Pro Bender (ala Legend of Korra)
polycounter lvl 14
***LATEST PROGRESS***
Colors!
Hey everyone! I've been lurking here for a long time, thoroughly enjoying all the amazing art I've seen. This is my first thread I've ever made myself, so hopefully it'll be up to par.
Anyway, I've been working on a little side project lately and I thought I'd start posting my progress here. My current project at work has me mostly doing UI, but I've always enjoyed making characters so I wanted to give myself something to play around with in my spare time. I've been totally diggin' Legend of Korra, and I thought it would be fun to make a team of pro benders.
For reference (for anyone unfamiliar with LoK):
I just really like the uniforms and thought they have a nice mixture of hard surface and organic surfaces. Anyway, here's where I started:
I decided to start with the earth bender. I wanted to make him a pretty bulky dude - based on realistic proportions, but with some stylization here and there - but I didn't want to go over the top with his muscles. I just want him to look sturdy. That being the case, he definitely has a fair amount of muscle mass, but I didn't want to make the muscles super sharp in their definition, nor make them overly inflated.
As a side note, normally, if I was doing this for a project at work and was on time constraints, I would streamline the process and not make any geometry that you really wouldn't see as part of the final mesh. Since this is just for fun, exploration and learning, however, I decided to start from the ground up and build the base body underneath the clothing.
I've also been trying out some new techniques I've never used before, such as blocking out the form piece-by-piece using dynamesh. It's a lot of fun so far, though there are parts about it I wish were easier to manage.
Here I've refined the body, separated out the head, and have started to block out some of the clothing and equipment. You can also see a bit of the process I was talking about before with adding parts on using dynamesh. The legs and hands, once more detail has been added, will be combined with the rest of the body.
Obviously I still have a lot more to do, so I'll continue to post here when I have more stuff to show. Feedback/comments/crits are more than welcome, so feel free to chime in if you'd like!
Thanks, and hope you guys enjoy!
P.S. - Sorry this was so wordy! I promise the rest of the posts won't be so verbose.
Colors!
Hey everyone! I've been lurking here for a long time, thoroughly enjoying all the amazing art I've seen. This is my first thread I've ever made myself, so hopefully it'll be up to par.
Anyway, I've been working on a little side project lately and I thought I'd start posting my progress here. My current project at work has me mostly doing UI, but I've always enjoyed making characters so I wanted to give myself something to play around with in my spare time. I've been totally diggin' Legend of Korra, and I thought it would be fun to make a team of pro benders.
For reference (for anyone unfamiliar with LoK):
I just really like the uniforms and thought they have a nice mixture of hard surface and organic surfaces. Anyway, here's where I started:
I decided to start with the earth bender. I wanted to make him a pretty bulky dude - based on realistic proportions, but with some stylization here and there - but I didn't want to go over the top with his muscles. I just want him to look sturdy. That being the case, he definitely has a fair amount of muscle mass, but I didn't want to make the muscles super sharp in their definition, nor make them overly inflated.
As a side note, normally, if I was doing this for a project at work and was on time constraints, I would streamline the process and not make any geometry that you really wouldn't see as part of the final mesh. Since this is just for fun, exploration and learning, however, I decided to start from the ground up and build the base body underneath the clothing.
I've also been trying out some new techniques I've never used before, such as blocking out the form piece-by-piece using dynamesh. It's a lot of fun so far, though there are parts about it I wish were easier to manage.
Here I've refined the body, separated out the head, and have started to block out some of the clothing and equipment. You can also see a bit of the process I was talking about before with adding parts on using dynamesh. The legs and hands, once more detail has been added, will be combined with the rest of the body.
Obviously I still have a lot more to do, so I'll continue to post here when I have more stuff to show. Feedback/comments/crits are more than welcome, so feel free to chime in if you'd like!
Thanks, and hope you guys enjoy!
P.S. - Sorry this was so wordy! I promise the rest of the posts won't be so verbose.
Replies
Added some more details to the helmet, and I'm beginning to work on the gloves. I also finished the legs and added them to the torso (granted, when he's all clothed and everything you won't see the legs, so I didn't go too crazy with the detail).
In the next update I'll start blocking out the outer uniform clothing.
Oh, and of course, critiques welcome!
After a few more tweaks and details, I'll be moving on to blocking in the shirt/tunic thing.
Comments/crits welcome!
I've only just blocked in the shirt. Still has a lot of work to be done on it - there are no folds, and has no gravity/weight to it at the moment. Also added leg pads and will be adding similar pads to the shoulders and forearms.
Comments/critique welcome!
photobending powers go!
@Shmaba - That does look better with the waist hoisted up. I was trying to lower the crotch line of the pants, since a lot of martial arts pants are made like that to allow for more mobility, but it definitely came off looking like hips were super low, too. I'll try moving the crotch up for the next update.
