PINBUNS: Characters

Showing posts with label Characters. Show all posts

Bloom - Retopology

normal map + uv preview

I finished the retopology and the UV's. I'm just currently moving shells into the 1-1 space rather than using separate UV sets as I'm not entirely confident with what programs support them. i decided i'll be using dDo for texturing as it's basically a built in bridge with Photoshop and works seamlessly. I'm baking normals and AO maps right now. Going to bake & work at 4k then scale down to 2k in final.

The model is overall 80k tris. (including holsters + guns) I worked to FFXV's polygon count of around 100k polys per character + 20k allocated to the hair alone.

Hair makes up about 19k on mine.

The two suit parts, armbands, glove, and bow part are one combined mesh, and combining the fancy raised part with the vertical striped underlayer was probably the most challenging thing to do and was laborious to say the least. As I worked on it I began to think that it's probably conclusive of not much thought on my part going into the design process. If this was a lower poly character I would not have been able to get this same raised effect in the silhouette. (One that is minimal at best regardless, and especially from far away) Learning experience ! Furthermore I was worried about baking a normal map, but I tried especially hard to respect smoothing groups. The edges of the model where the objects usually break up have hard edges and are separate UV islands. Thus I am having no problems with baking. (when using cages properly, that is)

example, low poly left baked normals on right (not final bake version)

Bloom - Guns + Holsters

Made the gun by going from high poly box modelling to the low poly by optimizing. It was a learning experience for sure! I wish I knew how to use 3ds Max too now.
Also finished the holsters, and consequently the rest of the high poly so I'm moving onto the retopology now. (Guns look dodgy in zbrush as I was using the lowpoly as light placeholders.)
As I made the lowpoly of the holsters in maya first the lowpoly is done for those too : D

Bloom - Concept Direction (big post)

These were some of the initial concepts I drew to get a sense of where I was going to go. I knew I wanted the aliens she is going to be fighting to be big; and so she needed a way to get up to them. My concern in terms of game mechanics were how she will do damage and any subsequent meaningful damage. I drew her topheavy, with mechanical arms that could make her fly with boosters. By giving her restricted movement in the form of a super duper stylish pencil skirt n' some heels it would make her a slow runner and in hopes that the player would realise it'd be faster to fly. However I got tired of this idea and I didn't like the inclusion of mech parts.

So I'm now looking closer at some inspiration. From the likes of Street Fighter, Bayonetta, the videos of 水曜日のカンパネラ, Katharine Hepburn, Dana Scully, and when BB played Bonnie in that one music video !

I want the head of the alien to be its biggest weakpoint, and also the hardest to reach. I tried to make some obstruction of getting to its very unfortunately always open mouth. Considering the game would be set in a New York style sky-scraper filled city, I'm trying to get the alien partially mirror the buildings. Vertical !

I got rid of the mech arms and spliced together some rollerblades with ice-skates so this way there isn't a reliance on anything rocket-based ! She'll have to skate up the alien cutting it in the process. For weapons, as this time around it is unavoidable, I decided to give her two high firing Glock 19's, although I also want to give her a tommy gun too. (thinking about those trigger buttons on a controller)

I pushed the vertical shape of the alien further, and thought it'd be interestingly hilarious if the alien had this accordion style body that unfolds (thus making the alien get higher) as it loses health. The concern being each time it does this it's not a clean process, has a little bit of a fit, and destroys the surrounding area its in.

This is where I'm at design wise right now ! (Though I still need to test different colours) She is still loosely top-heavy but it's not as obvious. She's got a harness set up to hold the guns on her shoulder-blades and lower back.

I'm hoping to be able to make this character in 3D as well as the alien. The alien in terms of rigging will be so hilarious because I'll have to make it un-posed. Gotta unfold the accordion !

As I want to start with a high poly in Zbrush i thought i'd better take advantage of all the embellished detail work I can do as aside from the guns and harness clips most of this project will be organic.

I'd love for any feedback of any sort please ! : ^)

soma - mada rig updates

A large update in small form !

