Road to the Academy of Art Spring Show - Tim Woody
polycounter lvl 8
So I'm starting this thread to show my path of progression to making a piece for my schools spring show. Which eventually should my piece be good enough, would help me land a job. The type of job I'm trying to land would either be in movies or games, I'm pretty open minded there. However I'm going to lean my piece more towards game work. Being that I'll have a high rez mesh and bake it into a realtime one. that covers both game modeling and high resolution modeling
I can either choose a pre done concept and model that or make a concept of my own but it would be a character concept. Although picking a concept to model would be easier I'm thinking of drawing out my own. I'm leaning towards doing something that would fit in with the cinematics of Blizzard so I'm choosing to do a demon hunter (yes I know they are already doing this for Diablo III I love that game series!) I have some loose sketches I've done that I will post.
Over the course of the project the idea of what I want to do might change. I will have questions and would definitely enjoy suggestions and viewers pitching in. I will need all the help I can get!
Heres one of the concept sketches I was working on. I want the design to fringe on religious iconography, crosses and such. however half has to be something relating to demons. I kind of want to him to feel a touch more on the demon side as if for camoflauge or trophies, not quite sure yet. His armor is leather with metal here and there. I'm also playing around with some sort of duster jacket. Putting a duster Jacket over everything feels too played out though.
I can either choose a pre done concept and model that or make a concept of my own but it would be a character concept. Although picking a concept to model would be easier I'm thinking of drawing out my own. I'm leaning towards doing something that would fit in with the cinematics of Blizzard so I'm choosing to do a demon hunter (yes I know they are already doing this for Diablo III I love that game series!) I have some loose sketches I've done that I will post.
Over the course of the project the idea of what I want to do might change. I will have questions and would definitely enjoy suggestions and viewers pitching in. I will need all the help I can get!
Heres one of the concept sketches I was working on. I want the design to fringe on religious iconography, crosses and such. however half has to be something relating to demons. I kind of want to him to feel a touch more on the demon side as if for camoflauge or trophies, not quite sure yet. His armor is leather with metal here and there. I'm also playing around with some sort of duster jacket. Putting a duster Jacket over everything feels too played out though.
Replies
Before you begin modeling from your concept I suggest making a much more detailed version. The armor that you have showing here is very complicated and trying to model something like that without good reference can cost you a lot of time.
Your base mesh has good topology, however you have a great deal of polys in the arms and on the crack of the butt, you could probably remove or relocate these polys.
Looking forward to your progress.
With this model I'm sorta multi tasking. I'm trying to lay out a good base but before I start in on the armor I'm drawing out some concepts which I will get around to posting and looking up more leather armor reference. I may find myself concepting some armor ideas in zbrush as well but I'll see.
hmm I'm trying to figure just what type of spaulders hes going to have. none of these SUPER stick out but lemme know what you guys think. This excercise did sort of clear up how I might want to attach the spaulders
I'm liking #2 the most. I'm a sucker for layered armor, and the skull is going to be a nice focal point. Even if it is Blizzard inspired I urge you to not go for the massive shoulder pads and gauntlets direction, it is starting to turn into a bad design trend imo. Your design is looking pretty good so far though, but I'd like to see some more love put into the chestpiece and the pants are looking kinda plain right now.
Two more with the last two. I wanted to steer away from the assassins creed look. My friend advised me to get rid of the hand blade. probably a wise choice.
Also good luck on getting in to blizzard. An old forumite, Soul, went there from AAC and hasn't been heard of since.
Also good luck with the show.
Anyway did a few adjustments for your head basemesh...
Couple guys who are some good reference...
Maxence Fleuret
Dmitry Parkin
Looks like most of the body will be covered, so just getting the proportions down and not worrying too much about the muscle anatomy should be fine, I'd definitely push the hands and focus a good amount of attention on the head. The head is generally going to draw a lot of focus. Keep it up!
-Oliver
I see "a person in an armor suit" when I look at your concepts and model. When I look at thychus findley I instantly see a hardened criminal who's been in a lot of tough spots and narrow escapes.
It's important to define a bit of your back story before you get too far into modeling.
Everything will come into play in the end character. People wear far more on their faces and body language/type than we often realize.
Even something as simple as the kind of environment he grew up in would determine the materials his armor is made out of and what kind of weapons he has access to.
I'd also suggest make another pass on the facial anatomy. I did a quick paintover of the forms that are missing. There should be a valley in between the eye and the cheek bone where the soft tissue is. Since he's a demon hunter I'd try making him a bit slimmer to give the idea of agility in keeping with the class.
I like the armor designs on the lower arms and hands the most so far. I'd run with that and make it the theme throughout the armor.
I left alot of forms in his face soft to possibly show that hes younger? somewhere in his early to mid 20s. However I will look at more reference and should be able to find those forms still. Thank you again! I will pay closer attention to these details. Now back to the drawing board to work on facial details!
Do pester me artquest if I've still missed one of the elements you were speaking of in facial anatomy.
A young face isn't exactly a soft face. The skin is soft and there is often more soft tissue, but it's important to remember that the same bones and muscles reside under that softer skin. Your character's face will come together almost own it's own once you place the forms in the correct places. Once you have them it's easier to edit them to get the look you are after. Go ahead and sculpt the muscles and bones into your face model using this as your reference. Then you can hit up the smooth brush to make it look like skin later.
For a demon hunter, I'd probably go with some strong features on the face but give him less wrinkles and pore detail to make him look younger. Remember, everything in Diablo is about being heroic. Better give him heroic features to match!
The scar across his face is a bit cliche. So imagine during his first hunt a demon gouges out his eye. So when he finally makes the kill he takes that eye for his own. So he has a sweet looking eye and a faded, more subtle scar. Or maybe we don't even see any of that and he has an eye patch to hide it all.
Just some ideas
I do like the idea of some sort of facial scars but perhaps those are a bit much and a little cliche. I'm for sure going to play around with him having a demon eye I think that would make an awesome push to his character.
My advice at this point is to A) try not to stress.
Also, If you're working in maya feel free to send me your scene and I can take a look at the render settings if you like. Rendering will eat up your time like nothing else so I'd be willing to give you some points to speed that part of the process up so you can focus on the modeling/texturing.
Thank you a ton for offering to look at my scene... you dont perhaps use modo tho do you? haha I find that modo has such good amazing results with easier to understand sliders and switches. Modo is also reeallyy fast at rendering however I probably dont have metal ray configured to its finest either.
Thank you again though you are a huge help to this project
Re-edited my last post to actually display the image
very beautiful, very perfect.
The armor looks a lot closer to metal now! So that's good. But it doesn't look like the kind of metal that would be crafted by someone in that time period. To fix that you may want to consider adding some rivets so it looks pieced together. Also, perfect reference for ya that recently was released
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