"PAINTOVER PLEASE" - painted crits on demand - with Steven Stahlberg

#941

Hi Steven, the thread is very effective for beginers, so am I. Because of that I post here my last work. Im satisfied with it, but it looks a little bit flat. Some parts aren t very good and I dont know what to do. I hope you ll help me.

#942

Hi Steven. Just dropped by to say what a great thing you’re doing here. That’s very generous and kind of you. It must take up a lot of your time.

#943

Hello again Steven, I have another project that needs critique, it’s a 3D model I’m about ready to start texturing.

Texture will be a yellowish skin.

Thanks

http://home.comcast.net/~gabe687/githzerai-head-detail.jpg

#944

I have another project that needs critique

No, I really can’t find anything to critique there. The features go very well with each other, it’s very realistic and believable. Maybe the ears are a bit haphazardly bumpy… but then again no, they could certainly look like that on such a creature. And with all the texturing and shading it might look quite different anyway.

#945

YES! :buttrock: You just made my day.

Will fix the ears, I was thinking they looked too smooth also.

#946

I’m having a hard time with the anatomy design on this model.

To me it looks fine and logical, but people keep saying it just looks like 3 torsos stacked one on top of the other, the muscles should blend more.

I’ve been doing sketches on it but can’t seem to figure a way to make it look good and still be able to work realistically.

I tried abs all the way up but it doesn’t make sense. How would the arms move?

A long pectoral muscle, it would still need the divisions for the connection in each arm so I end up with what I have now anyway.

I’m looking at different animal anatomy but nothing is clicking.

This model is still early, so I can make some pretty drastic changes. I haven’t even started working on the hands or feet.

#947

The first one: The legs seem very much bigger than what the body could supply with oxygen and food… also the trunk should be thicker at the base… the neck seems too thin, both to breath, eat and hold up the head and huge trunk

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This one: not sure if it’s more like the movie, hopefully a bit…

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This one: you get a better impression of anger if you follow the major creases and wrinkles that appear when a person is angry

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#948

One last one:
You don’t need the deltoids on the lower 2 pairs to be as big as the rest, as they could never be lifted straight up anyway. I also squiched the pecs more, made his trunk shorter (spine seemed too long), and wider at the bottom, to better support all that extra weight

edit: I really can’t see this guy evolving like this, without the pairs of arms and hands being very very different in size and function. (i.e. one pair much smaller, different amount of fingers and shapes of hands, etc) Just look at what happened to our arms as opposed to our legs. Unless he’s engineered in a lab.

#949

Wow Steven. I was trying to think a little bit in the ‘how it works’ direction, but I just wound up banging out a model that would do for ‘alien and strange’. What you have done makes a lot more visual sense, and it seems like a critter that could fit into a world. A good overview in terms of approach and how to think.

Thank you :slight_smile:

#950

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. It opens my eyes to new dimensions of thinking for character design.

Instead of just drawing something out, I need to have a mental note of things that need to be taken in to consideration.

Function
Weight
Muscle build
Mobility
personality
diet
sex
life span
bone structure
birth type
biological composition
abilities
race
age
habitat
possible injuries
culture
story
situation
concept

and what ever else comes to mind.

seems obvious now, but I didn’t think of many of these things before.

I’ll keep the arms normal looking though, because of the concept art and I don’t want them to look like a birth defect.

Thanks again :slight_smile:

#951

Trying to second-guess evolution is tricky but a lot of fun. Like the game Spore should be, if it ever arrives. :slight_smile:

I try to imagine what kind of creature a creature evolved from.
At one stage we were brachiating tree-dwellers, so we have hugely mobile and complex shoulder-joints, surrounded by enormous masses of muscles (deltoid, biceps, pecs, lats). For instance cats don’t have deltoids.
Later we became plains-dwellers, so now we have a vertical pelvis and longer legs, with even more powerful but much less agile muscles than the arms (because legs only need a limited range of motion).

This character seems very similar to a human in these respects, so we should assume his evolution went through similar stages. Except I think he’d evolve a little bit differently as his species left the trees… the top pair of arms would probably remain powerful as with us, but either the middle pair or the lower pair, or perhaps both, could be smaller by now, used for closer fighting, eating, grooming, carrying a child, other more delicate tasks.

Or, to rationalize an explanation: there’s a particular animal his species depends on for survival. They run to chase it down, then grab and hold its 2 deadly stingers with the long powerful top arms, then disconnect its neural nodes quickly and precisely with the smaller arms. :slight_smile:

#952

Moderately smaller arms will work.

I’ll make some sketches to explore some options.

Thanks again

Update…

It’s a good thing you can edit the base mesh and re import it for the ztool. Never tried it before.

This would have been a bit of a pain to do with Zbrush’s standart tools.

The arms are bent a little, but stretched out, the top pair equals the full height of the character.

#953

Yes, that looks better I think. But the arms are still very identical to each other, maybe the lowest arms can be less ‘bumpy’ with muscles, and a bit straighter… like ‘wiry’ if you know what I mean? And the hand and fingers could be longer and thinner too. While the wrist of the top arms could be thicker, more powerful. etc

But maybe we should see another textured and posed version of this guy before we decide.

#954

Awesome Steven i really like your work, he’s definitly angry now :smiley: I like how you concentrate light only on the eyes part of the drawing, seems very photorealistic when seen as thumbnail. just a question, in my drawing i made a bright light in the background part that was directly next to the character to make it stand out more, you think it’s wrong? Any other suggestion would be very appreciated :slight_smile:
Thanks for your time

#955

in my drawing i made a bright light in the background part that was directly next to the character to make it stand out more, you think it’s wrong?

Mmm, I felt it was a little arbitrary, and not really necessary. It reduced realism a little, introduced a series of focal points that distracted from where the focus should be (the expression of the face), and actually, ask yourself, do we really need to make the character stand out any more than it already does? :slight_smile:

#956

you’re right, i’ll try to simplify my next works, there seems to be always too much distracting stuff going on, thanks :slight_smile:

#957

I need some tips about lighting in this one. Not sure where lightsources are, maybe dim sunlight from the sky.

I’m not after absolutely realistic look, but something that will look good.

#958

Hello there! :slight_smile:

I started a painting a while ago, and need some help with the light and the background. To me, it’s finished, I don’t know what more to do about it. I’d like to see what I’ve done wrong :smiley:

The background is supposed to be a spruce forest, and the creature is made up. The lightsource is upper left (obviously), but I’m not sure if the shadows are right though.

Thanks for helping :slight_smile:

#959

Mr. Stahlberg, with your kind indulgence, I’d like to post my observations about Wiikates submission.

Wiikate, this guy’s head looks SO out of proportion to the suit, that to my eye, it just doesn’t read well, long before your lighting issues. You also have his mouth too small for his face.

I, too, am somewhat at a loss as to any real lighting suggestions. I follow this thread faithfully, just to try to glean a litte more intelligence on how to make those particular choices in my works, so please forgive any adjustments that make this worse, rather than better, it’s just the way I perceive your image.

~C

#960

I believe he might have been going for some WH40K inspired image, and in that case he was quite generous about the size of the head.
Here are some references :
http://uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarines/artwork/images/17-big.jpg
http://uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarines/artwork/images/18-big.jpg
http://uk.games-workshop.com/chaosspacemarines/artwork/images/art-17.jpg

Just trying to help :slight_smile: