Stylized Dragon

Artwork Works in Progress
1

Update on post #24: sorry for the bit of thread necromancy, but I figured it would be good to keep in all in one thread instead of making a new one.

As many of you are probably already thinking, yes, I’m planning on roughly following David Ward’s Dragon Series. :wink: My plan is to post an update after each session right now, so without further ado, here’s where she is after session #1.

I’ve been working hard to make the front less beak like, is it enough?
as well as thoughts on ears, she has none at the moment, mostly because I’ve never been good at those, does she need them?

ATS

Attachments

Dragon ortho 01.jpg988×921 32.3 KB

2

I think that it looks ok without ears, but it would depend on what type of eyes you would put on it. The snout still looks a little beak like but a few adjustments should make it look good. I am also following David Wards dragon series and I am up to the 2nd tutorial. (I still have a long way to go). I plan to make it into a game but that won’t start until about 2 months at least. Keep up the good work!

3

looks sweet :slight_smile:

4

nice work so far! I really like how the eye area has been modeled

if you’re still concerned about it looking too much like a beak, you might wanna consider reducing the overhang. Maybe even merge that thing to the flesh underneath, so it doesn’t look like a separate piece (hope you dont mind, i did a quick paintover to explain what I mean)
Of course you don’t have to do this, but I think it’d help take away from the beak look, if that’s what you’re after

making ears shouldn’t be too hard. since dragons are supposed to be reptilian, they’d just be small holes in the head

anyway, nice start!

Attachments


5

Looks like a female dragon to me, nice !

6

@Thalia Brunner: What type of eye’s do you have in mind? I’m still undecided if she gets ears or not, but they will be smaller whatever the case… maybe somthing like Toothless?

@Jeepster: I implemented partly what you said, I don’t know how much it helps the beak look, but I think it’s an improvement overall in that it merged the plate to the body. (and I really appreciate paint-overs by others, thanks!)

@iulyan25 & delic: Thanks, and good to know that my efforts in making it feminine are paying off a little.

Session #2

The “beak” stays for now, there are still more things I like then dislike about it, but that could still change.
I put on a quick displacement texture for the horns to give a little better idea of what I’m thinking, if you can’t tell what that is, she’s supposed to be and ice dragon… :wink:

Body still feels a little generic/sackish to me, thoughts?

ATS

Attachments

Dragon ortho 02.jpg1024×535 33.6 KB

7

She looks a bit tiny fat, could be bit a bit more gogeous, no ?
Hip a lot thinner, booty more proeminent, and shoulders bit more proud perhaps …

8

It’s a nice start, however it doesn’t offer much of an idea of how the ‘beak’ part meshes in with the head except at the top, almost looks like a hard piece you can lift up from the end except it’s attached.

She looks like a pretty Dragon indeed, though I don’t think Dragon beauty should have a requirement that it has to be modeled after hollywood pop stars and fashion models.:slight_smile:

9

Half update based on suggests, thanks delic, I was just staring at the same thing too long and missed that little bit. Not messing with the shoulder area to much now because the wings aren’t there yet.

Ace Dragon: heh, I was wondering when you’d show up, I’m honored by your presence. :wink:
I would agree that a dragon doesn’t need to conform to human looks and standards of beauty, but the “stylized” part kinda does in this case because humans are going to be the one’s primarily:p viewing/relating to this.

I also softened the “beak” edges does that give it enough to “attach” it to the rest of the head?

Edit: Full Update

Session #3

Took a bit of a break, but here she is after session 3.
My greatest concern at this stage is the monkey like back legs, I went ahead and added opposable thumbs unlike the video, but in transferring them to the back legs it seems to have given her a bit of an ape like appearance I’m not too fond of. Thoughts? My first thought was to shorten the part immediately above which is looking like a forearm even though it should be the palm area anatomically speaking, but I’m at a loss as to how to change it so if just put it back after making it all a mess.

Attachments

Dragon ortho 02_5.jpg1024×686 54.2 KB

Dragon ortho 03.jpg1024×700 75.7 KB

10

Session #4

This was the last modeling session. I’m pretty happy with the results I’ve gotten at this point, but I’m still open to critiques on the shape if you notice anything.

Topology isn’t perfect, but should be good enough for most of the deformation I plan on putting it through.

ATS

Attachments

Dragon ortho 04.jpg1024×590 63.2 KB

11

Wings to flat for a real creature. Look in some zoology books at bat wings.

12

Find the argument on the wings agreeable to an extent, maybe looking a little too stiff right now (and not sure about the sudden angle from the wing base to the main membrane area)

13

Thickened up the wings a bit, and de-stiffened them as well, both as suggested, thanks. (Ace Dragon I don’t know what you mean by sudden angle at the base of the wing.)
Here is a fun little AO render of the slightly tentative final model.

Attachments

Dragon Render 01.jpg943×1004 78.5 KB

14

Thats looking pretty great! I hope you get some crazy renders done with it. And I’d suggest getting down and dirty sculpting it. Good Job!

15

I think what doesn’t seem right to me, and gives that monkey appearance, is the small hands/feet. I think you should make them much larger and more like talons. Bear in mind on the back legs that you should still only have 2 joints (knee and ankle) and it almost looks like you have 3.

I also think that the previous body shape was better, though I can’t explain why. Perhaps bring the back haunches forward and make them more meaty?

I guess for a fictional beast it doesn’t matter, but perhaps you could look at some dinosaurs for reference and then some lizards/crocodiles and decide whether your dragon is more comfortable on all four legs (meaning even legs but longer body), or whether it can balance on two like a tyrannosaurus rex (meaning bigger haunches and shorter body). Think about the balance of the weight of the tail, and the work the wings have to do to balance in mid-air.

16

The angle in the wing-frame midway between the base of the wing and the wing-thumb (where the wing-fingers fan out from)

Something seems odd about it looking at the new render, I wouldn’t make it look so tight, rather having at least a minimal curve there.

17

Looking at that last render, it looks pretty good. Only thing that seems off: The feet and hands (or whatever) might need to be larger.

18

nice model :slight_smile: i think there are a few areas you could improve on though… the ankle area seems very thick and there are some weird things going on on the spots i marked red here

Attachments

Dragon Render 01.jpg943×1004 86.4 KB

19

Elemental: thanks, I hope to, and already done!
Ace Dragon: I see, yeah, smoothed that out a bit, thanks.
AC3 3592: yeah, made those larger, good call. thanks

Goosey: Thanks for the depth on the critique, completely agree about the feet and I think I’ve fixed those problems. As for the body shape, the reason I changed it from the last version was mostly in consideration for the weight balance in flight. (as well as that my family thought it was just a horse body. :() I tried to keep a bit of the butt in there though. Most of the referance images I saw looked more like a pair of legs coming out the sides of a big tail, which is kinda what I wanted only with the butt… because she needs her sexy little butt… :stuck_out_tongue:

Again thanks for the replies everyone, contrary to what it may look like I haven’t dropped off on this project. Rather, I seem to have run into a little system hiccup, I’m trying to bake my high poly sculpt into a normal map, however every time I do so I run out of memory, and it hard locks* my machine.

I thought I’d fixed the problem when I tried to rip the high poly model apart and then render out the sections, thus breaking up the memory usage. No go, every-time I enter edit mesh on the high poly model blender crashes within a minute, ether just blender or a hard lock. Thinking it could be a file corruption I’ve done as much as I know how with importing into a new file but still the same problems. (That and it often links instead of appends, at least that’s what I think happens as it selects with a light blue and I can’t enter edit mesh at all. I still have no idea what I did differently to link instead of append those times.)

So my question is, is there a good way to split up a texture bake that I’m not thinking of? I’d rather not have to re-sculpt the model in smaller chunks. oh, and lowering the multi res a level really looses most all the detail I’ve sculpted, sense it’s all pretty small.

*I consider a hard lock the only way I can get out of it is to hold down the physical power button on the computer, which, as far as I am aware, is not a very good thing to do to any system.

Thanks for reading if you got this far! :o
~ATS

20

I thought I was the only one with this problem. It would be really cool if someone could offer some advice on how to deal with this. I can’t afford to be throwing my machine through the wall. :mad: