Thanks @Zed, Candy, const, BluePrint and Kemmler!
@Candy I’ll try and fix the legs… the front of the calves does look a bit sharp, but that may just be the shading. Samus is a little strange when it comes to artistic interpretations. There’s so many different stages as far as the suit goes, and then she looks slightly different in each game. I’m doing my own spin though. I wanted her to look realistic, might make her a redhead/strawberry blonde since that’s what she looked like in the first game. To give some perspective as far as lore and timeline goes, I’m placing this after all the events of the entire series, following Metroid Fusion when she loses her regular suit. This is a redesign, so it should surpass all the previous concepts and be the most superior iteration of the suit so far (one that she hand crafted herself using remnants of the old suit).
@const I’ve been trying to figure out how far I want to go with detail since I’d like to do a series of cycles renders and that demands a certain level of quality and realness, but the game model may not need so much high level work. Like, right now I’m trying to get skin pores figured out… (and don’t worry about the hardsurface stuff, I’ve got a lot of experience with that :P)
for example I’ve got most of the face done, added in some placeholder hair/eyebrows:
(and that might look like a little too strong of pore detail, but that may just be the levels adjustment I did in photoshop, either way I can tone it back easily enough since pores are on their own layer)
@Zed, yeah I was kinda going for that. Wanted to shy away from the fantastical proportions of the games, made her fit but not so skinny she wouldn’t be able to lug around a 100 pound suit, yet still wildly attractive, given the fact she was genetically modified to be the ultimate fighter and savior of the universe etc etc.
@BluePrint Current polycount 20+ million, I hope to get that down to about 75-100K for the game character, since that’s about the current standard for main characters in AAA games.
So here’s the plan as far as it’s materialized in my mind.
- Get character art/model done
- Do some studio renders, close ups and some interior architectural shots
- Compile them into a magazine interview (think like TIME magazine or something similar) with lots of questions/answers relating to the lore of the game and some that expand my personal concept of Samus’s personality. It’ll be a nice exercise since I’ve finally figured out how to use Adobe Illustrator and I like writing.
- Publish the article and start working on the game-ready version
- Rig, do a few animations, put it in UE4, Unity, Marmoset… just see how it works.
- …maybe actually make a game prototype side scroller or FPS or combination of the two? (hey, I mean, it’s been done, it’s possible)
Anyway, I’ve got some school work, so I probably won’t be back until this weekend. (also I feel like I need to finish Metroid Prime 3 first…)
And before I forget… HOLY CRAP IS THIS PROGRAM USEFUL:
http://www.pureref.com/
It’s so handy for keeping all my reference in one place, organized etc. I used to use Picaso’s collage feature but Pureref is just so beast (and you can get it for free since it’s name your price). My only complaint is that is uses a lot of memory once you get over a 100 images, which I do a lot. Fortunately I run 16 gb, so 1gb of memory usage isn’t that bad.