Character - Ivan

Perhaps it's time I detailed a little more about my fantasy game idea...

It's one I've been reworking for some time. It's a fantasy/sci-fi turn-based RPG (whoa originality!) with Dmitri (the previous character I worked on) leading an excursion to find a legendary creature. This particular creature's properties are such that it's both magical and technological, two opposed forces. There's way more to it than that, of course, but in the beginning Dmitri leads a party of four to hunt for it.

This guy, Ivan... is not one of those four. :P

He's a down-on-his-luck shepherd living in the highlands of the world's largest nation, and like his jutted jaw and sharp features would indicate, he's a gruff, large guy. He's also got a Scottish accent.

Though it is but a distant twinkle in my eye, I do enjoy modeling these characters. Ivan's profile was very different from what I'm used to. His bottom-heavy head shape and ears that stick out make for an interesting silhouette. I imagine modeling his top-heavy, almost apelike body will be a fun challenge, as well.

Character Model - Dmitri Hesker

Well, here he is, mostly, kinda, sorta done. At least where modeling is concerned.

Total time spent on it is hard to measure, since I didn't work on it every day and never kept track of time when I did, so we'll highball it and say it was 35 hours or so. He's close to 12,000 triangles, so about 6,000 polygons.

And yeah, his name is Dmitri Hesker. It's been the same name for years and I have no intention of changing THAT about him. Mind you, this model is the result of his seventh or so redesign.

Arms may seem a bit long, but that's entirely on purpose since his hands are so large. I tried balancing it off by giving him wide feet.

As for what's left to model, all he really needs is "straps" which go over the gaps in his shirt. When textured, those will be the large cross-stitches holding the sleeves onto the rest of the shirt. And a few tweaks here and there, of course. I plan to fully texture this model and rig it, but I'm not too sure about animation yet. Rigging will just be for posing it out.

What do you think? Comment and let me know if you think anything needs changing.

Stumped

The title of this post is just for the pun of it. As you can see, the mesh is coming along alright. Some areas need better defining, like the pectoral muscles (they look awful square, don't they?). What you can't see here is that the shoulders have geometry that comes off the pecs, just like actual musculature. College wasn't completely pointless, after all!

I was worried about the neck, since it was so high-poly that it wouldn't fit on the lower-poly body, but fortunately it looks fine, even with a few of the lines merging together right at the base of the neck.

One thing that always bothers me when modeling is the proportions, and if I should follow the drawing or use my intuition to make it look right. The legs were a lot fatter before I toyed with them to get them to look more like the drawing, but then it might seem like he's got toothpick ankles once I get the feet in there. Hopefully they won't be too short, either.

The loosen shirt he wears will be an issue, though. I'm still deciding how to include it on the mesh. Those detached sleeves won't be too much trouble if I plan it right.