so i've been rigging asnd skinning the character as a test before unwrapping, putting him into a pose idea i had for the final in game render. but the shoulders are not deforming well at all. i looked at the polycount wiki and tried to match it as best i could on the mesh but they jsut aren't going right, or perhaps i'm messed up the skinning . i think i've alreayd solved the  elbows (which if i'm right was something i thought i already did but didn't, at least or the normal arm anyway). but yeah  pics below.

So I finally retopped him, it took me longer than i would have liked it too, i got confused around certain part like the hookshot arm. i wanted the tri count to match next gen tri counts, ultimately i'm still not sure what i good tri count is for a character. after reading edge magazine issue 267, it said  sunset overdrive's characters were about 40,000 tri's each.
 after doing more research killzones character were around the same too as stated here :
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-inside-killzone-shadow-fall
then trying to find out other game characters i found that ryse's character/s were 85,000:
http://gearnuke.com/ryse-downgrade-officially-confirmed-crytek-ceo/
and the main characters in Infamous Second Son were 120,000:(check page 71)
http://suckerpunch.playstation.com/images/stories/GDC14_infamous_second_son_engine_postmortem.pdf

I'm not sure how much of an improvement these tri counts make to the character, outside of the meshes having smoother normals which hug closer to the sculpt and smoother cloth, hair and body animations.

anyways here's a breakdown of the mesh as it stands 

still gotta sort out the hair clipping through the snood/jacket , I'm wondering if there's a physics trick to make the hair stand down whilst it's there and pings out as he runs around and jumps and stuff, or whether I'll just have to redo the hair to some extent . 

onto the next step for now

edit also closeup of head

 SO been a couple of weeks since last update. no real excuses for it so I'll just jump right in

 right now i essentially have the whole sculpt there now, think i need to tweak 1 or 2 things but it's all there now. above is a shot of every subtool together but i slowly break down the whole thing.

 here is a shot of the jacket on it's own. as with the cyber arm with the hookshot canon thing it clips through. when it's all retopped the jacket's sleeves will be retractable and so will the guys hookshot arm thing. i like the idea that an animator would be able to roll up the sleeves and lower the arm and hide most of the arm but it's hard to show with the sculpt.

 here he is with just a t shirt

 and here he is with just his trousers. i like the idea that he could just remove his clothing which could be used for game plots or cut-scenes or something, i was kinda looking at delsin from infamous second song and how all the layers of clothing on his torso looked like they acted separate from each other so i had the shirt sculpted to have a similar effect( though the jacket and shirt clipping though each-other is an issue i haven't figured out how to %100 fix as i can see it being hard making them not clip through)

 here's a close up of the head. someone named tobbo on the polycount version of this blog/thread commented on the neck being too long and the hands being too large. i fixed the neck but I've yet to figure out the hands and whether to big or not.

 also got the teeth and tongue  in the model

i actually spent a week- week and a half looking into hair techniques trying to find a technique that would allow me to model the hair quickly and allow me to tweak it on the fly, looking as sculpting and z brush hair/ fibers and a bunch of stuff. the only way i knew of how to do it before was brute forcing it, but it was a long tedious method and takes a long time to see how it's really gonna look, especially with this kind of hair which is lot's of fairly random sharp spiky strands

(the model i made from the old design you can see at the start of this page)

eventually i came across a method in max which consists of drawing sufaces on the head seperate from the model similar to this except i spilt it down the middle for more control
[img]http://www.hairfinder.com/techniques/4sectionparting.gif[/img]

 

then crated a plane and went into hair and fur modifier going into tools and clicking on instance node and using the plane as the instance.

then tweaking the size, number and styling to get the results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-TsteJQGg8
(here's the link to the vid where i eventually learned the technique from)

i did have to enlarge the spikes in order to cut the tri count to as low as possible( think it's 8,532 or something currently.

 

think i still need to model the actually hook and wire, which shouldn't take me very long at all

suppose i should start retopping, rigging then texture him soon. maybe start concepting a new character

 ok been about a week or so since i've gotten to work on this.
so i've got a fair amount of the folds in, gotta get more in on the main torso area, looking flat compared to the rest of the jacket. need to clean the folds up that are already there and work the trousers/pants, shoes and everything else.

 ok been a week or 2 since last update, went on a short holiday then got sick, anyway her's whats been done since the last update.
the clothing has folds painted into it. the reason why is that i'm going to use the polypaint and convert it to a texture map with uv master, make it an alpha and use inflate balloon in the deformation tool pallete to create the bases for the folds to clean up and edit.

 i've also got most of the mechanical arm essentially done and in place, i might be missing 1 piece of detail on the arm.
i'm still working on ideas/ plans on how to model/ sculpt the arm to animate the hookshot appendage coming from it. also how I'm going to create/ sculpt the piping, inorganic muscle fiber looking stuff underneath the arm.

