ZBrushCentral

female elf fighter character concept (WIP)

WIP_3_21_08_post.jpg Hi All!,

It’s been forever since I posted anything, but I’m finally getting some time to work in ZB after moving, so I thought I’d post this piece and see what people think so far. There’s still a fair amount of detailing to do and some equipment to design (the pole is just a place holder for starters…) but hopefully the piece is shaping up to be ok. As always any thoughts are always welcome on how to strengthen the piece

In building the model and accessories, I find myself frequently going back and forth between Maya and ZB and exporting chunks of the ZB geometry back so I can correctly position straps, bolts etc using the NEX tools from Digital Raster (very cool Maya plug in!). Is anyone else using a different approach? It would be great to work just in ZB but I can’t see a good way to do so, esp. if one starts adding hard surfaces and all the little bits and pieces. It might be neat if a thread gets started on different approaches to the “character concept” work flow, so I’ll see if I can galvanize my thoughts on it and post over in tutorials and hopefully others will also share so we can all get even more fun out of our toy - err, our “professional software package”:wink:
Hope everyone is doing well!,

Johannes

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I like the pose quite a bit. I think I’d have to have a closer look at the face as that is where I think more work needs to be done.

Don’t get me wrong, this is pretty damn awesome.

i think its a good start, the cloth is a little thick in places.
honestly i don’t see how its a girl, if you didnt write that it was a female in your post i never would’ve thought so. nothing says girl, the face is too manly, the size of the hands are rather large, there is a hint of a breast, but as i said if you didnt say it was a girl i’d have thought that was just a fold. speaking of which the folds on the left arm seem strange.
but i think its looking good so far.

I see a lot of anime/manga inspiration, where gender lines typically blur anyway… especially with fighter characters and especially in the face… I think a male would usually be designed with a slightly broader chin (unless they’re bishonen), so I think you’re doing ok there

awesome work… I personally just want to see some color and detail :slight_smile:

Edit:
a second glance at the inside of her right elbow, and I must agree there’s something very strange happening there

I agree with the not very womanly comment by Spaceboy. She doesn’t necessarily need bigger breasts or anything, but the face should be softer, mainly in the brow area. The hands also need to be scaled down slightly, other than that, pose is awesome, and the clothing is awesome.

Hi all!,

First wanted to thank everyone for the suggestions, they really are an incredible help when you’ve been staring at a sculpt too long, hopefully the tweaks below will bring things closer to where they need to go.
I’m not sure but when I looked at the renders again, in the inner area of the right arm, the shadows blend into the background and make what looks like a divot in the arm, was that what you noticed Salmongod?, if not just let me know.
On the hands, it’s funny because it really shows the hitches of sculpting someone of the opposite gender: you get so used to your own proportions that you forget little things like this. Hopefully the hand tweaks have fixed this (it’s hard to figure out exactly how much finer to make the hands because of the leather gloves, which would add some bulk, just not nearly as much as I had added.)
On curves and stuff in the main body, this is one headache I knew I’d get into from the start (which does not mean these aren’t valid critiques!) since real armor, both modern and ancient is about as flattering as a paper sack, but I think all of you are correct and I should try to subtly add a little more of the mass of the breast, especially to the right (more heavily armored) side, so I tried to add at least a little of that to the tweaks in the renders, but I’m probably still erring on the conservative side:) .
The head is hopefully also a little bit more feminine now, many thanks for all the suggestions on this.
Anyway, hope everyone is having fun,

Johannes
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this looks much better, i don’t know if you made any changes to the face but it does look more femine now. the hands are good too, you may want to add a little more volume to the left hand pinky.
outside of the breast shaping you talk about you may want to play up shortening the waist and/or make the hips a little wider, and/or shorten the height of the torso, but these are just my ideas, and i do agree what you have said about armor/gloves thickening and flattening things out. also i agree about the gender bending issues of anime in general.
as usual its a matter of taste and i did not have a window into your mind, so i added my two cents.
do you plan on coloring it? or making a more detailed base?

Hi Spaceboy!,

Don't worry about having a window into my head;) , I'm much more interested in what you and others are seeing without such a window, since that really helps feed my creative process and get me thinking in new directions (this is the best part of being in a creative workplace when it works right: all those creative processes feeding and supporting each other). I am actually very interested in trying some of the proportion tweaking stuff you suggest, not only because it may very well improve the piece, but it also gives me a great test bed to try out the transpose master tool (otherwise I'd have to wrangle some 23 odd subtools one by one - yuck!), so please feel free to make the calls as you see them (and that also goes for anyone else who's willing to do a critique:) ) On the question of how far along things are, there's actually a number of things still to do: the outermost armor and skirt is eventually going to a large diamond pattern to it, the armor needs to be generally scratched up, there are a few pieces of equipment to add (the main weapon is actually something in the general configuration of a japanese style nagamaki : 2.5' blade, 4.5' haft) and several smaller close quarter weapons and tools as well as equipment pouches and she will definitely get a better base than the present one:). The tricky part with all these is that I don't want to get either the "high fantasy" or the anime look so much as the look of a culture which is quite sophisticated but based on different technological principles (hence the more ballistic/leather armor approach except in very specific places) so I'm still chewing on the design of these things. On coloring the thing: Im not yet sure - I have a color scheme already designed and all, and it certainly would be fun, but I've spent a lot more time on this sculpt than I really should (it was really a test bed for developing a full character workflow w/ ZB and Maya), so I'm tempted to go on to the next one and see what can be done to accelerate the overall process - arrgh! decisions, decisions... Anyway, as I said before, many thanks to everyone for the critiques, they are a real help and more are always welcome. Talk to you soon,

Johannes

would like to see a base mesh for this.

Hi all!,

Sorry it took so long to get any further but the last week got a bit crazy. Anyway here are the latest renders of the piece. I’m still having some trouble getting the wear and tear on the leather to actually show up in renders (it shows fine in preview mode but not nearly so well in best mode.) I think I’ve also kind of maxed my system out since it’s starting to crash out even in 64 bit mode, so I’ll probably have to do some optimizing before I can add anymore gear and stuff.

-Rubent100-

as per your question, there are renders of the base mesh at the bottom of the post. I would have put it in wireframe mode but that mode doesn’t seem to like when things are too close to each other (it turns into a black mess), so I also took the worst offender (the torso) and rendered the 3 peices of it out so those can be looked at. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas on this.

As always, any thoughts, comments etc are welcome:)

Johannes

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Really nice stuff man. The pose is great!

Bryan Wynia
BLOG

This is wondeful work. I like her face. I’m amazed no one else has replied to this. Keep going.

Cheers
Brett

really impressive. I really like the pose and the armor. I personally would get rid of the pointy ears, I know it’s supposed to be an elf but I’ve seen too much of those. That’s the only thing marking her as an elf, she doesn’t seem tall and slim like tolkien’s elves, or the short ones like others, she looks like a human that just has pointy ears. Can’t wait for more.

you need to do some research on the difference between male and female anatomy. In the face, for a woman, the general shape is rounder, the forehead is taller/higher and the corner of the jaw is lower (further from the ear). In a man, the face is squarer, the forehead is shorter/lower and the corner of the jaw (like you have it in your model) is higher (closer to the ear).

Check out this link which shows the difference and goes into proportions a bit.

http://youtube.jimmyr.com/tutorials/Golden_Ratio_The_Perfect_Face_amp_Change_the_Sex_of_People.php