Sunday, March 22, 2009

DW4 - Weapon concept 1

You might think that I've just been to busy with the Dominance Wars to post anything lately, but honestly, I really haven't gotten much done on it at all. I really struggled with deciding on what kind of character to go for, but after a couple of days wasted I ended up going for a dwarf warlord character. I thought about doing a demon type dude, but I'm sure there'll be a shitload of those this time around, and I think I'll be able to get more character into a human(ish) character than some demon abomination with skulls and titties (you would be surprised by how many there are already ) flappin' about.

So, I kinda said to myself that I was going to wait until tomorrow with doing any more on this, to when I got back to the concepts I forgot at work on Friday (smart-ass). But as I got some left over time tonight after all, I ended up redoing the weapon concept.

The spherical watchamacallit in the middle was supposed to be a kind of window into the fusion reactor like process going on inside the weapon, taking the magic sucked from the surroundings into the characters backpack apparatus thingy and concentrating it into a beam of raw magic. But atm I'm really hating the looks of the thing, so I'll either turn it into more of a canister shaped deal or remove it all together and place it on the apparatus on his back.

The ornament pattern is just a placeholder, figured I'd try to give it some dwarfish ornamentation to make it seem like its more of an unique relic than just a run of the mill sentry gun. Might make those transparent to show what the sphere thingy is doing right now and to break up the mechanical shapes a little with some glowing bits.

Well, I'm off to study the anatomical proportions of dwarves. That shit is a google search made in hell, some things you just cant un-see...

Sunday, March 15, 2009

War is 'ere, so get to da stompin' boyz! Waaaagh!

Nerdyness aside, I just received an email from the Dominance War crew. First, they say that it will start on March 12th, then it gets delayed until the 15th. This morning I received this email telling me that it started this morning. 10 points for the awesome contest, none for the organization of it this far. This is just nit-picking though. The contest is looking great and they've managed to secure some awesome sponsor deals for it; Wacom, Gnomon and Blizzard to mention a few of them.

You can read all about the theme and contest requirements on the DW main page

Me on the other hand, I'll be scowering the interwebs over the next couple of days to find some great concept that I can steal. Err, I mean "to be inspired by", of course.

This is where I would normally say "Peace", but keeping in spirit of the competition, I have something thats a little more appropriate:

War! Waaaagh!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

An unfortunate series of events

As you might have guessed by the lack of updates, I didn't get the chance to finish the mini-challenge. A sudden illness in my girlfriend's close family quickly had me changing my priorities for the last 2 days of the compo, and in the end there just werent enough time to finish a decent diffuse and specular map for the model. I'll try to get it done at a later date, but at the moment I think I'm just going to take a chill pill and prepare for the main event, which is starting in just 4 days. My inexperience with the whole texturing and baking deal became obvious during this project, so there are some things I definitely have to brush up on before the main event starts. I'll check back with you guys as soon as the details for the main event surfaces.


Peace

Sunday, March 1, 2009

The Home Stretch

I think I'll have to settle with what I have right now as far as the sculpt goes. Deadline is tomorrow and I haven't even started on the texture, so I'm pretty much fucked. I'll try to get it done though, seven though the chance of actually winning this mini-challenge is next to none; a couple of the entries are freakin' awesome looking. My money is on Ced from 3Dtotal, his final entry looks insanely nice, and I cant say I've seen any others on 3dtotal or GameArtisans that comes close. I someone else takes it, it would have to be because they managed to get the theme through better, as that might be Ced's only weakness on this one.

Ok, so here is where I'm at right now, just gonna stick some eyeballs in that head of his and get on to the baking and texturing. Dont mind the intersection on the shoulder there, it fits in the low poly version.

Peace