[Contest] Mixamo - Goeddy
greentooth
so i am creating a beast character for the mixamo character contest.
It has been done!
i did a paintover to visualize where i will be going.
no concept for the weapon yet, but i am definetely going to create it myself.
It has been done!
i did a paintover to visualize where i will be going.
no concept for the weapon yet, but i am definetely going to create it myself.
Replies
anyways, now all the ugly stuff is out of the way and for now its only pure sculpting joy.
also i would like this thread to be moved to the contest section.
and crits are obviously very welcome.
Because that would be a cool concept. A mythical creature that the greeks and romans considered godly, and tried to mimic.
actualy i was just playing around with some shapes for the horns and then settled with this one, because it worked best in 3D.
his original mythologie was more in a crusader-like direction,
but something more focused on the classical era would also harmonize very good with the cloth and everything.
good input,
i gues i have some more thinking to do, to fully flesh out his story.
Design - I think you can push your design more if you'll mix more recognizable concepts. Since you're going for a humanoid character, maybe you can mix in some animal influence or mythical creatures, anything that the audience can easily relate to. Human + lizard = ??. Human + bull + lava = ??. Human + fish + ice = ??. The possibilities are endless!
A background story can also help a lot in your design decisions since you can easily reference to it in case you reach a "creative block".
Inspirational artworks and other references play a big part in designing characters. It is almost impossible to make an effective design without them especially for starters. It doesn't stop at collecting them and staring at them for hours. You should be able to tell what makes their design work. What separates them from mediocre works. What gives the "Whoa!" factor in them.
Unto specifics... maybe you can consider going for proportions like this:
I think that stylized anatomy goes well with what you have in mind.
Right now, you have a lot of themes going on. Greek mythology, gladiator, demon, war veteran, etc. It'll be great if you can choose one theme and relate all elements to that. If you're going for greek mythology then everything should follow. More skin, less cloth, muscular and a little exaggerated anatomy. angular face, heroic proportions.
cont...
I'm not expert at this but these are the lessons I learned!
That's it for now... I'll drop by again later or tomorrow.
so i will go through this step by step here:
1. Identifying themes
so obviously this guy didnt have a background yet, so i just put together elements that i visualy realy like in general, and that i often use anyways.
some of theses are
-horns
-medium stylized proportions
-loincloth and hanging cloth in general
those are things i realy like and that i would like to keep in the final product.
so to move forward i took the input i got already and started to first figuring out the themes that are currently going on here, pick whats good, and what has to be adjusted. Just to be able to give the whole concept a bit more focus.
2. Research and interpretation
so what did i get out of that? what do things already reference to?
-minotaur (obviously)
-gladiator
-beast (contest theme)
-horns resembling laurel wreath
Gladiator
so i could easiely sort this into greek and roman reference/mytholigy.
what realy helped me here is that before the adobtion of christianity the romans worshiped a mythology simillar to the greek religion. Most of their gods were just greek gods with ,atmost, different names.
also the focus on the roman theme allowed me to keep the gladiatur reference, wich already takes a large part of the model, that i´d like to preserve.
if i would just give the dude a spear and a net, i think he would fit very good as a gladiator, sadly i cant do that though.
Minotaur
next i researched the minotaur, and quite soon got the idea of doing a roman reimagination of the minotaur.
i don´t realy know all the thoughts that flew through my head so i´ll just write his story here as i nailed it down in the end.
Background Story
So one day the wife of the great roman emperor cheated on him with one of the War-god´s sons.
Soon after the bastard was born the emperor discovered about the childs true origin. Furious about his wifes betrail he ought to slay the child, but his wife managed to convince him to spare the childs life, fearing the revenge of the god of war.
Instead the emperor sentenced the boy to a life of prison, for he might become a gladiator when he grew up, and die anyways, not knowing his divine origin.
As the child came of age and started fighting in the great arenas of rome, it soon became apparent that he did not fear, but enjoy fighting for his life.
Fueled by his bloodshed, the demigods divine half started manifesting, shaped like large horns growing out of his skull; the horns that where the trademark of the god of war.
3. Tying it together
so i drew a lot of analogies in his background story.
i´ll just sum them up quickly here:
-horns resembling laurel wraeth, therefore combining both of his origins
-->noble and divine origins of the original minotaur
-arena and prison resembling labyrinth(prison)
-trapped in there waiting to be killed by someone, due to him being unkillable by simple mortals
-sentenced to a miserable life, due to his mothers betrail
so his theme will be Minotaur + Gladiator (also roman and divine)
4. Learing from others
next i analized other concepts of minotaurs and gladiators for comon themes and things that i liked in particular.
gladiators:
-light armor (i.e. lots of skin)
-asymetric armor
-heavily fortified "shielding arm"
minotaurs
-horns?
actualy most of the minotaurs were just men with bullheads, tales, horns, sometimes fur. Executed with different proportions, and different sculpting styles.
things i realy liked but cant realy incorporate are hair along his neck/back/lower arms and asymetric armor.
The hair is out of the picture, cause it would interfere with his over. the-shoulder cloth and the demonic features on his lower arms. the arms wouldnt be that huge of a problem, but if he has hair, he has to have it everywere.
The asymetric armor i can only partialy include, cause i need to consider the texture budged, wich might cut of a lot of detail if i introduce too many new asymetric features.
a theme that i have already includet and i will expand on, is the nosering.
he already has a couple of rings, and he will get a few more, also one for his nose.
also since his power growth through bloodshed, i will include some of that too, but most of that is going to happen on the texture side.
5. Improving the Concept
so here is what i made out of all that.
still there is nothing fixed here, so if you have suggestions just go for it.
the hair is totaly optional and is likely to not be happening, as i mentioned above.
around 10k polys, go for texturing!
Polycount is around 10k tris
i wish i could have incorporated the adjustments i made to the concept, but my personal deadline is tommorow and i totaly would have missed that