I’ve begun work on a new project, a film poster for a fictional movie entitled “Raygun Noir.” It’s going to have a combination of Raygun Gothic and Film Noir themes. I’ve more-or-less finished work on one of the characters that will be featured in the poster, a robot that will be the focus of the composition.
The character will be holding a raygun and leaning against a brick wall, the way the protagonist of an old detective or spy movie might in an advertising poster.
I’ll post updates as I progress, and I’m very much interested in input as I go along. Right now, I’m working on another character for the composition: a grim-faced martian meant to recall Robert Mitchum’s character from Cape Fear.
Incidentally, I tried posting about this project a little over 24 hours ago, and I thought that maybe I forgot to submit it because it never showed up. But I saw that these images I intended to post with it had not been removed (as is supposed to happen if an image isn’t used within an hour of posting) so there’s a strong possibility the original post is still sitting in moderator purgatory somewhere. Should a mod happen to run into it, please feel free to remove it.
Finished modeling and sculpting of the martian. The color is accurate to the final intended skin tone but it is a simple one-color diffuse/sss map. Unwrapping and texturing will be next on my to-do list, after modeling some clothes for him.
The character’s face came out looking a little like Joe Turkel, which I’m not entirely unhappy with. Of course, Joe Turkel’s face would never be seen attached to that body. I’m actually not sure why I sculpted the torso so thoroughly–the character will be wearing a shirt. Anyway, thoughts and comments are always welcome.
For right now this is just colors. After i unwrap these models, I’ll create texture maps to add more detail. In particular, I have a pattern planned for the colored panels of the bowling shirt. After that, I’ll probably shift gears and model some buildings for the background.
I’ve finished my character for now. Later on I’ll rig it, possibly doing some more work with the color maps. But next up, I’m going to model some buildings for the background.
Thanks! That was actually the idea–I used valves as reference photos. It always struck me that the glass assembly seen on the heads of 50s sci-fi robots like Robbie (Forbidden Planet) or B-9 (Lost in Space) looked like vacuum tubes.
I have created some rough, untextured buildings and rigged the robot character. Next up will be modeling some generic building parts that I will apply as a particle system to the buildings. Then I’ll add neon advertisements all over. And I will model a raygun for the robot. Still much work to do, but I at least know now what I’m aiming for in general look.
I finished with the windows on these buildings, apart from the ground-level store-fronts. I’m actually rather pleased with how they turned out: they are particle systems that place random window pane objects into the window frames. I’ve now started applying UV maps to the buildings themselves, but I’ll hold off on creating detailed texture maps until I see how much of the buildings I’ll be able to see under the numerous billboards and neon lights I intend to cover them with. Also, I’ve placed the logo in the scene. Later on I’ll model a more highly detailed version, complete with electrical wires and boxes connecting it to the side of the building the robot is leaning against. Finally, I’ve adjusted the camera. The scene now has a dutch-angle, which I’m surprised I didn’t think of before.
Looking at the robot now, it seems a little too perfect. I’m going to be giving it a proper texture map as well (the texture is currently procedurally generated) and put scratches on the high-use areas, like the feet. I’m also going to cover parts of the robot with little pellets of water, since I intend at some point to put rain in this scene. I’m currently thinking of creating a normal map to accomplish this, but if anyone knows a better way to create rain drops in a scene where said raindrops will not be seen close-up, I’d love to know it. I’ve seen Sardi Pax’s tutorial on how to do that with meta-spheres and a particle system, but that seems like way more effort and processor power than I’ll need for this application.
Incidentally, the texture on the wall behind the robot is temporary. I intend to put a lot more detail in that wall as well.
Had some real life stuff come up, couldn’t get to my project as often as I wanted. I’ve created a proper texture for the wall that the robot is hiding behind, but I can tell that it isn’t lining up properly. I’ll have to assess whether the greebles I intend to put on the wall will make that a non-issue or if I’m going to have to rework that texture. I added a billboard spanning the road, and some place-holder billboards on the building to the right. I’ve blocked in a monorail system to help break up the scene (and because monorails are very retro-futury). And I’ve begun working to make everything look wet, since it is supposed to be raining.
