Hulk-like hero (no name yet)

[XavierB]

Hey Guys! For may's contest I will make a Hulk-like hero (A very strong man), Don't worry I will not copy the Hulk, I will just make a similar silhouette.

I made a quick concept in photoshop, but on a scale of 1 to 10 my drawing skills are at 1/10... xd



I don't have any Idea for the head yet... My hero will have armor on his legs and two shields that he can use as weapon as well:P

I will use zbrush 4r3, 3dsmax, V-ray and photoshop. I believe I am a begginer since I started to make characters in january 2012.

And I am a 14 year old, french-canadian boy, who wants to become a 3D modeler for games/ movies

**UPDATE: this is not a typical hero like superman or batman, this is a semi-dark hero: kind of like spiderman when he wears the black suit: he fights the bad guys but is cruel.

My character is a wizard that doesn't grow old (he's about 200 years old), some of his armor piece are attach to him so he can't remove them or change them, that's why they have rust.
His powers are: resurect the dead, turn invisible, throw fireball and fly. (he has the power of the Deathly hallows in Harry Potter plus some cool powers haha!) The deathly Hallows are a big inspiration for the story of my character.

His real name was forgotten and he doesn't speak with no one (he can but I don't want to), all members of his familly were killed, he trained himself, he is the last wizard of his clan, he travels the world to save people from the force of evil who killed his love one and he is trying to find the bodies of his familly to ressurect them.

I hope that now you understand my vision for this Hero! **

Thanks, I will post WIP soon!

[Peter Donner]

Good luck!

[XavierB]

I started my hero in zbrush with dynamesh (from a polysphere). I was unable to create realistic forms for a really big character, so I changed the concept a bit, Now the character is more of a super-soldier, he will still have armor on the legs (and maybe on the arms), he will still have the shields, but he will have an shilouette closer to captain america or Master chief (from Halo). And for the chest I was thinking about adding either a sleeve-less vest or a vest that protect from bullets (sorry I don't know the english name for this -_-)

Here a screenshot:


The anatomy is far from being perfect! I will continue to work on it tomorow night!

Thanks for looking!

[dan]

Great start! Have you sketched out some silhouettes to get an idea of what you're going for? Doing that before going into ZBrush will really help you brainstorm the look of your character so you can focus on matching that rather than trying to sculpt and conceptualize your character at the same time. You can get some awesome tips on this process in both the Transforming Robot Production Pipeline Volume 1: Concept and Design and Creative Development: Character Concepting Workflows for Games in Photoshop with Eric Chiang tutorials.

[XavierB]

Thank you But I don't like to do a precise concept because after that I feel obligated to follow it... I use dynamesh as a concepting tool. I know that a lot of people like to do really good concepts but I don't have the skills for this! haha And I do have a shilouette in mind and a lot of reference (I want to go for a: captain america shilouette).

I think that (for me) having a bunch of reference is better than having 1 or 2 concept art (mainly because my drawing skills are limited)

[XavierB]

I tried to do the head and the armor today, but I failed, the head was horrible and the armor was even more ugly... I'm giving up for today, I'm gonna try again tommorow. I've never been good at hard surface modeling and human modeling...

I had a really good idea for my character's look but I'm not able to get even near to it...

[XavierB]

I started to work a bit on the helmet



I will add a hoodie to cover the rest of the head but I will have to find a way to make it! (I'll try with the topology tools)

The character is evolving a lot since I started, now I'm sure of what I want him to be: A dark hero, the kind of hero that saves people but the army and the police don't like him because he destroys stuff, and kills the bad guys except of giving them to the police to put them in jail... :P

So his armor will be rusty and he will be half human, half demon :P to make it more clear I want him to become like alex mercer in prototype, he kills the bad guys but is not very friendly and scares the normal humans.

[XavierB]

I worked on my character a bit and I think it's getting more and more ugly...



I don't know if I should start over or continue to work on it...

What should I do?

[emangiga]

When that happens to me I back up to wherei still liked it, and try again from there. Good luck!

[dan]

Thank you But I don't like to do a precise concept because after that I feel obligated to follow it... I use dynamesh as a concepting tool. I know that a lot of people like to do really good concepts but I don't have the skills for this! haha

That's understandable, although you can get better concepts the more you practice them.

The biggest benefit to doing concepts though isn't that you nail down the exact look of a character. Especially on a personal project you can give yourself the ability to have a lot of creative freedom still, but it's actually a lot faster to do concepts and get a better result. For example, in this case it'd let you get the silhouette nailed down to something that you're happy with. It's a lot faster to change a concept around in Photoshop until you're happy then it is to spend hours and hours or even days sculpting and then decide that you aren't happy with it and have to throw away all that work. Of course you're welcome to do what you'd like, those are just my two cents.

[XavierB]

Thank you Dan! You're right! Now I understand your point! I just drew some shilouettes in photoshop after seing your comment and I found one that is way better than this one! So I went back into zbrush and I changed the shilouette but kept the armor piece I added and now it feels way better. The character is now skinnier and I took more time to add the muscles and bones. The new shilouette like the one of the new tutorial about scupting a human marionnette, I followed the tutorial to do the body (But I made my character less skinny)

The armor fits very well on the new shilouette, I will add a screenshot in about an hour (I have to finish the shilouette first because it's not yet perfect!)

Thanks a Lot Dan!

PS:emangiga: You were right too, I backed up to where I still liked the body and modified it too make a better character and I changed the pose because it was kinda hard to sculpt with the old pose! Thanks

[dan]

Awesome!! I'm happy to hear you were able to tweak things to get it to look better! How long you spend on concepts can be determined by the complexity of your project, so it doesn't have to be incredibly long and drawn out for every project, but it will always save you time in the long run.

[XavierB]

Yeah you are right! At first I was scared that if I would have done concepts and shilouette I would have felt like I couldn't change it after it was done, but just a shilouette helped me to focus more and to keep the proportions right, before doing this the legs were too large, the deltoides where flat and small and the muscle just did'nt feel right!

Thanks again, since the final boss challenge you've always been a great source of help, Thank you so much!

[dan]

Anytime! I'm happy to help out! I'm looking forward to seeing how this Hulk-like hero turns out.

[XavierB]

Here is the new shillouette along with new pieces of armor



He is no longer Hulk-like but I like him better this way! I hope you do aswell!

What do you think of the shilouette and the armor so far?