DWIII - 3D - XP-58 - Aeria

#1

Ookay! I’m goin with CGS! :buttrock:

Friggin scared with all the good entries from all the forums but here I go! :scream:

After some sketching and thinking I chose this particular thumbnail. Asked several friends about what they feel about it without giving them the background and most of the responses quite matched what’s on my brain so let me try that here too. What kind of image you get with this silhouette?

I didn’t put weapon yet inside there and there’s actually somekind of a background story I thought before that, but I’ll post that later.

Crits & comments please. If anything looks like it’s over-cliche do let me know.

#2

The thing after some blocking out in photoshop:

Supposed to be an aerial invoker class. Thinking of fire element and cgs color scheme. Almost nothing show any indication of fire yet though, probably implemented through color and some effects later :shrug:

Decided to have an elegant, feminine feeling for this, I suppose the symmetrical design is also a part of it. I imagine she can fly without flapping by using magic to continually burst fire out of the wings (effect on the dragon’s mouth) to produce thrust. The pointy legs are what I tried to show some levitating feeling, let’s see how well it works.

The staff is just to be there as placeholder, definitely not what’s in my mind. Hell, actually the whole thing may subject to changes.

Now I need to go and flush out some more ideas …

#3

Really digging your design. The wings are looking insanely awesome. Since the staff is a placeholder, maybe you can come up with another one to implement the fire element.

#4

I agree the wings are looking ‘insanely awesome’. Fire would be cool and stuff but I think I’d go with the lightning/air catagory. Just because I think it’d be cool to shoot lightning bolts from the sky and use the wind to fly faster and stuff like that haha. She’d be almost like Storm from xmen though I guess…but it’d still be cool.

Then again I guess going fire would still have smiliar effect. She could just fly and shoot fire bolts from the sky.

Anyway you go I’m sure it’ll be awesome!

#5

looks really good! i especially like the wing details. the whole concept reminds me of one character in a demo reel i’ve seen from julianna kolakis. i think it could be good reference for you :http://www.kolakisart.com/WEB_gallery-images/goddess_sovanna02.jpg

#6

I think the scarf looking thing is a bit to rigid and should appear more loose and free-flowing, other than that I think it’s awesome. Really nice sense of depth shown with the values. Can’t wait to see this colored.

#7

Thanks for the comments guys! I intend from the start to have the focus on the wing, aside from the artifact. Actually before I had known that artifact should be either handheld or gauntlets, I planned the wing piece to be the artifact. I shifted some artifact features of that idea into the staff (still in paper) though.

Right now I’m exploring different main layout of the wing to see if I can come up with something better. I’ll post again in few hours.

Rion411: the fire elemental staff sounds like it can be explored, I may try it later.

eMysfit: element can still be changed, although it’s already shifted to fire at this moment. Like if I have the feathers colored in fire color, it looks like the dragon piece is sprouting fire. This make sense more than if I colored them white or electric style.

dmightyone: Thanks for the link! The picture looks awesome. I dig the clothing on the back, they do make her look floaty! That’s a good reference! Totally inorganic wings are cool and it did crossed my mind before but I abandoned it. Reasons are, first, I worried it strays into the path of the “machines”. Second, if it’s not metal, it may be recognized as artifact and then since I’d have 2 different artifact I may get disqualified. Third, continuing from the second one, I worried that the impression will become this

REKLAS: You’re right about the scarf. Next time I’ll try to get it more flowing like dmightyone’s reference.

#8

It’s coming along really well, I like the traditional feeling of the wings yet it looks powerful. Cheers.

#9

As dmightyone said it really look like this pic below which is annoying. I think you really change some stuff so it doesnt match with this pic. Getting inspiration is good, but your sketch looks like you really copy a lot of stuff, even the pose is similar.
No mean to be harsh but I think you should really push your design forward so it gets its own originality :slight_smile:

#10

CharlesVarenne: You’re right man, I feel that too. Don’t worry about harsh comments, that’s the way to improve afterall :thumbsup: I did received harsher one from my friend. Please check out the next updates :slight_smile:

#11

Heya

How about the wings are the fire? I mean her artifact (staff in this case) can be the power provider for them (you’d have to put visual cues to that though).

