Action Hero- Project Seraphiel

[herekitty]

Kristen Carter

Hello everyone! I was going back and forth on whether I was going to have time to do this competition, so I decided to go ahead and start. I'll post what I have so far later on today, so here is my concept and idea:

As Agnes Halladay, she was a researcher and a scientist working on a very special project. Her team had made huge breakthroughs in the world of robotics- they were experimenting with using human brain waves to control high end robotic systems. Fascinated by their breakthroughs, Agnes had stepped in as a test subject to progress their work further. Unusually enough, after a few weeks of experimentation a peculiar side effect began to occur- Agnes was pulling small amounts of energy from electrical devices.

While running some tests on this side effect, the manager of the project brought the team untimely news. The company that funded their research had been bought out, and the corporation that now owned them was known for their no limits approach. The stories of grotesque human experimentation, bodies and minds crippled and destroyed by science, had reached them through whispers by colleages. This new unnamed corporation was unethical, immoral, and unapologetic. Paired with the new work their team was doing, irreparable harm could be caused to the human race.

Before the next day came, Agnes and her team had destroyed their labs and fled. After two years, they were able to find new financing and restart their work- with a mission to destroy work being done by The Corporation. By this time, Agnes could actually use the energy she was pulling to power new experimental devices. They had created new armoured structures that enabled flight and energy pulses to push and move objects. And Agnes could power and control them all. However, she had been known to unpredictably pull the power from much larger things, which made having a normal life complicated. At any point, she could take the power from a car, a train, or even a city.
That is when she ceased to be Agnes Halladay and became Project Seraphiel.

seraphiel.jpg

The school I work for has a 3D printer, and I've done some work with it, so I have a little bit of experience working with rapid prototyping. I know the sketch is rough, so I will describe it. Right now, I want to do some sort of pose with Seraphiel touching down on or jumping off of a surface like a gargoyle or a spire. Because of the wings, I want something to balance out the weight there.

Good luck to everyone. This should be good!

[cfree68]

Great Sketch! and I like the concept as well.

[askue]

can't wait to see this develop

[SolidSnakexxx]

interesting idea...the power to drain the city's power and stuff...this one is going to be interesting to do in ZBrush....with all the mechanical stuff... :)

[snoopalu]

I like those wings they look sharp :D

[herekitty]

I know we need to update these at least weekly. I am going to definitely be posting more often than this. Here is my base mesh. I am actually a lot further than this, but this machine doesn't have zbrush on it, so I will have current screen grabs up tomorrow.

I edited the topology on the base mesh, because there are always some issues (like the center) that I don't like when sculpting. I also fixed the fingers, since I always have had problems with z-spheres and fingers. The whole intersecting/overlapping geometry thing. I've seen some fixes to approaching z-spheres for this, and in the future I will try them.

So here is my non-glorious base mesh. My first pass is pretty much done, so you will see that next.

base.jpg

Also, I've recorded videos of the whole thing (with a few minutes missing here or there) and it has been quite fun.

cfree68- thank you, I felt like I should have had more finished concept, but I just wanted to get started

askue- me too. i've been waiting for a good excuse to make a superhero.

SolidSnakeXXX- I'm glad that you like it. Honestly, I'm actually looking forward to tackling a little hard surface work in z-brush. I've got some ideas.

snoopalu- They will be sharp. Very sharp. :)

[sazar26]

cool concept and im glad you desided to take part in this contest :tu:

[Gohanf22]

good start on the base mesh. i like your setup so far. very good. keep up the good work. :D :tu:

[wethand]

yeah, the idea is nice. and the base looks clean, so far. :)
keep going

[Moni-Poroni]

Hi Kristen...cool concept...I love your sketch...and nice start...:)
Best wishes

[herekitty]

Here is an update, pre costume. The body is sculpted with the idea that the costume will be pulled from it. I like when I get to make female characters really long, and I really like comic book style proportions. My next post will show the full costume, minus the wings. Those are next on my list.

turnaround1000.jpg turnaroundhead1000.jpg

Sazar26 - Thanks, I really like the zbrushcentral contests and am happy to be a part of it.

Gohanf22- For a base it wasn't bad. I'm going to retopologize it in the end, but it worked well for a start.

wethand- it worked well for the beginning, but I plan to redo the topology for the end result. Hopefully get a more even distrubution of polys as well. Thanks!

Moni-Poroni- Thank you. I need to show more progress, though.

[Gohanf22]

good start kitty but i think there are areas that need fixing. here ill list them for ya.

-the stomach area is going down too far into the hips. probably pull that up some.
-fingers dont look right. probably didnt get to them that well yet so your probably going back to them
-she is a tad too thin. maybe spread her hips and waist out some and it will be perfect. :D

all in all your doing great. just giving you some pointers on what to fix. heck, shouldve seen mine. it needed a LOT of fixing. nice work so far. :D

Edit: with the waist and hips, only do it very subtle to make her a tad wider. too much will not get the effect. :)

[cmoffitt]

Hey Kitty,

Very nice start you have there! I like the sketch and the sculpt looks even better. Very nice style and exaggerated proportions. Can't wait to see more!

[- FoOD -]

Hmmm very long proportions but I like them good start :D:tu:

[wethand]

i agree! the proportions are long, but that looks right! i like the style :tu:

[Moni-Poroni]

Hi :)
Her face is soo beautiful... really great start.
Can´t wait to see more
best wishes :)

[herekitty]

Thank you everyone for your comments. I wasn't sure if it was going to translate well that everything is stretched out on purpose, so your comments reassure me.

I'm pretty far into the costume at this point. Color scheme I haven't really decided on yet. I'm not sure if I'm going to light or dark. I kind of like the impact of the darker costume, but it could look nice as white with some accents as well. The name Seraphiel comes from one of the highest angels, so white would be more fitting to that, but I'm not so tied into that look that I won't go dark. Any opinions are appreciated

Here is a screen grab of my current progress.

webflat.jpg

And a darker version shown with just masks. No polypainting yet. I think I'm going to start a test pose before I polypaint. That way if all goes well I can snap her back into pose after the painting. Wings are before that though. I'm going to be busy.

webdark.jpg

And here is the hair. It was started as zspheres and retopologized, then seperated for polygroups. Right now I've only sculpted what is right next to her head. After she is posed, I'll be able to move them all and seperate the ends and make them look less corpse bride-like.

webhair.jpg

[Moni-Poroni]

Great! This looks really really great. I love her dress :) :tu: :tu:

and you´re sooo fast:)

[Harmonic]

Wow great update. She is looking fabulous! Very nice outfit design.

[Gohanf22]

looking good herekitty. very well done. i like the outift very much. :D :tu:

[Alliecat 08]

She's HOT! Keep it up.

[SolidSnakexxx]

Wow, fantastic update.....Just love the darker version...of the suit..it gives her more interesting look. BTW, I really like the shape you are going for...very model look...slender and tall. :tu: :tu:

[herekitty]

Thank you everyone for your comments. I decided to go with the darker look for texturing, which I'm in the process of now and am loving it.

Here is an update with the wings:


1.jpg

[jackdaniels666]

Nice, I'm liking the look of the mechanical wings.

[maxinkuk]

Very good work on those wings!:tu::tu::tu:
The character has a lot of style but it seems to me that her legs are a bit too long actually.

[jp_smith]

I have to disagree with Max on this one, this character's stylization is all about exaggerated, elongated flowing forms I wouldn't change a thing on the proportions. :tu: :tu:

[- FoOD -]

Sweet nice sculpt the wings remind me of Battle Angle Alita - very cool :D:tu:

[Moni-Poroni]

Yepp.. the legs are too long...
BUT I love this proportions...
it looks so cool :tu: :tu: :tu:
and the wings you´ve created are really great!
Can´t wait to see her couloured and posed ;)
Kind regards :)

[askue]

interesting wings are they going to be bigger in the end?

[herekitty]

Hi everyone and thank you for the comments. I just wanted to quickly post a progress update. Texturing is on its way, started before I posed. I just wanted a basic look before posing, because I know things will change after it is in the final.

Here is a shot of the new topology before transpose:

webtopo.jpg

And here are the starter textures:

webtexture.jpg

And one view of the final pose. There are a couple of different angles that I like, so I'll get a turnaround up next. There's obviously some intersecting geometry here that has since been fixed:

webpose.jpg

As always, any suggestions are welcome. I hope everyone's project is going well. I've had issues with transpose master, which really only put me about a day behind. Luckily I expected something like this and am learning ways to avoid those kinds of problems in the future. Basically, halfway through returning to the subtools after transpose, the operation quit outright and that was the only pre-transpose obj I had. I'm really pushing these poly limits though, so I'm figuring ways to avoid that in the future.

The actual posing was relatively painless, and those videos will be posted soon.

jackdaniels666 - Thank you, I made them even bigger (as you can see.)

maxinkuk - Thanks, I really do push the limits as far stylizing goes sometimes. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but this time I felt I needed the length for posing.

jp_smith - I see you get what I'm going for. I'm not always sure it will read exactly right, so I really do appreciate your comment.

Fo0d - I didn't look for reference on Battle Angel, but I probably should have. I think a little anime sneaks in unintentionally in my work sometimes.

Moni-Poroni- Thank you very much. I hope you like the ideas for the colored version. I'm curious to see what you think.

askue- I looked at it after your comment and made them bigger. Why not?

[jp_smith]

Kristen, I'd consider dumping the visor or goggles, whatever those are. They're really hurting the overall design, which I think is really good. The goggles seem kind of clunky and out of synch with your design....plus they obscure the viewer's connection through the eyes to your alluring female character. :)

[luis2008]

damn heres another one i missed. this is looking great. nice details in the suit. keep it up

[jackdaniels666]

Shes looking good, I like how the texture is looking so far. I think you should keep the goggles, I feel they go nicely with your character and they make sense because shes flying around.(Always wear protection.:D)

[Harmonic]

That is looking really good, I like the materials and colors you have going!

[jarlaxle00]

I'm no expert, but I agree with jp_smith about the goggles. Nice costume design. :)

[SolidSnakexxx]

She's looking good. About the Goggles, I think may be because of of its color or something, making it looks like a sleeping eye patch-night shade (Dunno if you understand what I'm referring to...so I decided to attach an image)

NIGHTSHADE_.jpg

[Moni-Poroni]

kitty - the topology is really great:tu:
and I love the colours! :)
Concerning the goggles.. I understand what jp_smith says..
but I think without them there would be missing something..
I think you´d need something dark on her head then...
so that the colours are balanced.
I´m curious how you´ll decide. :)
Anyway -great character. I love it! And the hair is so beautiful. :)
Best wishes.

[jackdaniels666]

Was hoping to see this character finished. I hope you get to it sometime. :)

[Moni-Poroni]

Yes, I agree. Hope you´ll show us the final piece! :)

[herekitty]

Moni-Poroni and JackDaniels666,

I actually got thisclose to posting for the finals, but the whole youtube upload and embedding thing got me at literally the last second, and my post was rejected when the contest sections closed down. I was really upset at first, but in retrospect I knew there were things I wasn't happy with. I decided it was good practice for time management for dominance wars.

But I did finish, and I'm really happy the threads are open again so I can post the finals. They will be up soon. I really appreciated everyone's advice and critique, and would love for everyone to see the finished result.

Oh, and the actual finalists were all amazing, and congratulations to all of you.

[Robbyh]

quick question, how did u make the wings !

[herekitty]

So here is the final beauty render. I think having time to let this sit for a while was good for me after missing the deadline. In the end, I was happy with it, and I redid the final render yesterday.

Robbyh: The wings were made out of simple cubes for the long, sharp parts, and cylinders and shapes from sweep profile 3d for the bigger pieces. Some of the pieces were retopo'd when needed, and some weren't. The cylindrical decorations were made with the radial symmetry turned on. The cutout pieces were initially created in maya with a plane, selectively deleting faces, then warped, cut up, and fitted to the wings in Zbrush. Overall, they were incredibly fun to create and play with.

The actual final render was 1200px wide, but I'll save your browsers.

seraphiel.jpg

And if anyone is interested, here was the transpose video, which had to be cut down quite a bit to make it under 10 minutes. As you can see, I dealt with meshes with very different density levels together. That was weird, but I knew what I was getting into with that.

v17495624tJ2tSAXw

I feel like I use this program so much, and yet I still learned a lot from this competition. And again, thanks to everyone who posted here and gave me critiques and encouragement. It really gave me the incentive to finish this, and I made a lot of good changes based off suggestions here (like losing the mask).

It makes me happy that contests like this are around.

[jp_smith]

Cool, I'm glad you finished her! She looks great. That's a cool looking base too. :)

[Marsyas]

Cool character! I like her long, slender body and those mechanical wings.

[Moni-Poroni]

Hi kitty, I´m really glad you show us the finished piece. :)
Clever use of the primitives!
Hope you´ll show us more work in the future.
Kind regards
--Moni--