also worked on the face a little more, still gotta work on the brow and forhead a little more, maybe the cheeks as well as make the eyes a little smaller/thinner.

heya been a few days since last update.

a guy who goes by uberren on the polycount forum version of the blog stated that there was anatomy issues, whilst he couldn't describe everything he did say the forms were too sharp. so i looked at some anatomy photos and began softening and improving the forms of the face and body. I'm still working on the face, palm of the hand, feet area and the back a little.

so got started on the sculpt a couple of days ago, I'm trying to go for realism and getting the anatomy as good as can, I'm aiming for a sculpt good enough to both retop and use as a next gen game character and something i could use for illustrative purposes.

i still haven't worked out exactly how i'm going to get the hookshot to convincingly come out the arm yet, same with how to tackle his spiky hair.

also worked on the face more, it doesn't look quite right to be from a more 3/4 view still so i'm still working on that

Been a few days since I've updated, been working on this final concept  during it. i'm still not happy with the (normal) hand, it still doesn't look quite right to me after spending ages trying to fix it( i suppose it's batter than before but I'm still not completely satisfied). anyway until i can figure out that detail I'm considering this done for now.

now I'm going to model him and work on other aspects and character's of the project now he's been finalized.

 

i also tried shortening his legs a little, so he's roughly 8 heads in this one whilst i think he nears 8.5 heads in the other. i did this to make him a closer to the "idealistic(loomis)" proportions and make it easier to model with the proportions being easier to manage at exact head heights.

tried some of the schemes i liked with the final concept to maybe give me an idea of what looked best.

started the final concept pose. not liking the hands at the moment they look a little awkward. also trying to figure out how to maybe make the bag look more cyberpunk/ sci-fi and work on the rendering a little more.

i decided to do another batch of colour scheme on some of the new selected costumes, some have the same colours as some of the preferred previous schemes on the previous iteration and some are new.

just some thumbnail/ quick and loose sketches for the final concept pose today

i decided to take 5 designs i was liking and decided to make a series of alterations to the designs to see whether or not any of the alerted versions look better

 Hey, been almost a month since posting( been working on it though, life and forgetting to upadte just getting in the way ).
anyway i finished up to portrait for now and started soing the final concept. when i got a reply on the concept art version from "rapxic". on this thread saying:
"pretty cool i like number 23

but in all fairness wouldn't all that clothing make him hot, i suggest ya give him a khaki pants, lose the boot straps give him a tite shirt without sleeves to show off the cyber arm, probably give him a futuristic night vision goggles to go with the stealth manner also give him a drone 
so he can send it in to scan inside of a house he's robbing or to alert him if there's anyone following.

as for the bags i think they might be outdated if you're going for futuristic, either design the bag to look or have a sense of the future.

and yes that mouth needs to be covered then again if he's a fast thief and strategic thief maybe he shouldn't.

number 19 in your black silhouette is very strong.

right now the guy you portraying looks like an ordinary dude who likes ninja stuff,probably lives in a cold place and goes to school, you need to show he's really from the future and you have to ask yourself how would his urban community be like so you can draft out elements to show that.also you can show him stealling something or about to.

take a look at Cable from xmen, the first thing that pops up is futuristic compared to someone like beast.

apart from that nice work.

Read more: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/276597-Project-creating-a-world-a-runner-and-a-ring#ixzz2zMQUIaAc

 i looked at the design i did kinda realized that aside from the arm his clothes don't look very different from what i might see on the street now( except maybe the split toed shoes and the leg wraps).  i sort of understood what was meant by the difference between cable and beast, but the the issue of making it look more like cable was the skin tight soldier uniform look is something i'm trying to avoid, going for a more civilian clothing look. the other thing is the goggles.i still want to at some degree hide the characters face,  and am too worried that goggles along with hiding his face might de-humanise him/ his head too much.

 it did however give me the idea to look at the moodboard i had made in terms of practical clothing and actions and proportion and look at them.

i looked at them and reliased i picked a lot of now looking images, and perhaps i should have made one or 2 just for the sci fi-ish/ cyberpunk-y clothing.

so thats what i did. i created 2, one for real clothing, that exists that struck me as somewhat futuristic, and one for fictional attire from games, anime, random drawing on the net etc.

 i also decided to to type out a few buzz words that struck when i saw these clothing and see how many images they correlated to .

  with that i started a second iteration from these, with more look into making the character's attire look more fictional/ futuristic, and work on outfits, with more focus on showing off the arm more.

i decided to look at all of the colour schemes and narrow it down to the one's i felt were better/ the one's i liked. i narrowed it down to 30, which probably isn't narrow enough.
however the one's on this page that stick out to me are 1, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15 and perhaps 30( which even though the colours are kind of too bright i do like it)

also got started on sketching out the final concept sheet.