Proportions + Armour  Update! 

Before Change

After Change 

This past week I have been working on my Celts main shapes, armour and proportions. I felt like his previous build was far too under defined for the characters archetype. Bulking his muscles up matches the more aggressive and brutish warrior that Celts once were. I decided to give him the bodybuilder Arnold/Cohan type body with a massive upper torso. This new adjustment made a massive difference and shows how powerful he is.

My next step was to shift my focus onto his armour and come up with a design mixed from my previous concepts. I started by basic box modeling armour pieces around the low res character in 3ds Max, positioning and roughly shaping the Armour. I didn't worry to much how it looked at this stage as I would throw everything into Zbrush to continue shaping. I believe most of the characters story would be captured in the armour from patterns, details and scratches. I found an image of a golden buckle shaped as a tiger/cat that looked very interesting. I thought this would be a good idea to implement as it could show he is a wild hunter!  

Same again, for the arm greaves. Modeled in 3ds-Max and brought in ready for sculpting and adjustment. I am really enjoying creating this character and love his design so far!

Early concept of the boots. 

Looking into Celtic culture is a very interesting topic to look at. There are many different types of Celtic culture. These include Ancient Celtic Culture, Celtic revival and Gaelic culture. Celtic art is a difficult term to define, covering huge expanse of time, geography and cultures. The main area of Celtic history I would like to base my characters designs on would be the culture of the European Iron age around 1000 BC. Celtic Knots are patterns representing ropes or threads tied in a knot. Many Knots are continuous, with no loose ends, and these are also called gordian knots or Gordic knots. Spirals, step patterns, and key patterns are dominant motifs in Celtic art before the christian influence on the Celts. I would like to replicate these patterns on my Celt to give him story, personality and character.

Drawings!

Im not the best at drawing, but I had fun creating these character concepts!

Massive brute torso with huge shoulder pads. 

Ranger type warrior with sword and bow.

Shoulder Pad designs

Large brute face with a Celtic type crown 

Kahl drogo type design 

Design! 

Once I was at this happy stage with his propotions, I took a quick render of the figure and took him into photoshop for paintovers. I decided to design basic armour outfits to try and find some sort of direction. I really the style of the first design from concept #1 as I like the wild leather with steel look, that i feel follows the Celtic style. #2 I find too basic (cliche?), although I really like his circular shapes such as the chest buckle.       

On the left- The classic wild barbarian look. On the Right - A more civilized warrior 

I really like the john snow type outfit in concept #2. A brute of a barbarian needs feathers and cloth to keep himself warm in the winter if he is only wearing skimpy armour! I went crazy with the hellish "Hades" (greek mythology, god of war) type character. maybe having 1 or 2 spikes on his armour won't hurt! :D  

On the left - The john snow look On the Right - An evil hell raiser!!

   I shall post up more reference images to bring myself closer to the traditional Celtic culture designs for armour details, shapes and traditions.  

3D/2D Concepts 

When designing my characters I find it easier to paint on a 3d base to visualize the concept clearer. The big challenge for me these past few weeks has been trying to accurately create a robust 3d muscular male to start designing from. In Zbrush I started with a basic sphere and started to pull out the shape of a human chest. By pushing and pulling out the forms of the muscles, using plenty of reference along side sculpting. Zbrushes dynamesh feature really allowed me to pull out the limbs with ease without any topological issues because of its amazing algorithm. From there I spent a long time refining each and individual muscle. He turned out to be a very muscular fella but I don't mind that he has a slightly exaggerated structure as it fits his brutish profile. Here is the progress during the entire sculpting progress. (Click the images for a better view!)         

Initial blockout

Added more dynamesh resolution and refined more muscle/

Very happy how this was going at this point. Although the arms looked strangely long!

I believe this point was my breakthrough once I properly punched out the chest. 

  

Here is where I finally decided to stop and turn back to the designing stage. Otherwise It would of never stopped! Ignore the dinky little arms for now! xD Now its time to start thinking about him as reckless brute...   

Anatomy!

As stated within the brief, textures are not required for this character. Modelling, sculpting and clean topology will be the the main focus of this brutish character. I have been practicing anatomy ever since I got my hands on Zbrush (while Life Drawing in class). It is a very difficult subject to master and takes years of practice to get right. I believe I am finally at that point where I can bust out a rough character in less than two hours that has almost accurate anatomy. I feel I need to get to that next step where I can push my characters even further to a point where every muscle is polished in place. Creating a character from my chosen archetype: "   Aggressive and brutish antagonist based loosely on Celtic culture." , I believe this will be the perfect choice to work on anatomy as ~70% of the characters body will show through Armour, being the main area of focus. I shall be following many sources of reference and tutorials. These include books like Anatomy for artists, Constructive anatomy. Video tutorials and inspiration from my most favorite artists including Scott Spencer and Rafael Grassetti. Websites such and Gnomon Workshop, Eat 3d, Gumroad and Digital tutors. 

My next step is to create a very compelling character design, studying various cultures, armour, styles and inspiration.... 

                   

Images from sources such as Pintrest. 

-Aaron.

Video Game Character Brief 

I immediately knew that I wanted to choose this brief as soon as I saw it on the list. I am very passionate towards creating 3d Art, and one day would love to work in a Triple A games studio as a character artist. The brief states that you have to choose from the following archetypes :

•          Naturalistic and agile hero warrior based on the ancient Mayan culture.
•          Aggressive and brutish antagonist based loosely on Celtic culture.
•          Peaceful and progressive shamanistic ‘elder’ figure based on ‘futuristic’ technology.

I want to do the aggressive & brutish character because I believe I can show alot of interest in many areas such as his armour, clothes, anatomy and style. To begin this project I will gather as many images as possible related to the direction I want to take the character and dissect each image finding details that I would like to apply to my character.

Here are the first of many..