In case anyone is interested, here is the texture for the billboard, which I’m probably going to rework before I call this project finished. I was going for a cheap, state-paid-for aesthetic for the Mars ad, but I think I accidentally created a meme instead.
Next on my list, after I finish up the billboards, will be adding some traffic onto the street. It’ll be light, since this scene is set very late at night. I’m going to park a bus in front of one of the shops in the building to the right so that I don’t have to apply the Array modifier. I also plan to create some shadowy robotic figures, who in the story I am telling with this image, will be the mooks hunting down the protagonist. I also still have to put a raygun in that robot’s hand.
If anyone has advice about how to make things look wet, I’d love to hear it. I also welcome any other comments or critiques.
P.S. Is there a way to change this thread’s icon, as it appears in the list of threads? I thought maybe putting my latest update first in the attachment list would fix it, but apparently not.
I’m having a lot of trouble with the ground texture. I want to keep the anisotropy, but I also want it to be turbulent, and it seems I can have one or the other. I’ve created a compromise for the time-being, I’ll come back to this texture after I’ve finished creating the other details. I also went ahead and reworked the brick wall texture to line the edge of the bricks up with the edge of the building.
Renders are starting to take a little while, so updates will be a bit spaced apart. Thankfully, once I create the other texture assets, I’ll be coming up on the home stretch. In the meantime, I’ve begun to sketch out a new scene: the martian I modeled earlier was originally intended to form part of a “floating head montage” in this poster, but after I decided to take this poster in another direction, I also decided to create a different poster featuring him. It’s a good thing I modelled the whole body rather than just the head and upper-body, which is all the original montage would have needed.
So, I’ve spent more time with the martian, in between renderings. I fixed his bowling shirt–the previous image had the shirt fairly well fitted, which is inaccurate for that type of shirt. It’s now loose around the torso, as it should be. I’ve also messed with the colors. I thought that the old bowling shoes looked rather like clown shoes, so I changed their color. I also messed with the color of his skin, giving it a more orange tinge. For a while I tried making his skin green, to contrast with Mars’s overall red color, but I thought that made him look too much like Mr. Piccolo, so I switched back to warm colors.
Fixed up the texture on the concrete. It now looks more-or-less exactly like I wanted. I’ve also finished the background, for now. Next up, I’ll need to model the two (possibly three) mooks that are trying to find the protagonist. I’ve also worked on the scale of the wall that the robot is hiding behind because I thought it looked too big in proportion to everything else. Finally, I messed with the camera angles. At some point in the near future, I’m going to have to rework the scene’s lighting to create more contrast.
I’m back to finish this thing once and for all. I’ve already taken a couple of important steps–the robot in the foreground is finally holding the raygun that he’s supposed to have been holding, and I changed out the low-res place-holder title sign above him to a more detailed model.
Here is a closer view of the raygun. It’s meant to be fairly simple in keeping with the raygun gothic style of the character.
Looking at the image, I can tell that there isn’t much of a value difference between the foreground and the background. After I finally add the characters this one in the foreground is meant to be hiding from, I’ll be playing with the compositor to make the foreground pop more.
Added additional detail to the building the robot is leaning against, mostly power boxes and wires. I’m really pleased with the way the wires on the edge of the building turned out–that’s actually a flat plane with an image texture, the same image I used on the undersides of the monorail. I was surprised by how well it matched the lighting of the scene.
I’ve also added my first antagonist. I used Makehuman to model the character and then used a copy of the model to create a jump-suit, like the type futurists of the 1950s thought we would all be wearing. Over that is a fairly simple black coat. I deliberately avoided putting too much detail into the model; partially to make him seem less “friendly,” but mainly because I anticipated rendering the model in dark values and didn’t want to model details that I knew would be lost in the final image.
My next task will be to model the other two mooks I plan to add to this scene. I also want to do something to break up the furthest-away building across the street. I don’t like how flat it looks on the side facing the street. After that, I’ll put in the particle-system for the rain, some volumetric fog, and start getting this scene ready for final render.
