final sculpt render

Finishing sculpt

I have added some final finishing touches to the previously present assets and also added more that weren't added in the last update.

I was going to originally give the archer a elaborate glove on one hand to accentuate that he is an archer as I wouldn't be including the actual bow in the sculpt. 

 I started off sculpting this just to get a rough idea of the shape based roughly on the reference below. I decided after getting to this point that the glove looked too garish and took away from the previous subtlety of the design which was important to me so I removed it entirely.

I did like the idea of having one gloved and one naked hand though, having the dominant hand gloved would add a bit more context to the character.

I sculpted straight onto the base mesh that I used, on one hand a leather glove based on a driving glove and on the right a naked hand, this adds a bit of stylistic asymmetry as well as supplying context for the character, one hand is in more need of protection as he works the string of his bow.

I wanted to give the archer only one arrow, but a problem I was faced with is how do I present the arrow, I don't think an archer would bring a quiver just to carry one arrow so I had to think of how he might go about it, initially I thought of a thin rope around his back with the arrow tied to that but I didn't really have any idea as to how specifically I would go about making it.

I tried using a cylinder placed through the body to give the impression of  a rope hanging around his body, I used a similar mething for the cloth around his waist. I realised quite quickly that it wasn't going to give me the effect I was looking for so I went back to the drawing board and tried to think of something that would give the impression I wanted more, thinking about utility too, he would need quick access to the arrow.

I did some very quick sketches just to visualise the idea that I had, I think thought it look good and went with the overall aesthetic that I wanted to go for of a minimalistic set up so an arrow hanging from a rope around the waist would work.

I created an arrow quite easily in Maya and imported it, that created the rope by stretching out a small cylinder then I gave it texture using the standard brush I created the knot but just using the inflate tool on high intensity under the arrow.

Sculpting update

I had originally intended to create a whole new model for the helmet since I wasn't happy with how it was looking. Instead I decided to just add details to this one and fix some of the things that were wrong, like the eye holes being too round.

The Ottoman helmets I saw always had this ornamental headpiece on the front that I was reluctant to add as I didn't want the character to appear as just an ottoman solder. I decided to try it anyway just to see how it looked and I used shadowbox to create the pattern on the end. I actually really liked how it added some finer detail to the helmet so I kept it, since the overall design of the clothing is much different to an ottoman soldier I figured I would get away with it. I'm really happy also with how I made the leather ear-pieces, originally I was going to just add some rivets and alphas for texture but I had the idea to add some deformation around the rivets as the leather ages and became dog eared and loose. I just achieved this effect using the move tool in a short amount of time and I'm really pleased with the difference it made.

I haven't changed a lot in the body, I added some more freehand details to the drapery, I took what I got from the alpha and just exaggerated some of the curves giving it a more organic look.

I was reluctant to start detailing the pouches on his waist since I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with them yet. But after playing around with the leather ear pieces before I thought that after considering their use and wear it might be easier, so it really didn't take me long to detail one of the pouches by considering the contents and mass, then I copied that one and edited it to make the other one smaller and with less contents to add variation.

More alphas

I really liked using alphas so i took them and started working them over some other parts of my sculpt that I feel could almost be finished enough to utilise them and also to experiment.

Here is a close up of the cloth using the alpha texture, I am confident leaving it there for now since I won't be working on that subtool for a while now and I can easily undo it. I tried to be quite subtle about just suggesting the material rather than printing it over the whole thing in a really obvious way, as that is kind of the effect you would get looking at it in real life. I may have done this at too low a polycount but I can undo and increase that later if I need to, I may add some further detail to the creases first too.

I got a bit liberal with the alphas in the helmet, the reason being that I intend on redoing it later anyway (it's a placeholder for now) I just really wanted to experiment with some mixture of alphas to create different textures along the helmet. For example I used the lines on the top of the helmet to really differentiate the material and went with more smooth with scratches for the body of the helmet. in the cheek crevices I changed the material again adding a bit of texture as a stylistic choice and to add variation.

I used a premade chainmail alpha for the chainmail but I'm not sure how I feel about it, perhaps I just need practice but I am finding it difficult to get the texture consistent. I may try again but on the other hand I am wondering how necessary it really is to have it uniform anyway as it may not actually make all that much difference.

 I made this really quick mock alpha just to try it out on the helmet since I wanted some pseudo-Arabic kind of inscribings on it (I feel this gives the character more a sense of purpose, having a religion or creed) I think I need to make the background a 50% grey as the white actually makes the whole thing bulge out, I managed to minimise the damage using focal shift and the smooth tool but in my final attempt it would be better to not have to do that.

sculpt iteration

I took the loose idea I had from the sketch and started sculpting different iterations of the same design, initially the idea was to have most of the clothes loose material with only tight areas in the feet, hands and the middle of the torso where the armour restricts the cloth. I kind of imagined that this would just work with the archer image, making him look swift and agile.

I didn't like this at all, not only was the cloth kind  of awkward to sculpt for me but the whole design just looked very bulky and not what I was going for at all.

I decided to take the same design and just balance it a bit, I thought the 'skirt' looked fine but I wanted to change the top I though this would achieve the look I was imagining better.

I remade the upper body and not only does the whole design flow a lot better now but the chainmail coming from the helmet looks more fitting, not that that was a particularly important part of the design concept but I thought it looked a little awkward before. The chainmail guarding the neck but hanging freely gives more of a sense that this guy is not a conventional soldier, I think this reinforces the concept that he is a righteous law holder who acts in temperance. The fact that his face is obscured, even though I wasn't fond of that at first actually reinforces the concept too I think. 

the cloth was kind of giving me some trouble so I was looking at some reference images, I had been using some Jean-Leon Gerome paintings as reference as I already had some on my computer, so I used some of the characters in his paintings as reference to get an idea of how the clothes should look. I figured I could get a pretty good pattern using a rake-like brush so I had a look at the available alpha brushes and found one that I thought was perfect.

One of the problems to consider when using alphas I think is restraint, I could just rake the brush over but I think that at that point it looks kind of uniform and unnatural so I tried to be as minimalistic as I could, using a few stroked to suggest the effect that I was after, and I also found that switching between the zadd and zsub functions it created a more natural flow. I will certainly consider this in the future.

Some of the additional images I used/will use in reference

Helmet sculpt

I Actually created this sculpt some time ago after a hard surface sculpting tutorial but never got around to posting it.

I created it mostly using deformations and masks, I'm not 100 % happy with it now but I think I learned quite a bit, I might possibly start straight into trying to model the entire body now or come up with a few more variations of this helmet before taking it further.

The actual sculpt here was designed to be freestanding, the mesh coming from the bottom is actually a free hanging chainmail neck guard.

archer body detail

I before I started sculpting I wanted to get an idea of what the general shapes and materials would be that I would be working with so I created a very rough quick painting for the full body.

Next I'm going to create a slightly more detailed version of this then start sculpting, iterating as I go.