Action Hero - Damage

[maxinkuk]

Action Hero challenge - WIP thread by Massimiliano Calo'

The background of Damage:

Damage lives in a post-apocalyptic world and stands for the small man.
After the final war the WMU (World Military Union) rules the world and lives of the plunging of the defenseless human communities that live on the inhabited islands.
But a couple of scientists working for the WMU and horrified by the results of their work run away carrying with them the weapon they were working on: the prototype of a genetically engineered fighter that they love as if he was their child, which in a way actually is.
They live on a submarine and from there they coordinate the action of Damage by hacking into the WME system and passing on the information gathered over to Damage.
His final goal is that of killing the members of the world's military Junta and take control of the army, but to do so he must first demoralize the troops, so he's on a constant action of sabotage and terror. Many in the army admire him and occasionally mutinies happen.
Damage has a mix of high and low tech gear that looks a bit home made because of the scarcity of resources in the post-apocalyptic world.
He travels fast thanks to two jet propellers attached over his shoulders, he uses them either in the water to accelerate his swimming or over the surface where he rides a tiny surf board, the board locks tidily on his back when he doesn't use it. He can fly, but only for very short distances as this uses a lot of fuel.
He's completely fearless and just better than anybody else at everything physical like resistance, responsiveness, sense of balance and so on, he also has an exceptional resistance to shocks, this allows him to propel himself at high speed against his enemies and be the only one to survive the impact.
He also has the advantage of constant information updates on his opponents' moves.
His main weapon is the multi-purpose tech-glove that he uses like a hammer when at close range but that can also shoot an harpoon that comes also handy when he needs to climb up ships or buildings.

[Teyon]

Interesting. A bit on the bulky side - kind of like the early Iron Man was - but there's potential. Good luck!

[SolidSnakexxx]

The initial sketch reminds me of the Rocketeer but with very interesting mix of various arsenal. I think the character's going to be cool with great weapons. Look forward to seeing it

[C-Mad]

...He's completely fearless and just better than anybody else at everything physical like resistance, responsiveness, sense of balance and so on, he also has an exceptional resistance to shocks, this allows him to propel himself at high speed against his enemies and be the only one to survive the impact.
He also has the advantage of constant information updates on his opponents' moves.
His main weapon is the multi-purpose tech-glove that he uses like a hammer when at close range but that can also shoot an harpoon that comes also handy when he needs to climb up ships or buildings.

GREAT description of the character and his power! The one phrase that particularly jumped out to my eye, was the "sense of balance." That REALLY opens up the action pose for you, since a hyper-sensitive sense of balance would allow you to pose him with some extreme body contortions, if needed, to better emphasize his cool tech-glove. It will be interesting to see the different poses you will be able to set for this character.

Great start!
~OM

[maxinkuk]

Thanks guys and girls,

Teyon, he's a big boy indeed, maybe because I imagined him as I was swimming at the pool, so Micheal Phelps was probably the original "base-mesh". Like him he has solid breakfasts, food is energy and he needs lots of it to do more damage. That's also why he pretty much looks like he's wearing some kind of light swimsuit, an element that I think will stay, only evolving in terms of design, it's also consistent with the saboteur commando type of action.

SolidSnakexxx, yes, Rocketeer is pretty much there among the models, I like that kind of old look technology with lots of copper strips and rivets, they're funny, that's the style his gear will be.

C-Mad, indeed. I did think his powers and gear according to what would allow me more flexibility with the posing. I intend to exploit the full potential .

[JEQ]

What can I say? He surfs!

[sendhilv]

Good man.....

[maxinkuk]

Thanks Sendhilv.

Teyon, don't worry it'll come, there'll be the day I fix his face in the menacing grin that his pose will require, in fact I'm just now giving him teeth, a pretty essential feature of most facial expressions.
Then there is all his gear that I must model and sculpt before doing any posing, it's quite a bulk and it's therefore quite important for the pose so not much sense in posing him without it.

[maxinkuk]

Here's a start on the gear. I actually made two versions of all three main items, the rockets, the glove and the fuel tanks, only that I didn't like any of them so I put in quite some work to come up with a design that I liked.
The fuel ended up as two canisters, I think I'll add a third one under the rockets to make it into a bi-component type of fuel.
It's only the start, lots of it is still missing and I think that it will take me about a week to finish all of the mechanical parts.

I gave him teeth though, and that's quite a job in itself.
I started with ZSpheres, one for each gum, that gave me the teeth already divided by polygroups. I then sculpted quite a bit but found the single block hard to manage, so I cloned it and then on the clone split the polygroups. Then retopologized just to close the gaps. Brought back everything into the main sculpt and using insert mesh ended up with one single subtool where each gum and tooth is a closed mesh which has its own polygroup. That made it easy to mask to isolate each teeth or gum and sculpt in comfort.
They also need some more work, but 20 minutes should be enough really.