the angels of death are ancient evil warlords, reanimated with the power of the gods. they feast on the souls of their victims to sustain their animation on the reality plane.
with the scythe, they tear open their opponents, and suck the life force out.

hehe cool! those wings will be fun [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

legs look a bit short, unless its intended? Id suggest making them 1.5 times longer

thanks, wondering if it would be better placed among the ancients.. argh rules.
looking at the legs, yeah they might be a bit on the short side. then again, i always end up making stubby feet, heheh.
fearing i might be DQ'd.

Err, isn't ancient type of character reserved for CG Society? Brief is really vague about it, but I'd say there's possibility that this doesn't fit our type of "shadow", since we're only allowed to have human or alien.
[edit] But you already know this ^_^ [/edit]

well, it is a human...skeleton. with wings. and its very very evil.
does that count?

just wondering whether i'm out of bounds, or anything.

Yeah, exactly. I wish there was at least some sort of description instead of history and solemn vows for each team.

i'd figure my character is something a very powerful necromancer would summon.

If you turn the skull into a helmet that looks like a skull you should be fine. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Awesome concept!

i think you may just need to adjust your backstory a little to justify why this 'ancient' evil is working for the Polycount side... if he's just an ancient evil being then yeah he may be more suited for the Ancients..

nice concept just needs a littel bit of tweaking to bring it under the polycount guidlines.

yeah, the way i see it, polycount = sci-fi/non-supernatural/evil.

if you turned the head into a badly reconstructed human head, with exposed life support doohickeys, it should be fine. complete with full-black cybernetic eyeballs or something, because regular eyeballs may look goofy. you get to keep the skull look, and it's much cooler than "just" a helmet.

also may i suggest archangel-type cybernetic wings in place of feathers? Or a rocket with ornamental wings? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Cool design. I dig the shapes. Make it sci-fi instead of fantasy though.

hmm.. dunno.. i might end up getting an overly cyborg design if i implement many of the ideas seen here.
a whole army of guys with badly reconstructed heads?
hmmh.
well, i could supposedly say there was a group of elite soldiers in the previous war getting badly beat up, and put under life-support under extreme pain, simply because losing such fine warriors would be a great waste.
hmm.. nah. definitely too cyborg.
according to wiki if you got as much as a pacemaker, you're defined as a cyborg.

might have to go with "just" a helmet.
rules.. meh.

did some concepting:

eyebalss on shoulders, to see in every direction,
and cables running out of the optical nerve attachments.
inhaling tubes with pure oxygen that can be breathed in for increased respiratory function and strength.
the metallic wings was just fiddling around, i don't think i'll use those. i'll use feathered wings, and explain it with that these warriors been genetically modified with wings, with alien mutation technology.
and their faces are burned off in a ritual initiation,
signifiyng their life-long and faceeless contribution to their masters.

i invoke arthur c. clarke's famous maxim to aid your quandry: technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic--and vice versa. the point is that you can pull off a very supernatural or otherwise 'fantasy'-type entry if you play it right--just look at rockstar's winning entry from last year, General Corum. or as i would call him, totally sweet tech wizard guy. he's got some majorly fantasy/magic-y and demon-y overtones, but rockstar sold it really well.
so don't fall for easy route of just take a skull and adding cables to it. this is well past the year 3000, man! they stopped wiring up skulls with wires long before 2400, as everybody knows [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
i like where you're going with this, but don't get bogged down with details, and certainly not with cliches. i think a helpful general rule while concepting is to reject your first inclination, since it's generally coming from what you're most familiar with. i mean that in reference to stuff like armor, skulls, wings, weapons...
take a look at your first concept, and tell me if there are any elements that don't look pretty much exactly like you'd expect them to. the skull is a skull. the wings are pretty standard angel wings. the scythe is also standard issue from the angel of death prop department. at least in the armor you're developing some interesting shapes, but you'll be lucky if the viewer gets that far when looking at your concept--they see all the familiar elements, and either consciously or unconsciously, they're going to dismiss what they're seeing as just another angel of death type character. and at this point, they'd be more or less right, despite your having some cool shapes in the armor.
so you've got work ahead of you, yes, but so does everyone else and it's still very early in the game. and unlike many polycounters at this stage, you've got a strong idea that you'd like work with, so things should go pretty smoothly for you.
i'm not saying you need to chase novelty for novelty's sake, but you need to subvert expectations on more, if not most, of your character's elements.
likely, you'll find that in solving some of your issues with making the entry fit better with the brief, you'll also make him a lot more interesting character. what if it's an alien from a race of very ethereal or skull-like creatures? maybe it's a creature that, knowing the psychological value inherent, has a face or mask that resembles a skull? the sky's the limit, man, and then some.
you've been around here a long time and i've seen your work, so i know that you'll be putting together a pretty awesome entry this time around--here's looking forward to the future updates. cheers.

i got tired of doing novel creatures, and decided to do a bit of frankensteining. a little bit of skeletor here, and angel there, some equipment of death.. et voila!
refined concept coming soon.

this is my new concept:



2 machineguns on the back, rocket boosters, no wing in this concept, but i'm still going to have wings. and they will have feathers too. i'm thinking this guy will be a divebomber. attacks like a WW2 airplane with guns blazing,
then for the final approach, land, and slice down anyone not dead with the scythe.

continuing on my skulldude, heres a small mudbox head with paintover:

ack the heck, heres a lowpoly normalmapped and textured skulldude head:


no lights or shadows. around 1000 polys. which means i got 5000 spare.

Nice!

damn, i was doing a sort of angel o death thing and now its gonna look rubbish compared to this, looks fantastic.

[ QUOTE ]
Err, isn't ancient type of character reserved for CG Society?

[/ QUOTE ]
Who's to say he wasn't reanimated recently, old soul new body, yadda yadda bing bong... =P
Looking good BTW! The detail on the armor is crying for a good mudboxing. If you hit a roadblock with the wings check out Roosters entry from last year, it had a killer set of wings.

yeah i used those as a reference to make my ones [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

more concepting, currently he's got biker armour from hell.
and for some reason, the angle makes him look very happy.
hmmm.. ack, well, more work needed, see where the details go from here, since its only a paintover.
lets see if i can make some more attractive stuff in mudbox though.

So all I have to do to kill him is make him raise his arms which will drive the spikes into his head? You have to remember function and form. Even if the shoulder pieces don't move, which would screw up mobility, his head can still get knocked into them.

Don't get me wrong that shoulder detailing is cool looking, I think you just need to take into account he will be doing battle and the pointy bits should spear the enemy. Maybe just make them longer, or change the angle? It almost looks like a the shoulder/chest piece makes an open mouth. You might be able to play off that more. But then again it could come off pretty lame...

Looking good so far I like all the small details you have planned it's going to look bad ass! Nice work!

a bit more refined concept. added some arcane writing along the jawbone edge, and brightened the centerpiece. hmm.
going to mess around somer more.

ack, i'm sick and tired of function over form. this guy's purely form over function.
i want to mudbox in a relieff of a burning village on the left side of the armour, hah.