that last color concept looks awesome!! and like what you did with the demon horns great job

Great stuff man. Loving that pommel, but it looks like it would actually deal more damage then the blade.
I would also do something about the transition from metal to flesh, it's a bit too abrupt as it stands right now imho.

Thanks, Maph and Tomohawk.

I'm planning on giving the blades fewer, bigger spikes. Hopefully that will make it more intimidating. I'm not sure what I could do about the transition between the bone radiating from the skull and the metal blades, though I agree that it's a bit too abrupt.

I've changed the top of the axe/horns and added jagged, rusty spikes. I'm trying to work in some more "knuckle shapes".

Here's another WIP shot of the sculpt:


And an updated concept:

I've made some more progress on the high poly. Critiques are appreciated.

Critiques ?? NONE

Love it!

T.

I'm not a big fan of the horn shape really. They're too curvy, remember everything in DS is 'knuckly' so try to work some jagged edges into the horns

I agree with sukotto about making the horns more knuckly, I think you should elongate the nose cavity too, other than that, lookin good!

I might beef up the wraps just a bit, and have them come off the mesh some, so when they bake the normal map will come out a bit stronger. This design is looking killer though, can't wait to see that texture!

This might be nitpicking but I agree with Poffington that you should make less wrappings and make them thicker, It'll read better in the end.

I like your design and sculpt! one thing that sticks out to me as an interesting choice however is not to mirror the blade across (z), I would think you'd want all the resolution you can get for the skull side, having unique sides seems like it'd be pushing the 512. OR, im offbase and it'll look rad anyway =)

looking sweet
imo a little bit to much spikes on the blade

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. It was very helpful. I widened the handle wraps, made the horns more knuckley, elongated the nasal cavity and added some more dings and scratches.

@BluPanda - I considered 3 options for the skull:
1) Skull face on the front and back of the skull on the other side.
2) A squashed skull on each side.
3) One skull with a face on both the back and front.
I decided on method #1. It seems to add some depth and realism, as well as having the other side look different, but I'll have to sacrifice some texture res. We'll see how it turns out. I may regret it. #2 would have given me problems with the horns and spike.

@hannes d - The blade spikes were probably the part that gave me the most trouble. I'm past the point where I can majorly change them now. I'm not super pleased with them, but it's time to move on.

I guess it's time to do the low poly and bake, unless anyone can see anything else I could improve with the sculpt.

Great work dude, if you could add some strings to it It would be like the BEST FUCKING ELECTRIC GUITAR EVER ;)

I like this one very much great work!

nice sculpt! want to see it in colors.

Zelldwelller, that's really funny. I hadn't considered it as a guitar shape.

Thanks, jeebs and Kraken.

I was listening Manowar's "Die for Metal"
That kind of stimulated my imagination in that direction, hahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_UGFLT0VMY

It's taken a while but that crazy skull is growing on me. Nice use of the angles on the horns and the spikes on the axe look nice and mean.

Great sculpt, anxiously waiting to see how good it looks on the low and textured.

@Zelldweller: I was mostly listening to Joe Satriani while building this.

@Stinkhorse: I hated the skull for quite a while as I was working on it, then at some point it eventually started to look cool.

@XRevan23: Thanks

I created the low poly mesh tonight (1799 triangles). I've still got to figure out a couple of things with it. I'm a little intimidated by the thought of having to bake out the normals for all of these spikes and weird angles.

Here's the low poly with the normal map applied. More detail transferred to the 512x512 map than I expected. It's texturing and presentation time tomorrow. Lighting is temporary. The final presentation will be done in Marmoset.

Bake looks good. Now get some colour on that thing!

Bake looks good. If you are going to use marmo, make sure you check how the bake looks there before moving on. I had some areas of my normal map look fine in maya but terrible in marmoset.

Finally done!