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Along with the obvious addition of the outer tunic-like thing, I also raised the crotch a fair amount and added some wrinkles to the undershirt. I still consider this the blockout stage, so more wrinkles and other details will surely come later.
Also, a shot of the latest iteration, sans tunic:
As always, critiques very welcome!
My progress so far...
Obviously I've changed a lot. There were lots of things bothering me about the old version, and I also decided I wanted to take a much more stylized approach. I like stylized stuff, and want to get better at it, so why not practice?
At any rate, you can see I still have plenty of work to do. I figured this would be a great time to do a gut-check and make some course corrections. I feel like it's generally on the right path, but I really need some other eyes taking an objective look at it and letting me know what I can do to make this better.
Any thoughts? Any and all feedback would be super helpful! Thanks!
One thing though, aside from the shoes of the show looking like hooves to me, the ankles on your character look very much like that of a hoofed animal. The foot area in general looks a bit think.
So what is your goal for this character? Do you want it to fit in the world of Avatar or just make a nice stylized character dressed like a pro bender?
@jddg5wa: I'd say I didn't have a problem with how old the character looked before, but coming back to it I noticed what everyone else had and decided to make him look younger. I agree that I think it helped a lot. I'll add some more thickness to his ankle area. Is it just the thickness that makes them look hoof-like? Or is there something else I should change, too?
@Popol: I guess I should've been more clear with the title of the thread. When I said "ala Legend of Korra", I simply meant the character would be a pro bender - which is a type of character from the show, though not necessarily in the style of the animation. That was my mistake with the naming. Sorry! My goals for this character are to make him stylized, interesting to look at, animation friendly, and to have him dressed (and eventually act, in the animation) like a pro bender.
Haven't made the ankles thicker yet, though. Still need to do that.
Any feedback on this? As I'm looking at it now, it seems like his arms are too long, so I'll change that for the next update. If anyone else sees problem areas, please shout them out.
Thanks!
Still to do:
As usual, any and all critique is extremely welcome and encouraged. Feedback has been really helpful so far, and I'm sure more feedback would continue to improve the model. So let me know if you see anything I should fix!
Thanks!
Checked a couple things off the to-do list:
I would like to see the helmet and helmet padding a lot tighter on the face. Right now it looks stiff and like he picked it up from a big guy.
The only other suggestion on the head portion is in regards to the nose. I would mess around with the height of the tip of the nose. Personally, I think it should be lower.
Also the pants seem a little blobby. Maybe some sharper creases in the fabric there?
Tried to make the pants less blobby, thickened up the feet, and fit the helmet more snugly to his head. Also added more detail to the arm pads, added shin pads, and tweaked the proportions a bit.
Still need to add details to the shin straps, sculpt folds in the right forearm, and add gloves. Oh, and hair, of course.
Thoughts??
As usual, thanks to anyone checking this out and/or leaving feedback. Much appreciated!!
Thanks!! Glad you like it.
Thanks! And yeah dude, you should totally make a Korra model. I bet it would be good practice, and a lot of fun to work on.
...except the hair. Awesome people of Polycount, I need your help. I've done some paintovers of hair ideas:
Which one do you guys like? "None of the above" is also an option. If that's the case, I'd love suggestions, too. I know a lot of the styles in Legend of Korra are influenced by the early 1900's, and I'm cool with that, but I'm open to other ideas as well if it means it would look better.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think. Thanks!!
I personally like 1, 4 and 5 since they give him some sort of an arrogant and snobby appearance.
Thanks for the feedback!
Korra Blocking Test
This is the animation my friend has been working on that I'm making this model for. He's currently in the blocking stage and fixing a few things before he moves further.
Awesome, thanks for the feedback!
I'll continue to post progress on this as I work on it. Thanks again, everyone!
Moving on to unwrapping next so I can then bake all my maps from the high rez model.
Cool, thanks for the feedback. Where specifically in the fingers do you think the polys should be cut?
It might be kinda old though and I'm no pro rigger/animator.
Thank you!! Really glad you like it.
And yeah, the original intent was to make a whole bending team. I've been doing this in my spare time, though, so I guess it all depends on if I still have the time/motivation. Haha. We'll see!
Getting into the home stretch. Still have a couple things to fix about the AO bake, but I can handle that at the same time I'm working on the diffuse texture. Onward and upward!
This render has diffuse (and AO) and normal maps, and is just using default lighting. At this point I'm trying to figure out which direction I want to lean towards with the texture - realistic or stylized - and how far in that direction I want to go.
I think I'll probably start on the spec map before I make any hard decisions.
What do you guys think about this so far? Is there stuff I should change?