Wow! Thank you so much guys for your kind words! I’m so honoured to be in top row since it may be the very first time I post my work on ZBC!
@Aeneas: About the spear blade, we had to create a warrior who would use a magical artefact. That’s the reason why the blade is so bright. I wish I had more time to make more interesting effects on it though.
Maybe the kind of humour you’re talking about comes from a previous version of her magical weapon 
By the way, the concept was a paintover in photoshop, based on a quick doodle made in Zbrush with Zspheres.
For the turntable video, I used the MJPEG compressor in Max, I don’t understand why you can’t read this file :-\ I can play it in Windows Media Player 11, or VLC without any problem.
@ mradamw Thanks mister! I used Zbrush for the concept, the high res sculpt, and the base for my textures. Max and Photoshop did the rest.
@brettSinclair 
Thank you so much Brett! I’m so honoured that you posted here: your crayfish guy is in my favorite references folder!!! I love sea creatures and yours is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. You actually make me want to make another one 
@ gpepper: Merci! I used Max default renderer for this project. I wanted to try Crysis engine to test their shaders, but time was against me, so after few export errors, I came back in Max. Lazy me!
@ Iatriki: Thanks a lot Andrei! I wish I had your knowledge in rendering! You and Maddamart are so talented to give life to your sculpts!
@justin.jacot: My process is pretty generic I guess. I start blocking the proportions on a basemesh in Max or with Zspheres, then sculpt in Zbrush. I cut the character in many subtools, and had the chance to get the Subtool Master plugin right in time when I had to mirror hands or arms. Then I do the retopology in Zbrush or with Polyboost, and unwrap my final lowres with Unfold 3D. For this project I used the polypaint feature in Zbursh, but since I had my basemesh was different from my final lowpoly, and had no uvs, I transferred the polypaint on AUVs and projected the diffuse color from the high to the low with the Render to Texture in Max.
With this color base and an occlusion map in Mutiply, I had a good base for my diffuse map. The lightning is pretty generic too, especially for the first picture since complex lightning and shadowing was prohibited on this one. We were able to use a 3 spots lightning only. Here is a screenshot of it in Max:
@Slosh: Thank you very much! Dominance war is THE contest for character artists working in the video game industry. Each year the event is getting bigger and bigger, and this year, forums from various nationalities (Korean, French, English, Russian, Chinese…) were hosting the fight. You can find more infos on their website, and see the wonderful characters that were created this year and during the last two years.
http://www.gameartisans.org/dominancewar/en/index.htm
@onelasagnacat: Thank you dear neighbour! J I love your works!
@Morph division: I used the ZMaterial pack that Adam Lewis provided in Kolby Jukes’ new website:
http://tweakcg.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2071630%3ABlogPost%3A721
Thanks Adam for those!
Big thanks to everyone who took some time to post a comment!
Here is her background story, that matches to the Dominance war 3 story, for those who are interested:
At the dawn of the third millennium, the first killing machines fell from the sky like angels of death, come to change the face of our world forever. Resistance against the Biggun army was pointless and our people had no choice but to seek refuge in a place where the machines could not hunt us down: The ocean.
But as our morphology started adapting to our new environment, so did the robots’ technology, and the first submarine prototypes obliged us to descend even deeper into the abysses: Down there we discovered an unexpected fauna, but while fleeing from a threat, we awakened an even bigger one: Bioluminescent creatures of formidable scale, aroused from deep torpor by our arrival in their pitch-dark realms: Once more, left without any options for retreat, our people had to evolve to last, and we chose the art of underwater combat as our path to survival.
Then came the explosion, a thousand years ago. A luminous flash from space enlightened our world, reaching down to the deepest levels of the sea, and from that day, machines stopped functioning, their lifeless wracks being all that was left behind.
Robots were not the only one to be struck by the effects of the supreme weapon though, as our people underwent its ultimate mutation, resulting in a line of chosen females that could control the immensely powerful magical energies that were lingering in the dark realms: From our ancestral legends, these creatures from the deep, the Rusalki, are as beautiful as they are merciless: Air becomes water on contact, and when they venture onto the surface, tidal waves announce their arrival. Accompanied by other creatures of the dark that sense the power emanating from them, these awesome foes have mastered the ultimate art of invocation, controlling the spirits of the four abysses through a harpoon retrieved from the deepest point of the ocean, the artefact’s ominous glow flickering nervously in the hand of its cold-blooded bearer, waiting for the powers to be unleashed onto her enemies.
The mightiest among them, R’Zalka, is our chosen one, our only hope against an emerging threat.
Cheers!
Attachments
Lots of inspiration i must say!
