WIP: Female Character Design; need advice

[PenguinVisuals]

I get the impression that she's very young seeing her face. So when I see her full body I thought she looked really odd.

Her hair on the front part of her head should have its geometry hang out in front of the face, that will help cover the top of that hair near her ears too.

[kromano]

Thanks for the comment, Penguin. I'm reworking a new head where I'm going to try using geometry hair instead of alpha mapped planes. I have an idea that might help me reach the kind of effect I'm going for... still not sure how to save the body though. I'll work on some concept sketches based on feedback here. I've never had much luck on hair though, so here's hoping :/

[ansemsnobody]

Thanks for the comment, Penguin. I'm reworking a new head where I'm going to try using geometry hair instead of alpha mapped planes. I have an idea that might help me reach the kind of effect I'm going for... still not sure how to save the body though. I'll work on some concept sketches based on feedback here. I've never had much luck on hair though, so here's hoping :/

Try and make the cheeks more relaxed and less in your face... that'll kinda get rid of her goofy child look.

But very nice! Keep up the good work.

[ThreedyModeler]

The problems I see are:



The corners of the mouth and lips seem to be frowning, but the cheeks look like they should be in a super huge smile. Just turn up the corners of the lips and maybe relax the cheeks just a tad. Try to take out a little bit of the chunkyness of the silhouette while you're nudging verts as well.
Replace the eye geometry with a standard sphere primitive to get it looking a little cleaner. It looks like you're using some kind of modified geosphere, which don't work too well for eyes in my opinion. If you're using Max, you can use a Sphere with 10 or 12 Segments, and 0.4 on Hemisphere (squash) and it should look a fair bit better and use the same number of polys (if not less) Make sure you put the center of the pupil at the "pole" where all the segments come together to a single vertex.
The eye textures are a little unrealistic and slightly blurry. If you want a cartoony eye, then try to make it sharper or a little higher res (since the eyes are always the focus point of a face) and perhaps desaturate it a little bit, and then go back and put in little striations of saturated color, instead of the whole iris being solid vibrant blue with white blotches.
Also, on the eyes, you have the highlight (little white spots) mirrored so it looks like there is a key light from both directions. just take the UVs for one of the eyes and mirror it horizontally and then the highlight will show like it is coming from the same source for both eyes.
I like the style and the proportions seem pretty good for a stylized design. With a little polish this should be a fun little character.

[kromano]

ThreedyModeler, thanks very much for your feedback. I'd have gotten some work done but my desktop's gotten flakey on me. I've got a new mobo and proc running now but not much time. I hope to have more screens posted for further feedback soon however.

As far as texturing goes, the map that's on the head actually involved a pair of alpha mapped glasses which I removed, so that's eating up the extra resolution that the eyes used to have. I'm hoping to go for a colourful, stylized almost cell-shaded look in the materials rather than photorealism but at this stage my maps aren't there yet.

[kromano]

Update:
My PC works again, although I'm strapped for time. I'm rebuilding the head mesh with a new take on how to design the hair. It should hopefully make for a better, more stylized end product.

For now, here's where I'm at:
http://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/1234.jpghttp://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/1234lol.jpg

It is sitting (unintentionally) at 1234 polygons, but that number will shift as I model the rest. Please comment, I'm as far along as I'll get teaching myself, I really need advice to progress :D

[kromano]

I've started work on the hair mesh, haven't started on the back or tweaked it for optimal polycount yet.

http://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/head01_m.jpghttp://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/head01_w.jpg
http://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/head02_m.jpghttp://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/head02_w.jpg

[kromano]

Struggling on getting my maps to work out the way I want, but slowly making some progress. Here's the latest mesh:

http://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/h01.jpghttp://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/h03.jpg
http://members.shaw.ca/kromano/3ds/h02.jpg


Hmm, my 4th double post... erm, quad post?
I suppose I'll start a new thread when I have things fully textured and the body mesh complete.

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