Character: H.R. Giger tribute

[markjtaylor]

And the second.

[springgreenhair]

looks great :)

but i have some crits
@1st pic: the tounge looks weird, and there should be another head, where a new tounge comes out...and the teeth look much too bright, i'd say(even in direct light the teeth aren't white)
@2nd pic...the front looks too clean...a bit blur would be good, in my opinion
the alien looks a bit too plastic like i think

[markjtaylor]

thankyou for the critiques, I do appreciate them

What your saying about the teeth in the first image. Yeah I realised that, thats why I checked out the aliens dvds, and corrected the teeth in the second image.

As for the tongue, your right.... it irritates me to look at it, it's fixed for the third I assure you.

And in the second pic, as for the plastic look. Now that you mention it I tend to agree. It's somthing to keep in mind, so I thank you for that. Your opinions are appreciated.

[CPUxtc1]

Despire the look of the first, I think they both look great.
How did you texture them? I have couple models of aliens and am having some difficulty with my texture maps.

[markjtaylor]

Actually your onto a good point. Getting the right "look" to the texture / surface was more challenging than I originally thought it would be. If you can remember the movies, the only real hint of detail you pick up on the aliens, is shown with light on the wet surface of the aliens.

I first concentrated on the bump map as it needed to be quite detailed. After painting a rather detailed bump map, I started to colorize it a little bit, with greens, browns, fawns ect. The at the very end, I adjusted the brightness and contrast of the texture map and really darkened the whole thing, so only traces and splashes of color were visible.

After I had a detailed texture map, and a detailed bump map, I made a very complex specularity map to get the light to hit in all the right places to bring out the overall shape of the alien. The trick is in the specularity map. Keeping the right areas of the alien dark, whilst bringing out the crucial areas (i.e along the side of the head / jaw area) with light.

Coloured spotlights were also used in the seen to project textures straight onto the model without bleeding them to the background.

[JasonA]

Nice work on both of em:) Yeah the tongue looks a bit strange in the first pic, but I think its cause it appears to bend or something.. Seet job on the model overall tho!

How about posting a shot of the model itself, and perhaps an unsmoothed wire? that would be cool. Great job man!

[markjtaylor]

Well actually after my third image of the series

I will be releasing the entire Alien model as downloadable content to the public. Head, Body, the works. It may also be rigged for the download, although I can't promise that it will be fully rigged yet.

However it is not far away.

[l7d]

Giger kicks ass, we need more people recreating his stuff in 3d - http://www.hrgiger.com/

[innervision961]

I'm affraid to even attempt Giger's work, because i know i could never do them justice, but man those pics are great i love them :buttrock: Keep up the good work!

[ThorFury]

Hey Mark,

Your images look great, I just have a question about his legs. I started building my own version a few weeks ago and have been through the DVD a bunch of times but never found antyhing that shows the legs in detail, just one photo that makes it look like he's wearing combat boots. Did you use a little poetic license when you designed his lower body or am I missing something?

Keep up the good work, I can't wait to see the third pic.

Gregg Wrenn
www.cheesewars.com

[markjtaylor]

Thankyou everyone for your comments and support.

ThorFury, as to your question about the legs. Your right it is very hard to find decent images to model from. Some of the later DVD's contained the legs however the "Alien" design was changed for the later movies, and I tried not to go down that road and stick to the original design.

I ended up using this image, I know its not much, but it works

http://www.hrgiger.com/images/alienfigli.jpg

Thanks for your interest. It's appreciated.

[CPUxtc1]

There should be a models trading area.

[markjtaylor]

I agree. I'm still thinking of where im going to host the files.
Hopefully it wont take too long and this bad boy will be available for download shortly.

[CPUxtc1]

I have a version but I need to work on the texture maps... I can't remember where I got the alien but I have the original, one where I made the legs more like the original and one where I took different parts and made a ... queen of sorts(with tentacles for arms and extra hands in front)... and added a sort of ant-like pinchers to another to make them look the the Sentinal from the Earth Wars comics.....
I just barely learned how to use UV maps but I would rather just get the UV maps from someone whose already made them... why do something that someone else already did.....

Anyway... Are you going to do anything special with the alien?
You should do some stories with them and post the animations.

[CPUxtc1]

I tried to post something but I couldn't get it to work...
I'll try later.

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