Art: Main character / Drop Hunter ('Scilly') #1382
Comments
|
Looks great! I think the ear wearable is a good type of direction even if we don't end up using it. The discussion centered around decking out the character with some interesting spoils (hopefully more semiotic IMO two parts with excellent vibes already are 1) the action collar/mask and 2) "skirt over slacks" trope. That doesn't mean they should be kept exactly as is, I just think they are already doing a lot to create the impression of a protagonist.
Also, since there seems to be ash ketchum energy in this chara, my interprestation is she would rarely be in a bored pose, or just hanging out. Ash is always doing something and it's hard to imagine him chilling and daydreaming. One of the first things I do with charas is give them the expression they would be likely to have, and it's different for each one. That is very subjective at this point but it helps me visualize.
|
|
Deku from Hero Aka.
|
|
|
|
Another comment from testing a sample VRM; this one should not be busty or have much rounding on the torso, to maintain a level of androgyny and sense of speed in the silhouette. It seems important to making the crazier animations believable. |
|
Initial linework and design pass is done, ran out of time today (it's after midnight here) but will work on callouts, some emotions, and materials/colors, and presentation/cleanup pass tomorrow.
There's enough here to tell the the direction it's going, and enough hopefully for Vian to start messing with it. If there's anything large that needs to be changed, let me know - it's easier to change now before colors and lighting is masked in. |
|
This captures the most important parts of the vibe, and it has the right shapes. FaceIMO we should not change the face from the originals, most of which comes down to expression and pose. This concept feels "cool and exclusive" rather than "cool and inclusive", from the nature of the pose. You would be hard pressed to find Ash Ketchum in such a pose in any official media; he would not be standing around looking cool, he doesn't have time for that. He would be always be having fun or facing some sort of challenge. Ash looking cool (fanart, not correct vibe)
Instead of that, you always see him doing something. Ash in natural habitat (could be official)
The clothes are a good basis and the right style is there, but IMO it's not quite decked out enough yet. If this is a drop hunter they are likely to have some discord in the things they wear. For example the bottom half works well here, in asymmetry and some mismatch.
Finally I think having a pose with sword being used would help.
|
|
Sounds good, I'm working on these changes now and will update here once I have them! |
|
Made some adjustments; this is a bit more sketched-in than the other sheets; I'm needing to speed up the workflow a bit more. No real colors, these are just value indications for the materials. I can do a full color/material pass if needed as it comes up.
The bulk of the design is unchanged, it's mostly character personality and pose tweaks. Added some asymmetry, as well as taking the 'epic' knob up a bit. Should be enough to model on here and with the previous sheet, hit me up if specific callouts are needed. I'll compile everything once I have a sec to do a presentation pass and clean these up a bit more. |
|
It's leveling up! Summarizing discussion (it's up to you @Vianvolaeus if you want to start on this yet): Model
Art
|
|
Base model can be kept, that's a-ok 👍
The rigging on the robot arm whilst keeping it symmetrical for animations, etc, is quite time consuming, just a headsup if you do want me to redo that entirely, but I might be able to add a new upper / lower arm shape like we're seeing in this design, and keep the existing hand. I'd go back and re-UV it if that's the case.
Deceptively difficult change 😄 I'll see what I can do with it, I get where you're coming from and agree. Should imply speed, action, etc.
Agreed.
This character uses potions, do we want to directly reference that with some kind of specialised potion holster?
I can either flair up the concept design or I can go really all out with it and do something like the below artwork: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/e0YXqb #1335 is 99% finished, just getting transparency to display correct, so I'll start on this one tomorrow. |
|
Yup sorry, I meant the model hair color is perfect already imo (gray/white, it's very unique), just the art would need to align with the model since it is blue there. |
Let's keep the robot arm and move it onto new body then, I don't see any issues with the design; what we have is actually one step further than the art, since it is a fully robot arm.
Not anything referencing specific items like potions, however a bag on the side with some semiotics seems appropriate as a decoration.
