KNight's Custom Commander Adventure

Like I said in the post, basically everything that CAN be wrong IS wrong so far. Tonight I'll be able to give it an hour or two to really get it whipped into shape.

Mike

So some points;
- Waaay too much secondary color
- Complex shapes make it more awkward to do solid blocks of color on.
- Maybe too much Primary and not enough Grays?
- I think the finer details like Panel lining and other fine details will be really important.

Mike

Too much gray and not enough primary, especially on the torso and lower legs.
Secondary color quantity is fine, but if you need to get rid of some, then the center bulge in the chest needs to be removed, it's fine otherwise.

Something else maybe?



A little dark in the quick render but otherwise still accurate if very "flat" coloring.

EDIT; Yeah it's a bit dark so a non-fancy version;



Mike

Like it a lot already. But something feels odd about the spine/head. I think the upper half foremost element of the spin should blend in with the head, color wise. Either that, or the segments in between the vertebrae.

Right now, the head looks like it's somehow clamped on, not like an extension of the spine. And the spine itself looks really rigid.

Arms, legs and shoulders are fine. But the color distribution on the upper body could still use some work.

Still not enough primary on the upper torso...

Exterminans is right, the segments between the vertebrae should be primary too.
Also I'm not sure about secondary on hands - those spots may be a bit too big for solid secondary. I would draw some gray symbol (or even just a rectangle) on them - they're asking for it.
And a little bit more primary on torso and less on legs. Through that is entirely a question of taste - I don't know where you get the percentages you was talking about. Alpha and Theta are almost entirely painted while Rallus and Osiris have almost no paint on their torso at all. And I don't even think those examples are boundaries of artistic possibilities in that regard.

The percentages are from talking about it with Steve.

Mike

I just had to try something about the head/spine, hope you don't mind.

Honest to me that just looks "too busy" and isn't making the best use of the shapes involved. The spine kinda came about based on the Delta where it was a minor, but neat feature. I wanted to kind of take that and turn it up to 11 as it were, so I made it much bigger and more prominent and figured I should pull some inspiration from Necrons as well and see about doing some kind of red glow if possible I between the main segments, in that case I figured solid colors would work better overall.

I think the amount of primary is pretty close to where it should be, the gun/lathe arms will also have a fair amount as well. Legs might need some tweaking still thought.

The Secondary on the shields does probably need some tuning down, I had tried it a bit earlier but I think I'll focus on it tonight.

The shoulders I need to try some different things as well with the Dk. Gray, I think it should be Primary but with a Lt. Gray inlay and some kind of vent maybe?

Mike

Moar tweaking;




Lots of little tweaks all over, but looking at it again now as I'm posting this I think I might just ditch the Lt. Gray bit on the upper Torso and use suggest more panel lining and gray accents to make pop because it does feel quite busy otherwise.......



Yeaaaahhhhhh, I think I'll stick with that for now.

Anyways, a few pretty major adjustments on the Legs, I think they end up working out pretty well. Tweaked the Shields as well but I'm thiking that maybe making that section pure secondary might still be the way to go? there would be a fair amount of Lt. Gray from the Gun/Lathe arm as well and the shield could lose some visual definition that that and I still might have room for some Secondary anyways....

Tried that thing I mentioned with the shoulders and while my version is pretty unwieldy I think the idea itself does have merit at least. The Torso and Legs have spots that could receive similar treatment as well down the line.

The Upper arms are starting to feel weird as well, might try swapping a Gray and Blue on there.

Also as a complete side note, given the current name of "Tyrant" I'm kinda wanting to try for a "dark and gritty" version to better suite the name, might try that tomorrow for kicks.

Mike

That's looking muuuch better! I'd definitely pay for that comm now! Can we get a rotating version of the textured model when it's done?

Which one?

Mike

The second one. Torso is pretty much done. Spine kicks butts.

But legs and shoulders feel busy.
On shoulders it's hard to see the shape of those gray pockets. Maybe it will look better in game... And those tiny secondary stripes look weird. Again, maybe will look better when final.
On legs I would make tights mostly gray and knees/shins mostly primary instead of current mix of both colors on all parts. It's done in a similar fashion on other commanders and looks really well.

And hold on, is he wielding dual fabrication tools?

Yeah, like I said, I think the Idea for the shoulders is good and it's just my execution thast's terrible, also with just the "camera" angles involved right now you're almost looking at the shoulder "dead on" and they lose thier shape regardless of what the texture is.

For the legs, I'll experiment with the idea, not sure how well it will work out here because for most commanders the thighs are just really small compared to the lower legs but here they are pretty much the same size so doing it all grey might be too much but we'll see.

For the Double Lathe arm, that's just a side effect of Mirroring things, technically I only unwrapped one arm/leg then just mirrored it.

Mike

I agree with Teod on the legs, but the shoulders look fine to me.

You still never answered my question. ;p

Mike

Teod answered it! (second one, the one with more primary on the torso!)

Wow, this is looking great. I'm really liking the head design, as well. I find it slightly reminiscent of both the basilisk from black ops (the better veterancy mod totally broke it though, by multiplying its already insane regen) and some of the heads from AC4. White glint and aaliyah?

The one thing, though this may be largely preference, is that the line created by the head and two shoulders is very straight. Maybe if some part of the shoulders/upper chest was 'opened up' somehow, I don't know. I'm not much of an artist, sadly.

Also, I just spent like 2 hours trying to find a picture of a gundam model I used to have. It was far and away my favorite, and I couldn't remember what it was called, only what it looked like. Eventually, "mobile suit with the most boosters" turned it up.





You gotta admit, Kaempfer looks pretty dang cool. It doesnt particularly lend itself to PA style, though.

Oh, one other question @KNight, I know uber provides a rig for you to build your model on. Do they also provide the ability to define custom animations? It seems odd that the animations for a unit, especially one as prominent as a commander, should be configurable as well.

I'll answer for him: No. What would even be the point of having a standardized rig without standard set of animations? Picking between four meshes is the configuration you are talking about.