Alrighty ! Rig is done basically. I need to still add eyelid bones and get the controls for them, but aside from that everything is done and working well. It took me forever because I was determined to get all the LRA's set up properly ! I am in the process of skinning Mada right now. I also went back and gave her teeth and a tongue finally ! Alongside this I decided to add fake speculars onto her face and hair to aide a focal point. I'm gunna add corrective blend-shapes for face expressions & hair to save on a surplus of bones. The spine has a twist rig in it and both the knees and the elbows have pole vectors in them to stop flipping, as well as being double jointed.

soma - Mada's finished textures

finished the textures ! baked some AO's in Topogun as xnormal didn't want to comply this time around. AO's were put on a multiply layer to give a little extra sparkle n' depth to make the neutral lighting pop better. (as i painted minimal specular highlights) I'd say it's about 80% hand painted and a real good practice. the textures are 2k but they could be resized to 1k with no problem. In this case it's not a big deal for them to stay 2k.

soma - Mada's Texturing - Explanation

I wanted to give a little explanation into how I am going about texturing Mada with help of some old but gold handy dandy software named 3D-Coat. I used to use this a few years ago and whilst it can stand alone as its own program I like to use it for its 3D space texturing. It has a slightly wonky bridge with Photoshop but its ability to make seamless textures is more than convenient.

All of Mada's clothing has a seam right down the centre at the back. But if I paint the details and major overlapping elements in 3D-coat it deals with them as if the seam isn't even there. So I can go from 3D-coat as a basis to lay down the basics and then go into Photoshop for details! My only note is that because 3D-Coat's bridge with PS is a little wonky, I am working quite destructively and mass-merging my layers every so often to keep things light.

: b)

the current texture map !

soma - style decisions

I was incredibly unhappy with the style I was giving the characters and after a lot of tries I finally got somewhere between smooth and textured that I believe I can also bring over to the whole world !

Adapting Les Parapluies de Cherbourg - Small Additions

Made the first shot less bare (above) and added some proxy polypaints for vis purposes to Genevieve's model. Still need to step up subdivisions of the body/head, hair and eyebrows but I won't do that right now.

Adapting Les Parapluies de Cherbourg - Further Model Progress

Worked on the dress with its ribbons, as well as the ribbon in her hair. There's something still off about the face I wanna fix when I figure out just what that is that's causing it..
I'm not too sure how I'll make sure the hair doesn't clip through the dress when she lifts her head at the moment.

Adapting Les Parapluies de Cherbourg - Likeness

Firstly, I added some smaller details around the handlebars from the previous image as they looked plain, and we're going for that blooming feeling! I need to add some bells of some sort to greater reflect the music. (that whole scene is so bare currently)

Crucially I'm trying to strike a balance between style and getting a likeness of Catherine Deneuve's face. - It's very difficult! I had spent the last few days trying to get an almost photo-realistic likeness with another 3d model. (but to save face here, i'm not going to show you that monstrosity) I however couldn't get it right nor charming enough. The seemingly bald model above was my 1.5 creation starting from scratch but it was bland and not stylistically interesting enough and so I worked on it some more to get the closest above (with hair). I'm nowhere near happy with it yet but I think it may be a step in the right direction.. AND YES SHE'S GUNNA HAVE CLOTHES ONE STEP AT A TIME

Across-Course Collab!

photographed & created by Kanna Kawakita

The past weeks I worked inbetween my current project to collaborate with Kanna Kawakita from Fashion Media and Promotion here at UCA Rochester to create a portrait and "character-fy" her designs that she both made and photographed (seen above!) - which subsequently turned into two illustrations to be used for the front and back cover of her Zine! It was really fun to interpret her designs into characters and push them stylistically, and the idea of turning into a monster but remaining cute was inspiring to work with. On the left is the more transformed version of the original girl on the right! They were printed in A5 size for the Zine. I also just wanted to say a quick thanks to the mysterious person who put my name forward to Kanna. - Thanks :^D

ありがとうございました！

Infographic: Characters

Lets keep these egg puns to a eggistentially low amount everyone

Now speaking of existential crisis', I drew these rough egg characters but currently all are too complicated for an infographic. Actually I would prefer the infographic not to be entirely obvious in its character elements and focus on animation with text to get some humour goin' but we'll see..

hey and a little irrelevant thing to this project but Mr. Selfridge has started again; in the 20's!!

FABULOUS ASSASSINATION - Balcony

FABULOUS ASSASSINATION - Street Fight + Beatmaps

Beatmaps. Beetmaps.

FABULOUS ASSASSINATION - Final Fight Scene

A final scene of the fight between the king and the two strawberries. After becoming so fraught with anger and denial from the truth of being a fruit and not a vegetable, The King becomes inflated to unleash his final form, destroying his glass palace in the process. (meant to represent his ego) In this form he swings gigantic spiked tomato vines releasing baby-tomato warriors from said vines. To save the town of Minestrone from becoming further damaged Parfait & Marquise must run up the vines defeating any baby-tomatoes as they go; ultimately aiming for the "V" shaped glass pendant on The King, stopping his tyranny and ending his denial-filled reign.