One of each shoe type? Flaired running shoe and robotic foot. Left arm is robotic so the right leg could be robotic. The other option is just two running shoes if it's easier. Two robot legs would be overkill on the cyborgness IMO. |
|
Decoration/patch ideas.
|
|
Shoes with very good texture: Also cool shoes: |
|
Couple of hairstyles based off of the original, with the rear changed.
|
|
Pushed the asymmetry, introduced a few options for robotic leg and a few different shoes that break silhouette more/look more interesting. Also added patches and some extra geo to the alts, hopefully there should be all the needed ingredients here.
|
|
I'll be able to expand on this with more precision etc tomorrow, now the above is present. I like the third variation's leg, it looks like it could be the same manufacturer or designer as the arm we currently have. Textures are incredibly rough, just a fast texture paint in Blender. I've taken care to keep the shapes of the jacket etc quite ambigious on gender.
|
|
Good stuff! ClothesSlightly worried about panty shots now that I see it. Can we add some sort of shorts as well (which would be very fitting for the chara), and perhaps lengthen the skirt? This is from Infinity Train:
HairThe hair is a bit too large at the back, the swoop back should be the kind that would happen naturally if you're going fast all the time, rather than the result of a lot of styling. Basically I think this should be a gradient rather than a hard line.
An attempt to cut down on the hair volume -- IMO we weren't far off initially.
LegsFinally, the legs design looks good -- just adding shoes would be enough, without any robotics. However I think the legs should be thinned out some percentage for this action heavy chara; it makes poses read better. Adventure Time uses this technique to an extreme effect. Although I don't think we should go to any inhuman extremes, we can probably channel that vibe. |
|
This hair is getting in the right direction but it is too short/styled. The lore reason is Scillia is not the kind of person who would care about trendy hair, but she would care if it was aerodynamic.
|
Yeah, I considered this with the newer design and had painted shorts on underneath. I'll go back and change things up. Here's how that looks at the moment. Here's a reposing / scaling of the original hair we had:
|
|
Leg scaling. I've set 3 values that can be recalled from pose library in comparison to the current/original. Final overlay image is base value vs maximum. Past this point it ends up looking quite silly.
|
|
Cloth details were added via a multires sculpt and baked in as well, much like #1386's outfit was. Worth noting if we ever want to touch up existing or purchased assets - we can add cloth detail in non-destructively to a base mesh (to a degree) |
|
The simplified "hoodie" looks good, but can we move the pockets down? It feels like actual pockets would be lower. For the leggings: can we do something simpler? Simple horizontal striped socks, slightly bunched at the bottom? There is a lot of complexity going on in the lower half, which can be simplified. The shoes I think would probably look fine For the collar: although it looks good, a couple of artists have expressed that it is hard to sketch such a complicated hexagonal pattern. 2D compatibility could be greatly improved with a simpler mat. |
|
Taking a step back, WDYT about just in general adjusting to the 2D art? It was originally pulled from the same face (gear), and I think it's the strongest concept so far, at least in 2D, which is where the project requirements bottom out (it should be easily drawable). So the challenge would be to tweak it more faithfully back into 3D. I think the delta is in the eyes, ensuring the hair doesn't clip with the collar (possibly thinning out the sides?), and the legs. |
|
I could not find this model in GDrive: #1382 (comment) |
|
Still has rigging morph problems around the waist when sitting: |
|
Changes were made to address the above.
Think I accidentally updated to the wrong file yesterday, so I've added in a new one following the proposed naming scheme with the other files. There's a shapekey on the jacket to accentuate the the lift it should have when sitting at an extreme angle, so it can easily be corrected for stills. It's as close as it can be without having extreme deformation / folding in on itself. |
|
Can we highlight the pocket square like in the concept? For the legs I was thinking even simpler, it doesn't need to have a logo, or any features. What I had in mind was essentially one of two styles. Both styles are primarily driven by ease to replicate: Short and stripedThis can be cut a bit above the ankle. Long and solidI think what we have is really close to this. |
Think I preemptively screenshotted - it should be there in the blend on the drive 👍 I can cut back the details on the textures no problem, sounds good. |
|
Thanks, I'm also curious how a stripe and making the socks shorter would work. This turned out to be surprisingly important in cohesiveness of sitting shots. |
|
Picking left ones, following meeting. |
|
Will require a lot of redoing on shapekeys, but was able to get some rough previews out with some mixing. Not going to replace the working file just yet since there's still a bunch of work to be done rebuilding facial shapekeys, etc. |
|
Those eyes irises are too big for that eye shape, and too dark.
