am on it i looked at it in the morning and saw that it looks like shes underwater.... doh! but hey thats how I rolled.

Lessons learnt from this comp:

* Wings that work nicely are fucking hard to pull off, no rigger in their right mind would be happy with trying to make what ive done work nicely.. heh.
* Trying to work with a character that has a massive silhouette in its entirety can be frustrating, I want to show her face but that would mean cutting off her wings, or cranking up the perspective or finding some strange angle to shoot her at etc.
* I underestimated the time it would takes to present a character like this.

Some WIPS and other goodies

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/279/c/e/2010_comicon__valkyrie_wip_28_by_hyperdivine-d308ks9.jpg

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/284/5/d/2010_comicon__valkyrie_wip_34_by_hyperdivine-d30iwgk.jpg

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/273/7/2/2010_comicon__valkyrie_wip_25_by_hyperdivine-d2ztz78.jpg

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/286/4/0/2010_comicon__valkyrie_wip_40_by_hyperdivine-d30nrv6.jpg

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/286/b/3/2010_comicon__valkyrie_wip_38_by_hyperdivine-d30nrl5.jpg

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/285/7/7/2010_comicon__valkyrie_wip_37_by_hyperdivine-d30lflj.jpg

Thanks for looking dudes, hope you like!

[Tom Ellis]

I've already given my praise over on GA but it deserves more.

Easily one of the best pieces I've seen in a long time. That beauty shot goes further than just being a 'good model technically and aesthetically' it's a piece of fucking art dude.

Nice to see a bit of Xoliul action too in a world becoming quickly overpopulated with a certain primate ;p.

[Slave_zero]

Amazing work!
I especially enjoy the work on her face and her beautyfull eyes. Lovely. Also the wings are impressive. I also like the simplicity of her armor. Not overdone with ornaments and such. It fits nicely.

I guess the special effects on her spear in the beauty shot are painted. Or did you some particle effect magic to get the effects into 3d?

[Flaringo]

This is absolutely insane. Great work!

[Barnstable]

Simply gorgeous.

[nullfed]

Yeah the eyes and the wings are sweet. Great presentation.

[cupsster]

love eyes execution..

[Skillmister]

Brilliant work, those eyes are amazing!

[Charlie]

Absolutely beautiful!

The face is one of my favorite parts, especially the eyes and lips!

Also I love the wings. Is each "feather" a plane that you moved the vertexes around for? Sorry I'm new to the modeling scene and was just wondering haha.

Great job anyways!

[polozad]

Great work! Few words about diffuse?

[sampson]

goddam hazardous you cool man, nice work. the slits on the helmet look weird close up but from far away its fine (just limited polys i guess). aussie pride.

[adam]

Stellar stuff. I am going to put this up in the banner rotation first thing tomorrow morning.

[AimBiZ]

Superb stuff. Was a bit sceptical on the wings of the first image but the others sold it. Love how you managed the skin as well.

[Prophecies]

Awesome job man! Well done! I don't think the header does this model justice though. Might just be me, but it could be better (the new polycount header, not the model itself!).

[Hazardous]

Holy crap thanks for the banner guys - totally honored!

Slave Zero: Thanks man, yeah the smoke and particles are added in photoshop after the screengrab - I really like Xoliuls shader, very little post work involved in any shot once some good lights have been setup!

Charlie: Haha yeah man you got it pretty much - each plane is moved around and placed individually until i found the right volume that I was after for the wing. It was much more challenging that i thought it would be, and i imagine it would be alot more challenging to make a wing that actually works well animated - that will be the next step!

Sampson: thanks dude, Your right i should have cut those things out of the helmet - always next time!!

Thanks again guys, stoked you like her :D

[whats_true]

She looks wicked dude. Awesome work!

[Charlie]

Sounds incredibly tedious but if the wings turn out as great as yours did I think it's definitely worth it! Thanks for answering as well, I'll give wings ago once I get around to character modeling.

