Charmander Redesign

[wester]

So i've decided to pay a small homage to something that played a pretty big part in my childhood. I used to be obsessed with pokemon as a child and it really pushed me creatively and artistically.

I just wrapped up my last project and have some freetime to work on this guy. I'm going for a cinematic/movie quality model. I'm going to rig him and get one of my animator friends to animate him walking. I'm also going to do some fire particle effects for his tail and maybe a puff of fire during his walk cycle. Ultimately I wanted a pretty strong portfolio piece as i'm trying to get out of game art and into film/tv modeling. I think that doing a dinosaur type creature would benefit me in that respect.

So here's what i have so far on my Charmander redesign.

[WildDUcK]

much more violent version ^^ i like it.
But on the original, the fire looks more like a torch no? Yours looks like his skin is on fire (by the way the fire could be a bit more cartoonish to fit with the rest i think)

Keep it up !!

[astroAJ]

I agree with wild duck, the fire was at the end of his tail

[McKronic]

badass dude, nice job on the scales I know how tedious they can be

[wester]

Ehhhhh, I want to steer away from stylized or cartoonish. The point of this for me is to make it as realistic and plausible as i can. I want the flames to kind of slightly falloff towards his back as i feel like having just a single torched flame would look too stylized. It may be abit too extreme in my concept though.

The fire is going to be made in maya with particles to look as realistic as i can.

Yeah those scales were pretty painful but kind of therapeutic to sculpt.

Thanks for the feedback

[sarN]

realistic pokemon would be the most awesome series ever. well, the first 150 at least. what are there now like 6000?

model and render look great! you better do all 3 forms

[wester]

Yeah i agree with you Sarn. I'm going to try to do a quick shot of this guy on a live action plate. There are a couple fan films out there but they're horrible. I have some animator friends willing to work on it with me so hopefully by the end of this i have a pokemon short <------nerd

Also i'm not doing all 3 forms just going to see this one through and maybe revisit it in the future.

[wester]

Here's an update. Since i bowed out of the sci fi short film i was helping out on i decided to pick back up on this model.

Texturing progress.

[wester]

I am reminded how little about mental ray i actually know when i work on this haha.

The SSS on his mouth is going to be an interesting learning experience for me.

[luanpestana]

wow, very nice, its face reminded me the baby godzilla

[wester]

Thanks luanpestana! Ha yeah i used them and the little yoshi dinosaur from the mario live action. Both just awful awful movies but had the look i wanted for this guy

Here's some progress. Finished his mouth, tongue and teeth. Moving on to the claws next, then having a buddy do fire effects for his tail and then rigging/animation.

[setschaos]

I bet that if you posed his head a little higher up it would; A: fix his head size to tail size balance issues and also resemble the original even more. I would also like to see some color tests, maybe up the saturation in the orange top skin and yellow under skin. Play with that, I'm curious as to how close you can get the resemblance to the original while still gaining your realism.

Great work so far, I love it. Always wanted to make a whole host of realistic pokemon

[wester]

One of my buddies is doing the fire effects and rig for me right now. Here's his progress on it. Some crits i gave him were that the fire was all together too big making his tail look small, I wanted it to match my concept closer. I wanted the flames to be fairly smaller, and get bigger as they reach the tip of the tail. I also want the top of the tail to be on fire, not so much the entire tail.

-----Fire Effect WIP-----

[wester]

Almost finished him up. It's taking awhile since things at work are picking up. Hopefully going to try to finish his base up next weekend and call it done.

[WildDUcK]

Really nice just the flames looks like a photoshop modification and could be improved i think. Love the smoke from the nose