|
|
I would also copy the |
|
Outline shading seems to help a lot, and I've also set up the UV space so that the inside and minor edge of the hair will be in darker shadow. Front of the hair is following the gear and 2D more - shaped up the rear of the hair to be more like the 2d rather than the messy long Gear 3D version, Overall it is using a lot less individual shapes and rigged parts, so it should move more uniform and with less collisions, etc. Face is also a midpoint between the two, since gear was supposed to be close, but the 2d is different in eye shape / head shape as well - adjustments made all round. Some texture work - new iris tes, new eyelashes to fit 2d art, some fake AO / shadows in some aspects to decrease the flat feel it was having. If this is a-ok, it's ready to be transplanted onto the existing body/clothing and begin the VRM process / optim. etc. There's a VRM model (before adding clothing etc), and a .blend file on the drive if you wish to take a look at it in more detail: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hWy0YQUwFH_AcUfvH1WVis26bePcF0WZ |
|
This is real good, looks about as close as we can get to 2D in the 3D. Seems ready to be glued to a full body. I tried the vrm in engine and it looks great; it also looks like hair rigs would take it to the next level in motion, which was the whole point of the hair. |
|
For the body, I’d again defer to the 2d art, which is relatively close to what we already had (the goal being easy to draw, and having parity between mediums). That includes the green hue, long socks and possibly simpler shoes (the current ones are kind of “turbo” in a good way, but they are harder to draw). One interpretation of that sketch could be Zelda/Link-style boots, which are very easy to draw and seem to fit the character well too. |
|
|
|
Or, the shoe can be simplified but still kept in contemporary style that can be simply drawn. This style would also fit the chara as it evokes sonic and knuckles type design. |
|
Re outlines, I think it looks best with, but that's something I can accomplish in engine; it wouldn't need to be baked in. |
|
Note that Link's shoes are quite large.
|
There's some issues with how mtoon outlines work in-engine I believe - VRMs with outlines set in Mtoon 'fill' alpha sections of materials. If you need to test - these avatars are identical except for the former having outlines enabled: https://webaverse.com/assets/761 They definitely help sell the anime look and feel, and they still work well with PBR-ish materials as well, since they end up looking 'contained' within the outline shell - almost looks like a higher quality 2d rendered artwork. Outside of that, they're used heavily in VRM (especially VRoid content). |
|
We've discussed re-doing the jacket again since it's so far off the initial now - largely the importance of it being more of a hoodie style with the pocked meeting the bottom seam: Effort needs to be made to avoid it looking lumpy / bulged, which will be problematic with skinning. Pocket opening / folds should be accentuated (this will have to be a combination of texture and topology to sell the effect, since at oblique angles the topology difference will not be obvious. Multirez and AO will help sell it. The concepts depict a high collar that can cover the lower face, rather than an actual hood, so we should follow that IMO (much easier to recall / sketch) |
Yes, it’s not quite a literal hoodie, just the pockets style resembles it. Actual hoods are harder to draw. |
|
➤ Avaer Kazmer commented: Still has rigging morph problems around the waist when sitting: |
|
Is this repost of an old image / old bug on an outdated model intentional? Not sure what's trying to be communicated there |
|
No, I haven’t tested on the new model. I don’t know why that bot is reposting. |
This will serve as the design issue for the main character, user of the 'megasword'.
Will update as appropriate.
The idea of using the ears from #1294, but with the existing character design, was explored briefly.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: