Beginning a thread dedicated to a group of characters dubbed “The Unnaturals”. A bit of a venture in creating our own little universe of superpowered characters with my brother taking on the role of Stan Lee and myself Jack Kirby Originally what started as me wanting to develop a two player fighter based off characters from the “Marvel” Universe has taken a turn to this. I won’t get into much story or “character” development here, just art, in the hopes of some feedback and exposure. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave comments and critiques.
I have hopes of showing a little of the behind the scenes of the workflow, at least for this first character, but I feel it will soon turn into just progress shots. But we will see if I can provide a little help. There are probably better ways out there, but just in case, some one with less experience than myself stumbles along, then it could be of service.
First up is a character we will call “Foxy Lady” for the purpose of this thread. She is to play a sensual and mischievious role in our stories. My weakest area, as it is usually where I put the least amount of effort and continually underestimate its value is the concept. I usually do a rough base, render it out and then paint the concept over in Gimp:
I’ve taken and broken up the mesh into separate objects to work on. The head, the torso, the gloves, the boots, the belt, the tail and the eyes. I will also do the hair and cloak just not entirely sold on the cloak yet.
@XeroShadow: Ya, no problem, that’s part of what this thread is about. Hope these help. Btw, thanks for the name suggestion, we have some names in mind, “Foxy Lady” was more of a generic working title. Note the wires are a little sloppy and subject to change. They are from the base I used to sculpt.
I usually begin with the head and this character seems to be no different. I have three meshes I work with: A high density for sculpting; a relatively high poly mesh which is unwrapped for texturing; and a low poly which everything is complied onto (This would be the finished product). The sculpt will give me my normal and ambient occlusion. The high poly will be used to texture and then as stated everything is transferred to the low poly. So here is the beginning of the head sculpt. Still very wip. I’m using Megan Fox (clever) as a very loose reference. Not going for a likeness, just trying to capture some of the features.
@XeroShadow: Affirmative. Originally I had wanted to design a game based off Marvel characters, but realizing I would have to inevitably deal with Marvel my brother suggested coming up with our own. So our characters have been transferred over to that idea, although I am loving the story more than expected and we are contemplating exploring other mediums to tell the story.
A small update to the sculpt. Very minimal, but I know there there Its followed by the high poly I referenced earlier. Just slapped some base color on to get a feel for the character. All my texture maps are in place and it’s unwrapped. Now the workflow is jumping between the two models texturing and tweaking, texturing and tweaking.
@XeroShadow: Ya it was a quick paint over. And after taking the texturing a bit further it started looking horrible, so I’ve had to back up and take another run at it.
1 step forward, 2 steps back. After doing a quick test texture something looked really off. So I’ve lowered the brow ridge, raised the upper lip and rotated the eye. I’ll probably do a retopo to smooth everything out and then try the details again. The eye is just a place holder and is untextured yet.
So another update. Did a retopo and made some major adjustments. Looking much better now in my opinion. Not quite getting the “sultry” look yet, however. Perhaps with some color.
So after some discussion with my brother, it was agreed this wasn’t the right look. So going back to the sculpting process I’m gonna try add a little bit of characterization to her. Did some comic character referencing and created alittle mood board.
Originally what started as me wanting to develop a two player fighter based off characters from the “Marvel” Universe has taken a turn to this. I won’t get into much story or “character” development here, just art, in the hopes of some feedback and exposure. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave comments and critiques.
