Dracula

[CountZero]

Great work, I like the style and especially the eyes. No crits acctually.

[Vertigo]

Thanks for all the kind words.

Kuman - I'm glad you like my style. And I was thinking the same thing with the eyes. The texture I have for the iris was only a temp one. I really want to go in and create a really high res texture so I can get this really stylized lines that sort of radiate out from the center of the iris, if that makes sense. You can kinda see it in my sketch. I may even try to play with a specular map to see how I can make the eyes pop more. I already started in that direction by giving the whites of the eye some self illumination so they appear even more white than his white skin. I'll try to get something up soon and see how you like it.

{dg} - Don't worry about the mistake, its no big deal. I plan to start unwrapping his face in the next day or two so I hope to get a render with his eyebrows up soon, so check back and let me know if you like it. I'm glad you like the stlye too.

gerMan - That the whole idea. Well, not an actual movie, but he will be in a short film I'm working on. I want the short to be the center piece for my soon to be demo reel.

CountZero - Its always nice to get a thumbs up on the overall style of my characters. Thank you.

Here's a rather small update. I just tweaked some areas slightly to make it look just a little more like the sketch. I pulled the collar of his suit and his cape down on his chest more. I'm thinking of opening up the collar more and put the tie in there. I'm more interested in getting to the unwrapping of his face and putting the eyebrows in though. I'll try to get a more interesting update up soon.

[kuman]

sup vertigo

yeah i hear ya on your ideas for the eyes. i totally agree, i have some eye textures if you're interesteded in using photosamples. personally i prefer to paint everything but the photostuff might work better. they arranged in strips, not like radial but like horizontal you get better res that way if you can get them laid out without too much triangle distortion on the uv side.

one of my suggestions is to use a strong specular hilight, like almost as if you were trying to do a realistic eye. i struggled a lot with my opera performer's eyes but i finally found a solution i liked. i'll send you a max file with that if you use max.

basically my suggestion is that if you have a really realistic/strong specular aspect to the eyes, it would really make them stand out from the rest of the model. and i think that kind of specular hilighting though, in reality it blocks out a section of the irises actually create the illusion of this clarity in the eyes if you know what i mean.

i think that clarity would really make the eyes totally jump off the image since everything else is so soft.

anyhow good luck, lookin forward to updates.

-k

[Vertigo]

Hey Kuman,

I see where you are going with your ideas for the eyes. It wasn't initially what I had planned, but I'm starting to get intrigued as to how it would look. I think I may give it a try. You're right about how the highlights in the eye can breathe life into a character. I'm just not sure how much life I want Dracula to have you know? He is supposed to be a cold shell of the man he used to be. Plus I've also kinda grown accustomed to the almost 2d style eyes he has. But again I am interested in how he would look with more realistic eyes. Maybe I can even find some balance between the two. That may look quite interesting. I'd love to check out the file you came up with, or just see other eye textures you have. I'll PM you my e-mail address.

In the meantime, I've started on the eyebrow texture. It somehow wasn't looking right to me, but I think its because I've been staring at him without eyebrows for so long. What do you guys think?

[rubberduck]

Nice touch with the eyebraws, kinda reminds me of a gnarly branch with thorns on it, goes well with the style

[Superkid]

hey vert!, well i gotta say i am impressed with your huge cast of characters for your animation so far, i love the simple yet not style, are you planning on making him maybe go poof and have his body turn into a small bat and have the same head. i am just tihnking those crazy old school looney tunes horror parodes in my head. good job though!

[Vertigo]

Thanks rubberduck - I had the same feeling about the eyebrows resembling thorns, it really wasn't intentional. But I like them. I'm actually making the points, or "thorns," less prominent than they were. I'll put up a quick render to show you.

Hey Supes - I didn't know you were on this forum too. Thats great. Yeah, I was thinking of having him do the whole turn into a bat thing, but he won't do that in the animation I have planned so far. The animation is set up almost like a really short pilot episode introducing all the characters. These ghoulish guys are supposed to come off as scary at first, which obviously by the look of them they are not that scary. So it should set up some funny situation for if I ever continue the story. I love that episode from looney tunes where bugs keeps turning dracula into various pieces of bat and man. "abbra-ka-pocus!" I think a bunch of looney tunes shorts are coming to DVD really soon, I hope that one made it on there. Anyway, thanks for the compliment.

Here are the new eyebrows. I hope to tweak out the skinning and model the props (the knife and glass with eyeball in it) this weekend. I'll try to keep you updated.

[saby]

cool character. I can only admire it. I love your style.

[Papaya]

I really like how the eyebrows flare sort of like the cape. And the black eyeliner is faboo. And the little fangs... love it.

He'd look stylin' with a ****** mary martini-type drink. But only if it has a cool swizzle stick. Love swizzle sticks.

[sarN]

looks great vertigo! i love your character and cartoony style

[Vertigo]

Poor Dracula, I've neglected him for far too long.

Well, after showing my family my demo reel and seeing how excited they got over some of my characters (especially the kids, they loved it) I've now got a renewed interest in this group of rascals and want to work on them again. I've gone in and started on the texturing of Dracula here. So far I'm working on the bump map mostly. I'm giving him wrinkles and such to make him look older as Dracula should. I've also started to give him some noticable strands of hair instead of it being one big black mass. I thought I'd toss an image up here to see if you guys like the direction I'm taking him. Or if you have any other ideas that I can put in the textures to add more to the character.

One cool thing I've noticed too is that my animated the bump map turning lower, he seems to grow younger. So that could be cool to see him drink his "******" Mary and it makes him younger. We'll see. Oh, I've also restructured his face to make his morphs work a lot better. But you probably can't even see that.

Crits and suggestions would be helpful.

Later

[OpticalDeath]

Great character! Love the expression on his face, kind of a laid back, "you humans are nothing but insects to me" kind of look to him.

[Desmark]

Its been said before, but this is a very cool character. I agree with what Kuman said about the eyes, I too think it adds some 'life' to the character.
No crits as such, just want to see more. I hope you're going to animate him

Des

[Corth]

I'm glad that you have a renewed intrest in this guy, dracula has always been a favorite character for me. I think it would be great if you got all you got all your characters together in one render

[Vertigo]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I'm glad you like what I'm doing with this character. I have a few things left to do on his face textures then I'm gonna do some basic textures for the body. I've started on the morph targets now. Once I've gotten a majority of them done I'll post them for you to see.