Day 7- Cold Junk

Got a few hours into the armor for the goblin. Figured I would post the progress since it'll be a while before I can work on him again what with finals and break. So since my last post I managed to block out the leg guards and I started on the chest armor.

The shin guards are pretty simple plate metal. I like to come up with interesting designs for the knee areas in my armor because I feel like it's a good midway point between simple areas (the upper and lower legs) that frame it nicely. I didn't want to do something crazy and out there like skulls or demon face motifs because I don't think these goblins would be really into that kind of thing. So I went with something more natural, a sea shell. It has a nice flaring effect to make the armor look bulkier and it was a good way to controll eye movement. I'll probably have to push it out some more since I have to have the leather straps n stuff to hold it onto the character.

Now that the metal armor was blocked in, it was time to move onto the leather materials. I wanted to include multiple materials other than flesh and metal because one, you would always have some sort of flexible material to cover animated spots.Otherwise, imagine if you were in a full body plate armor set and dropped your keys on the ground, there's no reaching over for those. Especially if it was really cold out, just imagine A Christmas Story but in a much worse area...

Also, when I was imagining this character, I didn't want to make him too feral like some fantasy artists like to do with goblins. In this goblin's world, they are more than freaky looking green monkeys. They are capable of working plated armor so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say they would know leather work as well, though it would be much less refined. Their society doesn't care much about intricate craftsmanship, make the damn thing and lets go eat something's face off. So with that in mind I tried to keep the patterning to a minimum but still allow the creature to move. I still might have given it too much detail but I think it's pretty good for now.

Next I'm going to give him some sort of pants or kilt or something. I haven't quite figured out how to get it to work so some research will be done.

day... you forgot what day you're on haven't you?

So it's been a while since I've actually posted progress for the goblin. Been really busy with school and this game project I've been working on for a while now. My schedule finally cleared up though so I managed to get a few armor pieces roughed in. I'm sticking pretty close to my original reference with this one so the progress has been pretty quick. I think I've dumped maybe two hours into what I have so far which isn't too bad though I would like to get much faster at this process.

So I really liked the back part of my original reference image because it really gives him an extra slouched over feel and I wanted to carry that over to my model. Right now it still sort of looks like a rolly-poly bug (do those have an actual name?) is humping his giant back but I think if I pull those edges out more it will make it seem more like they are plated sheets instead of an erotic bug. I still need to make the sharp attachments on the back, make his shin guards, and possibly give him a gauntlet on one of his hands to give em some sort of asymmetry (cuz that's never been done in the history of art).

Once those are in place I'm done blocking out the hard surface stuff and I'm moving onto straps and leather-work which I have next to no experience with so this should be fun! I might also get his weapons modeled/sculpted out, so stay tuned :)

Day 5- "leg poop"

So I got around to working on the legs, only to realize I know frigging nothing about leg anatomy! This didn't really stop me from working on it of course since it's not like I know the anatomy of anything else really. Except for the sartorius, artists love sartorius.....es..... sartorii? Anyway, after searching through other sculpts and images that I've collected over the years, it's apparent to me that no one really knows their leg anatomy either. I found tons and tons of different sculpts handling the muscle forms differently. Comic book artists tend to show every single friggin muscle as if batman didn't have flesh (though damn wouldn't that be a geat super hero?). The more traditionalists sculpt it really toned down and boy is it hard to make out forms that way through crappy pictures.

When I sat down and looked at the rest of my model I decided to go for more of a comic style exaggerated muscle structure for two reasons. One, so I can at least learn the muscle forms. I know nothing about the muscles of the leg because I've never practiced them and I really need to master their crazy twisted lines. Two, the rest of my character has pretty defined forms and it would be odd if he had ultra realistic legs. Plus I could always tone down muscles easier than adding to them.

I found some interesting techniques from my favorite sculptor, Ryan Kingslien, about some of the forms of the legs, like how the femur has a bend to it, giving legs an outward arching motion. I had a lot of troubles getting the muscles of the quads the way that I like and I still didn't quite hit it but I think I'm getting closer.

I think that's what I'm really working to do with this sculpt, I know that I'm not going to get a perfect anatomy sculpt this time around, but compare this to my last "best anatomy sculpt yet" image and you can really see a difference.

The lower leg was a little bit easier. I'm still just doing blocking, not really making the actual muscles but more their general form that will help me really get them looking awesome. The lower legs is mostly long verticle lines that hook everything up (to you crazy anatomy freaks out there, I'm generalizing here sheesh). The toes I pretty much handled the same as the fingers though I am proud to say that I didn't have to dynamesh this! though for future reference I should still sepperate the toes at the zsphere level because it did take a bit longer than I would have liked to get those piggies to the correct shape.

As far as form and design goes, I wanted to sort of mimic hobbit feet in how clumpy and gross they look. The armor isn't going to cover his feet so I'll be detailing that much more than say that lower back which still looks wrong.

Next up I'm going to do some fixing up of some troubling spots, come up with an armor design, and get some of it modeled in there, so stay tuned :)

Day 4- "that's one buff old man"

So I have another post of my progress. Reworked some more parts of the chest to make it less wonky (though there's still a few things with the hips that I don't care for but that will get fixed). I moved onto the arms and hands and got those more or less blocked. I'm still fighting with how stylized I want to make this character, but I think that will come out in the texturing process.

