A knight Character

#1

at the start, hello, I am new to this forums and came here to receive constructive criticism and be able to improve my 3d artwork.
I have been looking thorught some portfolios and got interested in this forum by its quality artwork.

For this model I was intended to do a cartoon character, It is a knight.
Since my computer is too slow to render animations I can just render it in a single frame.
The desire is to totally rig this character and pose him with his armor and render.

I have a model sheet, it is not totally correct in anatomy, But I could use as reference.

I didnt want to make it too realistic cause My purpose was cartoon.
the Low Poly:

The high Poly mesh:

I know it looks horrid until now, I am updating every time I get a new mistake I see.

I want to render with renderman and maya 2014.
I started with the low poly in maya and the high poly was made in zbrush.

I need tips/criticism mostly for modelling/sculpting and texturing.

#2

As cartoon approach what kin dof cartoon style do you want to mimic?

#3

Nice to see an answer, I was more like a realistic cartoon, with big eyes and realistic features.
You can see the character is strong , so to exaggerate I made his torso triangular shape and made big forearms as big elbow bones, you can see here:

knee is a mistery to me as I dont get the style I meant.
I tried to exaggerate on some muscles too, so they get the feeling of a strong man.
I think I got a bit messed with topology, I am in need to study how to do it in zbrush to get a better result.

#4

Try to mimic a good reference first, because I can see your anatomy knowledge need some improvement.

Best to start with something maybe less ambitious. I’m sure you can refer a a comicbook superheroes who has that kind of v-shape torso.

#5

v shaped torso:

I didnt mean to copy a style, I mean to get a sense of style together with practice.
redid some muscles:

thanks to clay buildup I got better muscle detail.
I even made texturing, but at the moment I am trying to make eyeballs work.

#6

Green: head proportions.
Orange: your character’s proportions are heavily shifted from your reference. The hips should be a lot wider, the torso is shifted up a lot.
Red: there must be a cavity. A ribcage is covered with relatively thin layer of muscles and looks like a cylinder on which front and back muscles are kinda ‘slapped’. So there must be a cavity.

Don't try to resculpt your muscles or bother with eyeballs and eyelids. It won't make it any better until your main proportions are established. Even if you are trying to achieve a stylish toony look, you should first fit all main body parts where they belong. The best way to go for you would be to work on body until it looks like some good genetic basemesh (large masses, smooth corves etc. There are lots of basemeshes on the Internet just google). And only then build all the details on top of it. If it's not what you're aiming for, then just download a basemesh and sculpt muscles on top of it, it will do better for you.

Trust me, we all went through the same struggle trying to go straight to detailing and texturing in hopes that fundamentals are just an excuse for those elder artists that they use to distract us from bringing them all down with our pure talent and awesomeness. Go back a few steps back and work on main shapes. I'd even recommend to throw away the legs for now so they won't distract you. I can guarantee, you will be surprised with the results.