Countless hours slaving away in that dark cave called the media studies labs and I finally have something to show for it. This is the first time I've ever modeled a character, or a whole environment, so this has been a big learning experience. There are some anatomy issues with the girl, mostly due to trying to pose her without rigging her, but I'm still really happy with how this all turned out. I completely modeled the girl and all the houses/structures. I painted in and photo collaged all the stuff in the really far bg. I also overpainted a bit on the models here and there, pushed the lighting, etc in Photoshop. But yeah, its finally done. Once Dominance War is over, then I can finally have a life again, lol.
6 comments:
I like the expression on her face :) 5 stars man
you're going for Dominance War??
ooooo so this is what you've been up to???
HOTNESS!
first with the sweet parts:
I absolutely love the how the background elements compliment the foreground (this is you best composition) Although normally i would say that your main character is splitting the composition in half, this doesn't bother me as much this time. all shapes lead beautifully to the main character and that Arching motif you got going there is splendid! the mix of textures and photographs work pretty well. You were right about the anatomy issues but seriously they don't bother me too much. The palette is done really well with that kind of muted tone to everything and sometimes it might just seem "safe" but i think again with the "dusk" time of day it works really well. the modeling on those mid/foreground buildings are hot. although they could vary in size and shape...
ok now for the nit picks:
First of all the thing that pops out at me the most is this middle ground background transition... well, honestly, there is no transition there the middle ground kinda leaps off and it makes all that interesting detail go FLAT! which for me is a shame because there are some really nice background elements working there. I feel like in this environment especially that there should be some incredible sense of atmosphere and depth. Oh, and about the back ground those mountain-like things on the right and a bit on the left seem really... bad, i cant tell what they are exactly and they seem really rushed. Although they are really nice shapes they don't read as anything for me right now. I think a really basic adjustment that could really help this image pop is thinking about the intensity of color as it moves from the foreground to background. Some intense light on the main character would be nice and there is something very artificial about the lighting on the top of that hut she is sitting on... i think it should be catching more light there... and that foreground pole to the left of her needs to be darker or as dark as the covering it is attached to. Moments in the foreground, like this, are times you do not want to get lazy on... cause although there are some nice textures there i doesn't seem believable or like they are even attached.
DUDE, nice work and i know this is a lot to think about, cause personally i know nothing about modeling so i know there was a lot going through your mind on this one. But now after the deadline i think it would be nice to fix it up a bit and you will have yourself a very nice portfolio piece!
Now can we play some BBALL!
-jair
Thanks for the feeback guys.
Jair, about the middle ground to back ground transition, I know exactly what you mean. The whole perspective of the scene was faked in Maya, I actually had to split the buildings into seperate layers and render them seperately. There are a couple things happening because of this that flatten out the middle to bg transition here. I actually didnt get to compile and paint over the renders until the night before this was due. I literally spent probably around only 6 hours changing this thing into what you see now, so some parts are a bit rushed. I had to physically erase out the edges of the middle ground, and it was really hard to get it to match the depth of field blurring, so the transition from the edge quality of the middleground to bg kind of kills it. Also, since the perspective is actually faked (those buildings in the back are actually physically smaller than the ones in the middleground) you don't really get a gradual transition of size as it leads back. I tried to make it seem like the houses were dipping down from the middleground, out of sight, and then back up into view in the far bg. It was tough to pull off, and even with my fake perspective I had to compile over 30 different renders to make this scene work. It was crashing Maya and bringing the computers in the labs to their knees. If I put more buildings in there I might have never finished, lol.
And yeah, those huge shapes on the right kind of suck. Its a result of panic I guess as my deadline was approaching. I don't hate the way they look now, but I guess compared to everything else they are too loose and don't really explain what they are. They're supposed to be giant heaps of metal, space trash, machines and houses, but they're so far in the distance that I figured some textural/brush work would be better than trying to put some actual details in there.
As for the foreground pole and roof and stuff, that's all lit by Maya lights I set up, so I guess, in theory that should be close to correct, atleast based on the same lighting system that everything else is lit by. I placed a blue-ish light in the scene, opposite side of the direction the sun is coming from, to push that cool blue/gray on the shadow sides of everything, but maybe the pole is catching a bit too much light from it. Also, I painted on those strong oranges and high key rimlights on the girl and a little on the roof she is siting on. Maybe I should bump up the value of the roof a little bit then? And yeah, its funny that you mentioned strong lighting on the girl, because thats what I did, lol. You think I need to push it more than it already is? And are you saying that the texture on the pole doesn't seem to fit, or the texture on everything in the foreground?
I'm going to let this one sit for a while then go back and touch it up during the summer. I'm to try to do atleast one more of these before school starts up again. I can probably do it somewhat faster now that I actually have some idea of what I'm doing. But yeah man, thanks for the compliments and critique.
Yo this is time well spent brother! Man that face is SO REAL. Good stuff there. Tho...I feel it's too dark. It is pretty much the focal point so let us see some more of the face by making it lighter.
And she's pretty smack dab in the center. What if we move her over a bit to the right. Plus, right now, she's almost too perfectly framed by the curved structure behind her
And I feel the clouds are too crisp compared to the blurry shacks in the background. I would crisp up some shacks, add some highlight accents to SOME of the shacks so its not just a sea of rooftops
The values of the clouds and the right cliff are too similar. darken the cliff and lighten the clouds behind it
GET OUT ON THE COURTS this......SUNDAY? :D
haha, peace
Nice work Raz. I really dig the way your character came out. Though there are some obvious form errors (stomach, knees)I really appreciate the amount of effort and time it must've taken to get her posed properly without having a full rig.
As far as the buildings go there is some nice detail in the ones closer up, but the middle-ground/bg buildings just looks sloppy. Almost as if you quickly instanced a bunch of houses in clusters just to fill in the space or took some really low res jpgs of buildings and pasted them in photoshop which is unfortunate because it detracts from the beauty of the composition.
Anywho, overall good work ^^ especially considering it's your first time ever doing something like this.
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