Alien readiness

My Alien character is ready to be decimated and I now need to start working on the low poly version of him so I can project the details, the pain is going to be deciding on how hi poly I can permit the torso armor to be so I can capture the shape of the folds without going to the thousands of polys.

I decided to ditch the leathery braces and shinguards idea and rather continued with the shell/carapace idea I used for the torso armor, the character will, when finished, wield a hi tech staff as a weapon.

Puffs Duology

I've done two animation tests to both test the rig and the skinning....... and just for fun.

I'm satisfied with the character, though I will probably fix little things sometime, like the eyes, they look a little too glassy.

The animation is done purely from imagination and I have not used any reference videos or pictures, which is what I probably should, but hey it was just tests.

This will be the last entry about Puff before I continue with my Alien character.

Puffs RIG-atoni

I've finished projecting the hi poly details onto the lo poly version, going from 8 million polys I think it was to 2578 polys, by no means this is not the lowest I could go but at the end of the day this model is intended for a possible showreel intro not for a low poly competition or a job.

I've also done a rig for the character, almost from scratch, I started with a skeleton from the skeleton generator in maya 2012, and then adjusting them to fit the character before creating all the controls.

Puff Progress

Tomorrow I am going to start the work of adjusting the low poly versions geometry to better fit the high poly character before I do the projection of the texture and normal maps, but also before that....I have to UV map the low character, must not forget that.

New Character: Puff

Started a new character yesterday, more of a logo character for the Christer Mortensson brand if you will, hehe, actually created the original character 2 years ago but lost the files after a harddrive failed.

But luckily I remember it quite well and it's a fairly easy character.

It's a stylized Puffin bird, it is more or less the national bird of iceland and I've always found that it has a quite interesting look about it.

And since I haven't got any stylized characters in my portfolio, I thought it was a good idea to make one.

Still having some problems with the polypainting, but thats the next part on the agenda.

Updated Armor

I refined the lines of the armor, I changed my mind about the armor being traditional looking bone with hard but flexible material underneath but instead going for a kind of over lapping design.

Here you can see how it looks on the character, I also want either some clothing or more armor for the characters hip area, but would rather not have a traditional belt looking thing.

Torso-astic Armor

I thought the character looked a little bare and unprotected, this species has, as I've stated before, a tribal warrior culture and are very agile and good fighters. Now a specialized and bare outfit like the character is wearing now is ok for a stealthy assassin unit or something similar, but what I am going for is the soldiers outfit that would be the standard for this species and I would then want at least some armor on him.

It is fairly low poly (for a sculpt) and low detail, but the intention is for the armor to consist of some creatures bones to protect from slashes and I will want something hard in between them that at the same time wouldn't restrict movement. And I will also need to find a way to make the bones not seem too rigid so that would allow movement as well.

Colors ahoy

I've started to do some polypainting on the character, might end up not being the final design though, but we'll see.

I've continued the color scheme of the head for the hands and feet, where the strongest purple color is is where the roughest skin is located.

I want a shiny, almost wet look for the suit. And the leather bracers should look worn and scratched, but thats for later.

Crows Feet

I actually did this some time ago but I added alot of skin detail on the characters face, mostly lines and cracks, this is definately not a young example of the species, if their signs of aging is the same as ours....?

Suit up!

After doing most of the work on the feet I decided to begin on some of the fun stuff, which is, alpha brushing the body.
It has always been my intention for the character to have a skintight suit most likely made of some kind of animal hide to reflect the species tribal / hunting / warrior culture, and I really liked how this almost crocodile patterned alpha brush looked as it looked hard and rough, though maybe too hard to be used for a skin tight suit? as this is an extraterrestrial being this can't be crocodile hide but perhaps rather an equivalent and with slightly different characteristics.

Though I still want to add alot of scratches and other wear on it.

I also added some wear on the suit where it would be most likely to be some like under the arms, at the elbows, the .....crotch, and also behind the knee. I did this to make the suit not looks brand new but more worn and personal.

not exactly Hobbit feet

Here's how the feet look at the moment, I think I'm managing the reptile look quite well so far, can't wait to add some alpha patterns on here so it looks like proper reptile feet.

Glorious Feet

So I've been reconsidering my original design for the aliens feet, I wanted to have a reptile look for the feet so I looked to incorporate a Velociraptor claw to a humanoid reptile look for the rest of the foot, though now I'm not so sure it looks all that good, it isn't aggressive enough. I have been keeping a basic boot design as a back up but I haven't given up on the reptile look. So I'm now experimenting with creating a foot design based on the Tyrannosaurus, this will give me the aggression I want as they have rather large claws which is something I have really seen this alien species having as an integral part of their fighting style.

This is the initial results of the new foot design, and I have to say that I'm really pleased with how this looks as oppose to the original idea.