And im not sure if the artifact has to be the weapon, or something else.

If you’re going for the fire propelled idea, heres some more reference that might help you (sorry for the small image, couldnt find larger):
http://mtgdraw.com/images/darksteel/Furnace%20Dragon.full.jpg

#12

So here I got several thumbnails of different wing configurations. Some are still bare without any wing armor and stuff though :shrug:

If you notice, 9 is the bare version of the one that I’m using now. Fighter aircrafts gave me inspirations for some of the configurations :smiley: - 13 and 14 (and the rest of canard configuration) came from those canard+delta crafts like rafale. I didn’t thought of Su-35 while drawing 7 but it ended up similar. 10, 11, 12 are derived from berkut.

Morgado: When you say fire wings, somehow this pops up in my head :slight_smile: However that really sparked some idea on my head, thanks man! The weapon (sorry no presentable sketch yet, will come soon) is going to be a twin transformable thing with mechanism similar to chinese fan or umbrella. The modes so far are 2 x fan, 1 x regular staff, 1 x oversized wide area/heavy spell amplifier device. Additional modes popped up on sketch includes 2 x sword and 2 x magic shield. When you said “visual cue”, I realized it’s very easy to include 2 x booster that can be attached to legs, hip, or wings for speed bonus. Then there I can have my fire wings or something like that properly explained by the artifact. Thumbs 4, 11, 12, and 13 have this kind of weapon docked in booster mode.

#13

Nice scetches! I like 4,8 and 12. Keep it up! Good Luck!:thumbsup:

#14

Never seen that manga before, and that wasn’t quite what I thought, but more as the wings being generated by some kind of “magic jet”, and not flapping at all, but being the propeller of the aircraft… only shaped as wings.

As for the thumbs, nº12 held my heart, especially if those things hanging out of the shoulder pads would become something organic.
Nº14 is also cool

#15

I asked my friend around to vote. Including my own vote, it seems that 12 is really popular. I wonder if it’s the hanging things? :slight_smile: No.14 followed closely in 2nd place. I’ll refine this two and see how it’ll end up. Seems like nobody got problem with the dragon head so I’m going to implement that again. Some got problem with the current feet though.

So meanwhile, anybody got more votes?

#16

This is insane (in a good way). The dragon wings are awesome and I don’t think that you should throw those out. Whatever modifications you make, please please retain the dragons lol. I like 12 14 and 6. Six is really elegant and I’m a fan of elegance. Ten is a bit mechanical but I like the idea of having wings that are lower and more arched.

#17

Yep its the hanging thingies that give it the grace. Those will look spectacular if their something more than simple cloth hanging from the shoulders :slight_smile:

If you’re still in the mood of experimenting shapes, making nº12 again, but this time with the wings of nº14. I reckon it will give her a more dynamic look.

#18

I vote for no.4 and no.12…

they are quiet a like…
just that no.12 maybe a bit confusing…looks like she has 2 types of wings…
nice thumbs…^^

#19

I vote 10-12 :smiley:
The thing with having the wings low down is very appealing and original. And the rest of the design of 10-12 is great too.

#20

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Pardon me for the lousy pencil sketch but here’s no.12 and 14:

Since 12’s form is sharper, I tried to incorporate erm … slightly more offensive looking details. The other way around, 14 got slightly more curvy details. Well, may not be that really different, but whatever.

The hanging thing was actually planned to be a long feather like those on long tailed birds from the start, with extra color pattern variation. I added it to 14 but not in the front side. Difficult to place it in front since it’ll most likely cover up the dragon’s face.

I think I’ll need to speed up my work and nail down the concept so I won’t lose too much of my modeling time :shrug:. That’s quite an amount of detail to be modeled by a noob like me. Hopefully by the start of next month I can start modeling.