PETROL/BLOOD - Blitz Widow
polycounter lvl 11
Bleagh... I'm gonna hate myself for this in the morning.
Reserving first post for latest progress and stuff and things. Y'know, organization.
EDIT 2:
3D has started.
EDIT 1:
Concepts! We've got concepts!
Reserving first post for latest progress and stuff and things. Y'know, organization.
EDIT 2:
3D has started.
EDIT 1:
Concepts! We've got concepts!
Replies
The idea is simple. A woman riding on a big cybernetic spider.
The Spider:
I want it to be modeled after the infamous Black Widow. Believe you me, compiling reference for Black Widows has been an exercise in and of itself. I freakin' hate spiders, mang. I imagine that the spider's cybernetics allow it to move around kind of like the 3D-maneuver gear from Attack on Titan. So, it should have two-to-four apparatus that fire cabled harpoons to allow it to move around quickly - kinda like Spiderman... Or the characters from Attack on Titan. As for how it's piloted, I'm thinking that somewhere on its cephalothorax a pilot seat could be placed or something. I think a dual stick setup might be ideal.
The Pilot:
Uhm... It's a woman. That's pretty much all I know I want for the character. Just throwing things at the wall and seeing if they stick.
So, uh, yeah. This is just a really rough start... Lookin' forward to screwing with some PBR, though.
Haha, well good work on looking past your fears and doing it anyway!
good start!
'Got around to fleshing out my thumbs a bit more.
Today's progress...
EDIT: After thinking about it further, She's back to being known as the "Blitz Widow."
Somehow, she wound up becoming a cyborg of some sort... I took a few pieces that I liked from the other riders. I'm still debating on a few points, though.
1. I'm wondering if I should give her Rider C's afro
2. I'm wondering if I should increase the amount of stylization
3. The forearm blades... Yay or nay?
Hm... That spider better turn out awesome.
All right. We've now got a concept for the cyborg spider. Right away, it's become apparent that I'm gonna have to do more research on harpoons and grappling hooks.
More-or-less, it's a giant spider with 3D-Maneuver Gear and dual machine guns. I think I may also need to find a sleeker gun setup.
So, I finally thought of a fictional justification for this duo (well, trio, if you think about it). (This is a DashXero contest topic, so you KNEW this was coming) And, it goes like this:
Sometime in the future, there is a steel shortage. Scientists decide to genetically manipulate spiders to giant proportions because SCIENCE (and because spiders' webs have a tensile strength greater than steel). These giant spiders' webs were broken down and mixed with certain polymers to create a plastic with steel-like qualities (called, interestingly enough, "Plastick"). However, this genetic manipulation came with side-effects for the spiders. The increased size of these spiders meant that their brain mass was exponentially larger - and since only a very small part of that brain mass is necessary for a spider's day-to-day activity, they had an excess of brain matter - and nearly complete use of it. This resulted in most of the spiders possessing precognitive abilities, and in a few terrible and tragic cases, telepathy and mind control. It was found that networking a live human brain with a spider's brain kept them efficient and compliant and broken of will. However, the spiders retained their superior mental abilities. And, doing so was essentially the same as assigning a taskmaster to a slave. After a while, someone got the genius idea to add additional cybernetics to these giant spiders for weaponization.
The woman was in some incident where she lost most of an arm and both of her legs - as well as her husband. Her husband's brain was able to be resuscitated and (as was the law at the time) was networked to a giant spider. After she recovered from the incident, she sued for custody of her husband's brain and won. Due to the danger posed by an unrestrained super spider, it was also awarded to her. The particular spider was a black widow cybernetically optimized for bridge work. She had it fitted with weapons and joined the gladiatorial circuit to ensure a fitting death for them all - her, her husband, and the spider that was foisted onto her. The problem? Well, before the incident, she and her husband were mercenaries. What should have been certain death became a somewhat lucrative career.
Years later, she's become known as "The Blitz Widow" - one of the most beloved gladiators in the circuit... And she still hasn't found a fitting death.
Today's, er, yesterday's? progress:
The main base of the spider is almost finished. Just need to add eyes and spinnerets. I learned a bit more about spider anatomy. For example, the location of spider vajayjays. Yeah. TMI, I know. While that was relevant to the sculpting of this particular spider, the main thing I had to learn about was spider leg anatomy.
I'm beginning to like ZSpheres for some odd reason. If you ever have to make a spider with a similar structure in ZBrush, and want to save yourself a little time, you can get the zsphere base I made for this particular sculpt here. You'll need to modify it, but it should be a somewhat decent place to start. Provided you ever want to make a spider...
So, her tragically deceased husband's brain is now in a giant female spider keeping her alive through telepathic // mindcontrolled excellence in tournaments. That is so weird and interesting and I'm tempted to say cool, but is it really? Creepy awesome.
Progress on the spider:
It's been slow going. Mostly because I'm trying to get the hang of using panel loops and making mechanical objects in Zbrush. What I've managed to do so far is block in the major shape portions of the spider's cybernetics. I absolutely ABHOR the seat I've made. So, my next step is to concept a better saddle for the rider and her husband's brain as well as plan out the little cybernetic details for the spider.
The spider is actually the part that worries me the most about this project for a number of reasons. First, I mostly sculpt human figures, so the rider doesn't worry me as much (though there are still things about the rider that worry me...). Another thing is that there aren't many hard surfaces in my portfolio, and this cyber spider is going to have quite a few hard surface objects on her. So, yeah. I'll be learning a lot of new things on this project.
This is coming together really nicely.