Guild Wars guy
polycounter lvl 15
I figured I should probably not spam up the WAYWO thread, so yeah.
I saw the concept art for the ArenaNet internship program thing that happened earlier this year and decided I'd like to take a crack at one of the characters.
And the concept art in question:
More updates soonish. In the meantime, any comments or critiques or whatever would be sweet. I still need to get the draped cloth looking right, but the whole thing is unfinished right now.
I saw the concept art for the ArenaNet internship program thing that happened earlier this year and decided I'd like to take a crack at one of the characters.
And the concept art in question:
More updates soonish. In the meantime, any comments or critiques or whatever would be sweet. I still need to get the draped cloth looking right, but the whole thing is unfinished right now.
Replies
Another thing that seems off to me is the wrinkles, other than the ones on the sash. They're really uniform: same width, parallel, straight and soft. Get some more variation in there in width, sharpness and direction. Particularly in the back I think there should be more curved draping wrinkles instead of just being all straight.
The guy in the concept's clothes puff out and get wider as they go down. On your guy they are just kind of going straight down.
Good stuff so far, nice to see something less stylized from you.
Same shape, over and over.
I think you might have a bit too much of a focus on anatomy, and not enough on the final shape, so I think it's worth playing around with that a bit more.
I haven't really worked on this guy in the past couple of days, so I figured I should get back to it. I've been trying to get the folds looking a little more natural. I dunno if I'm succeeding, though. The seams at the shoulders still look weird and I think I may be overdetailing; the material in the concept seems like it's a bit thicker than the sculpt would imply. Subtlety is key here, so I'm probably going to be reworking the cloth even further.
I still haven't touched the hands and the boots are nowhere near done, so I should probably focus on them for a while.
The clothing looks nice although the wrinkles are a bit too much in places. I don't think a gold chain would affect the coat quite that much.
The internship program has been over for a while now, but it's cool to see folks still taking a crack at it.
I know I really need to tone down those wrinkles. I'm having a tough time getting the feel of the cloth right, so I should probably go hunting down some sort of references of how exactly the cloth would hang and wrinkle. Maybe I'll be able to take some reference images myself, though I don't know if I have any appropriately thick material on hand.
As for the program being over, I'm well aware. I just think of it kind of like the Splash Damage environment art test. I know a lot of people will have a lot of different takes, so why not try it myself?
Now that I think about it, I suppose it's possible that the concept was from Utopia and not Nightfall (Utopia was the cancelled campaign that was in a Central America-ish setting). I just presumed that they wouldn't have been using concepts from Utopia. It probably doesn't matter much anyway as long as it looks good. Nightfall had plenty of North African/Arabic influences as well so it got pretty diverse.
I've found that colored AO works a lot better than just straight black, especially if you're tying to get a more clay-type feel to the material.
I've tried to tone down the wrinkles on his jacket a bit. It seems to be looking a little better than it did before. I should probably stop fiddling with the jacket cloth so much and focus on something else for a while, like his hands.
Since I'm really not sure where this guy's supposed to be from, I decided to do a couple of versions of his head. One with a more Central American feel (hopefully) and one with more African facial features.
Well the neck piece right now is just a place holder, I think. And with that I don't think it looks like a dog collar. Either way I'm sure it'll look fine once he gets around to focusing more on it
what?
what about his body looks specifically caucasian?
Seriously, though, what does that even mean?
Aaaaanyway.
I agree with you guys about the head variant. It doesn't look too hot, so I'm just going to keep the head he has now and maybe sculpt another from scratch if I feel like I really need to.
As for the collar... man, I dunno what's up with the collar. I haven't touched it since I started out and I'm slightly confused by it now. It looked to me, judging from the concept, like it was a large metal necklace type dealie, but now I'm not so sure. That said, I'm going to keep it as a large necklace type dealie because 1. I'd have to resculpt stuff to make it work as a cloth collar and 2. I actually like the idea of him wearing a big ornamental ring thing around his neck. The concept definitely leaves some room for interpretation in that area, anyway.
I've screwed around with the jacket and sash thing a bit more. I think I've got them to the point where I can say I'm fairly satisfied with them, so now I'll focus a little more on the hands and boots and possibly even move on the the low-poly soonish.
I also went down to the lowest sub-d levels and tweaked some overall shapes. His shoulders slope a little more now, even though they're about the same width, and I poofed his clothes out a touch.
And here's where the head is currently. I'm sure lots of optimization will be necessary. I'm going to try to get a full mouth in there, too.
and guess you gotta cut it down to mmo specs which doesn't sound fun
only thing buggin me is the shoulder area. Seems too narrow given his body type... actually i think it's the space under his arm that's catching my eye, seems to proturude out of the shoulder too much (inside arm is usually pretty close to the bod)
anyways, awsome so far. bake should look cash ^^
There are still some areas that need lovin', especially the face and hands, but things seem to be coming along well.
Any thoughts, crits, whatever are all welcome.
There were some questions about the material setup in the WAYWO thread, but it's really nothing special. I have colored spec and a gloss map. The spec and gloss affect the pattern on the coat, but there's no crazy shader magic going on. I do have a pretty complex lighting setup, but it's mostly just so I have rim highlights and stuff. These are all screenshots from Marmoset.
Here's a paint over to show you what I mean:
Nothing major, I just think the shoulder seam in the clothing could be emphasized more like you see in the concept, and it looks to me like it needs a bit of an angle to it instead of a perfectly smooth transition from the torso to the arm. Something else that I think might look cool is if you faked some reflections in the diffuse map with the gold collar giving the objects around it a bit of yellow, but also receiving reflections as well.
Just my thoughts.
I think the only thing it's lacking right now is some more variation to the textures. I think you did a great job on the materials and it looks realistic, but it's almost too perfect. Even slight gradients over the expanse of those large surfaces might help take it a step away from that sterile feeling, and some slight indications of wear here and there for interest.