Well I finally got around to the preliminary sketch. This guy has a neck that’s too weak and rubbery to support his head. A special hoisting device had to be built to keep his head upright. The device is strapped to the characters’ back and his head can be raised and lowerd via a crank (not shown). I hope to begin modeling early next week. Please let me know your thoughts.
Jim
I like it a lot, it is a cool idea for a character. I am interested in seeing it as a 3d character. I am looking forward to seeing your progress on this.
The majority of the model is finished. The “head hoist” is just a proxy object at this point. As is the neck itself. There’s still plenty of tweeking and optimizing to be done. Also, keep in mind that in order for the character to have proper balance he must eventually assume the proper pose as illustrated in the drawing.
Please offer critiques, comments and suggestions.
Thanks.
Ok. I had time tonight to do some detail work. :applause:
Poly-count is currently at 3,450. Whew! Gettin’ close. And of course this isn’t mapped yet. I find it helpful to assign different colors to multi/sub-objects.
I’ve completed the head. I’d like some suggestions for the eyes. I’d like to put spheres in the eye sockets so I can pose the eyes later. But, I don’t know if that would conform to the guidelines since the eyeballs would be a separate mesh. The other option would be to fill in the hole with polys and just map them along with everything else.
Also, I’m debating weather or not to give him alpha trans hair. 
Thats a crazy concept Option-cg. The model is coming along nicely. As for the eyes, if you are gonna follow strictly to the challenge rules go ahead and use spheres and then pose them. Once you have them looking where you want attach them and then delete the unecessary polys inside the head. That way you can have your pose and stay within the rules. 
heheh now this is a concept :buttrock: ! Very well pulled off and very original!
I cant wait to see how this turns out:applause:
Ok. I’ve learned to never say you’re finished with something until you’ve slept on it. I’ve done quite a bit of detail work since my last post and now I can say I’m just about ready to map the model. I just need to optimize first cuz’ I’m at 3,980 polygons NOT including the head hoist.
Also, the head hoist is not positioned properly nor is it completed. I need to rig the character and pose his properly before I know how the hoist should be arranged.
Please reply with your comments and suggestion at this point so I can make changes where recommended (if agreeable) before I lay out the UVs.
Thanks for the comments so far
Jim
This is mostly just highlight and shadow right now. There’s still a lot of detail and refinement to be done.
Looking good, you have got some nice muscle definition going on there, especially in the transition from the arm / armpit / shoulder to the chest
very nice.
I spent tonite fleshing out the face (pun intended:p ). I know the ear sucks but I’ll get to that eventually.
Please critique. I need brutally honest input.
Here’s my texture sheet at the moment:
You want some brutally honest input I honestly think what you have is real good, your character is probably one of the most original ones here.
Now this is what I would do next to the texture, once you have got the base muscle structure down, (which you have done very nicely), the next thing I would do is add some high frequency noise to the map.
When I see you character he reminds me of an old Asian man, like the Siamese twins Feng and Eng. So some details I would add would be: liver spots / age spots/ suns spots (they are all the same) some subtle noise on the base color layer of the skin, since old men dont have very smooth skin I would add a some color variation to the skin overall, by adding some grunge to it, not too much DONT make him look like he needs a bath, just some darker variations on the base skin color
a render cloud layer may be all it needs (set to some blending mode)
all just very subtlety. Also some stains on the pants would be nice. That would make it pop
One thing to note about using a cloud layer or slapping a grunge map over the whole thing is that it will make your seams very obvious, an easy way to solve that with, out any plugins, would be to fade it / erase it out to nothing close to the seams.
I dont mean to tell you how to do your work, it just seemed to me like with the brutally honest input comment you were sick of just getting complements and wanted some advice
so that was my 2 cents on what I would do, but thats just how I would do it, and I am not you.
I like the wrinkles you have on the face, nice detail
that sort of thing is what I am talking about.
I would also consider splitting your map up into 2 textures
you will have more room for detail if you scale up everything and put them on 2 maps
but you are pretty far along for that now.
Thanks for your input Ionanism. Your texturing skills are pretty awesome so your advice was well taken. I still haven’t touched the shoes yet and time is running out.:rolleyes:
Textures are DONE! :applause:
I think I’ve found the pose I’m going to use. I still have to map that “head-hoist”. Not sure If I’ll get around to building a set before the deadline though.:shrug:
Love the pose Optigon-cg, textures look pretty cool man. I like the addition of the scar… :applause:
This is looking really cool now!! I think that you need to make the veins less prominent, but make alot more of them!!
The skintones are quite yellow at the moment, it would be cool if they were more human, I think it would make the character alot more freaky . . .
This is a really great idea.
L8r Speve-O