Congratulations on getting top row you deserve it for this awesome piece.

[Raider]

Gotta say man, the first thing I thought when i saw this was Aion, which had stella graphics and you actually made it look better. Those wings and that face are badass

[pior]

Very cool, congrats!

[Klumpmeister]

very purty girly you got there.

[JasonLavoie]

Simply amazing, the high to low transferred perfectly, with how the specular is reacting, it at times can look like a cg model, very very nice!

[catstyle]

great stuff hazardous! saved off that close up off the face for reference/inspiration : D

[luke]

simply fantastic! i feel sorry for the judges who have to choose a winner out of all of these

[shotgun]

Gonna be the stickler here who says it's boring as hell. The craftsmanship is gr8 but what else?

[Cyrael]

Awesome work!! And congrats on the banner!

[Hazardous]

Thanks again guys! Appreciate all the kind words!! Makes me want to make more!!!

Shotgun: Replicating a comic hero would be pretty boring for me, and I cant bring myself to just make a duplicate of something thats already been made dozens of times every comicon. I like this kinda direction more, and its the best I could do in 5 weekends of free time, sorry to dissapoint, will try harder next time, and hope to see your entry next time too :)

[EricV]

that is awesome!

[redpandafire]

Simply adore this!

[AstralFear]

I really love this. Your work is inspiring, and I love the textures.

[afisher]

Awesome work, congrats on the banner

[dkreset]

hey man! that's some awesome stuff!! I have a question outta curiosity, where did her hair piece go in the beauty shot?? Did you take it out to showcase her facial features more?

Anyhow, great job on the entry!

[Autocon]

Really awesome work, love the wings and the great silhouette they give to the character

[Bishop]

I haven't been on Polycount for a while. It's nice to come by and see a new beautiful banner up.

[BradMyers82]

Great job man, I love the wings! My only crit would be that the face looks slightly more stylized than the rest, and makes it not quite fit right imo. Anyways, been a fan of your work for a while now, and congrats on the banner. :)

[BradMyers82]

Was just browsing your portfolio again and looked at that arm you did. I didn't realize there was a real-time skin shader that had all those layers like subdermal and epidermal various spec layers etc.

What shader is that and how can I get a hold of that?

[Andrew Mackie]

Beautiful character man. You executed everything so well.

[Hazardous]

Thanks again dudes for al the kind words!

dkreset: Dude haha, so I didnt even notice that until a couple of days after I composited the final shot!!!!

Bradmyers82: Thanks for the crit - if you could elaborate on why you think the face is more stylised than the rest that would be helpful thanks!. Regarding the shader, its Mental Ray SSS shader applied to a realtime arm - not a realtime shader. Your the first person to point that out, but now that you have, ive realised its not very explanatory is it!?! Ill fix that up! thanks man!

[kengkard]

awesome work guy!!!:thumbup:

[RiotForQuiet]

this is wicked, congratz

[mosena]

really cool man!!! cheers

[ZeroCartin]

Awesome work :D

[Serenity4art]

amazing piece of work, love the colours.

[Hazardous]

Hey thanks guys, I really appreciate it! She actually looks really weird to me now haha!

[ageshero]

Incredible, but personally i find her face to be really annoying. lol

[untoo]

Incredible character, but i think it will get even better if you work a little more on the expression in the face, doesn't look really angry.

[untoo]

Sorry, don't know how to edit the posts, i looked again and probably you are not triing to make her angry, but right now i belive that the face lags on expresion, other than that perfect!

[Hazardous]

Ageshero & Untoo: Sorry to dissapoint you with the face - Ill try with some better expressions next time :)

[untoo]

Don't missunderstand me, you didn't dissapointed me, the work is amazing, really amazing, i wish i could do something similar (hopefully if i continue learning someday...) was just a personal opinion to make it look perfect, but other than that i really love it.