I started out like everything else I sculpt, I used the move tool to push and pull the basic forms I wanted. I have very little experience with arms (arm muscles especially) so this part took much longer than it should have and it still isn't totally accurate but it's better than anything else I've tried. I think for future note I should try pulling the arms in at the shoulder more. I've been looking a lot at other sculpts and I've noticed that my sculpt has really broad shoulders and I think that has something to do with the Deltoids protruding from the chest. I sort of did that on purpose just because of baking the mesh but I'm wondering if I did it too much.

Then I had to shape the hand and get the digits in which was a pain in the ass. There wasn't enough geometry in the nubs that were there previously so I had to get dynamesh to work without destroying my model so of course the resolution is rediculous, hopefully the feet wont be as much trouble but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Once I was happy enough with my block-in I went on to doing more anatomy suggestion lines. The upper arm isn't usually too bad, I found some interesting styles for doing the Triceps and I'm pretty happy with the results. Weather or not those are anatomically accurate I'm not 100 on but like I always say, if you don't know if it works, make it look cool. The lower arm was the real difficult part, a lot of the muscles wrap around the arm because their primary use is to move the wrist, so finding reference pics can be difficult because the angle and position of the hands can really change the form of the muscles more than the other body parts. I'm still not totally happy with these muscles so I'll probably search for a critique from someone who knows their anatomy really well and can give me pointers. What I do really like about this is the use of bones. I tend to forget that bones do show through in bodies but some of my friends have been yelling at me to include them so I found that the elbows were a perfect spot and I think they came through really nice, so thanks guys :).

Next came the hand details, something which I also struggle with because it's less about muscles and more about bones and fat pads. I always tend to over-suggest forms so they just end up looking like crap. I'm also not sure if the characters hands should be more bulky or more skinny, I think I went with more skinny and I think because he is going to hold a sword or axe I should go more blocky. Most of the tools I used for this was the clay brush, the dam. standard in zsub and zadd, and the move tool and I really like the results. I'm not doing all the really fine detail yet because I still have those feet and I'll probably have to dynamesh them because I want the feet to be really exaggerated and cool looking because it's a goblin and I feel like I'll lose those really nice hand details anyway.

Next I'm going to fix those terrible pelvic muscles and then move on to the legs, so stay tuned :)

Goblin character days 1-3

So for my first post on this blog, I figure I should show my latest project because let's face it, everything I've done before now is total crap. For this model I decided to create a goblin with crazy fantasy armor. My main inspiration comes from this piece

by the wonderful Wes Talbot

I don't necessarily want to copy his style but more his form and combine it with my own style. To start, I went to my go-to program, Zbrush. Using just a dynameshed sphere I roughed out the shapes of the head.

I like starting with just the head because a face will really define my character. I have a big image containing various references and inspirations but for the most part I don't really have a concept image painted out, so getting to know my character is really important because it well effect how I approach the rest of the designs. Once I had the head sculpted out, I went ahead and did some detailing. This part is sort of a double edged sword, because I really like having the ultra detail to get a really good feel for what the model will look like so I can prepare the rest for the same level of detail, but it's detached from the body which will create some nastiness when I go to bake the details for the game rez model. 

If I left the detail out I could move on to the body and dynamesh it together without having to worry about the loss of detail, but that makes me a little blind to how I should handle the body and I won't know if I have the head the way I want until way far into the development process. I think the best course of action is to combine the body and create a really nice re-topologized mesh and basically blend shape it to this high poly model. That way I can have a really nice low poly model with super clean topology for another project in the future. I've never actually done this before but I know a few that have so I'm pretty confident in that technique.

So here is the same head with all the wrinkles and stuff. I still have a few more things to add such as pores and warts and things like that, but that will wait til the very end when I know what part of the mody is going to show after I add the armor.

Next step was to get the body sorted out. I decided this character should have some sort of hunch or lump or giant back. His face came out looking really old and warped and I wanted to continue that through the rest of the design.

Zbrush has an amazing tool called Zspheres which lets me block out basic forms and armatures in a matter of minutes. The only real problem is that Zspheres are always sphere shaped so it's hard to get a good volume. Usually I have to stretch things like the hips and shoulders out a bit which makes it look odd. 

Once that is done, I convert the spheres into a mesh and start shaping out the form. I decide to go crazy with his back and make it less of a hump and more of an overdeveloped Trapezius (back/shoulder area) muscle similar to the hunchback from 300.

(oh ephialtes, how I love your creepy-ass form)

I then started sculpting in the muscles and more detailed forms. It might seem strange to work on details that won't show since they will be covered by armor but I like having the muscles for 2 reasons. For one thing, clothing doesn't just fuse to our flesh, it is defined by our bodies. It's almost impossible for me to design armor to fit this character if I have no idea what his body underneath it looks like. Second reason is because I may use this model again in the future. I big thing for 3d artists to do is to kit-bash projects together. So many characters and models are just reused assets for other work. It saves time and money for studios and is really unnoticeable if the artist is good.

This brings me to my current progress. Right now I'm working on the chest area and making sure it looks exactly what I want it to look like. I really want to not make him too muscular because that's overly done and doesn't actually show artistic skill for a character artist (imo). However I do want to show that he's pretty bad ass and will friggin kill you if you cross his path.

His muscles are still a little bit too defined and brawny, I wanna give him a little bit more fat and tone down his pecs and delts and just overall soften the lines of his muscles. you can't really see his posture but he is leaning over a bit so I want to make sure his abs are always folded over each other. Once I have this all set I'll probably move onto the arms next, so stay tuned :)