Lunarman's Skins

[Lunarman]

I've gotta be quick. But just to let you see, here's a WIP of my avatar redesign:



What do you think of it so far?

Lunarman

[Shazam]

Nice simple design thus far. It'll look much better when you get the highlights and seam work done. Are you going to have the cressent moon on there somewhere?
The white is a bit grey and dull, you could get it crisper by using hue and saturation to put a tint of blue to it.

[UnkoMan]

People do tend to like a blue tinged white... But for this paticular design I don't think you need much, if at all. Actually... maybe just put the blue hued white on the refl layer. I think that could provide an interesting "moon glow" feel. Okay, maybe that's just me.
This is looking like a really good start, however. The tones used so far are very nice. I can't wait to see the finished project.

[BatWing]

great skin wip lunarman!

[Lunarman]

Right, the normal skin is done (that is, the non armoured one).

Here you go


And as well I did three recolours just for the sake of it: From left to right it goes Solarman, Lunarman Avatar, Lunarman 1st Gen



Comments and crit welcomed as always, I think these turned out quite well :).

Now to get the armoured one done.
Lunarman

P.s. the mesh is a nifskoped taskmaster with some TomV bits

[Lunarman]

And here's the armoured version:



What do you think?

Lunarman

[Alphanaut]

I like the non-armoured version very much. Well done. The only gripe I would have with those are as follows:

*the logos: Solarman's sun is slightly off centre and I believe you can smooth out the moon one a bit more.
*Solarman doesn't look "bizarro" enough, if you know what I mean. He kinda looks more like Lunarman switched his identity temporarily rather than his opposite from an alternate dimension.

The Amoured version, however, not as big a fan. I Think you'd be better off skoping the armour pieces onto the first mesh, adding more pieces to the armour and tweaking the transparency a bit.

All in all, good job though!

[Toxic_J]

Nice set of skins lunarman, good job on the highlights.

[UnkoMan]

Quite well indeed! These came out great. I'm really impressed.

Some notes though: The belt and... arm/leg bracers or whatever you call them... They seem unfinished. (Also the main skin's ones appear to be all upside down) It's most likely due to the fact that they go from darkest to mid range tone, but don't have any of the brightest highlight. Also, they are straight gradient from top to bottom.  Maybe try to add a bit of the highlight coming down, as seen in a lot of belts.

I don't know if that sentence made any sense. Oh! Look at my icon. Do you see how that line of grey goes down the belt? That's what I'm talking about.

At first I thought the moons were suppose to be a silver piece above the blue. But it looked really weird to me. Upon further inspection I realized it's cut out of the blue part. One I figured that out it looked alright, however... It has a bit of shadow. The rest of the blue doesn't leave any shadow on the metalic parts.  That's what makes it a little awkward. I would say try to be consistant one way or the other. Either way would look fine but both together looks a bit odd.

Also I agree with Alphanaut about tweaking transparency on the armor, and keeping the raised elements of the first mesh. I'm tempted to suggest skinning glowing eyes like in your micro and such... but this full facemask with blank eyes looks so sweet.

All in all... holy cow. This is some amazing work, really.

[BatWing]

lunarman and solorman!? :thumbup:
what will he think of next? :o

[Monkeyman]

Great skins, but one thing you could would be glowing white eyes like your avatar. Great job!

[The Pwime]

...


Okay, I'm Jealous.  :P

[AfghanAnt]

i like the idea of your moon armor

[the_ultimate_evil]

excellent work lunar. these look great. the only things i would say is maybe add some more detailing to the belt, and try and either lower or work around the emboss and bevel on the logos. its looks like its digging into the chest

[Lunarman]

I've released these now! Get them at my site (in my sig)

[UnkoMan]

Looking good, Lunar. I never even noticed the slight texture on the blue. Great touch.

I don't know if this is just a problem on my end, but in Ctool2 the armor isn't transparent. Looks pretty funny. I don't know if it's fine in-game or not yet, but I'll check.

EDIT: Yep, it's not transparent for me.

[Lunarman]

Captain has also been released due to requests for availiblilty

[Lunarman]

Hmm, it's been a while since I posted here.

Just a quick WiP for now



I've only got the Extras to skin now, and once they're done I'll put it up :)

His name is Acidnite, previously a Afghan forced into making biological weapons of warfare he rebeled against his masters. He mvoed to Japan where he build his own bio-suit complete with poison darts, rockets and radiation emitters. Once he was ready he returned to his homeland to free his impoverished people from oppression.

[Lunarman]

'ere he is



Comments and crit please

Thanks

Lunarman

[The Pwime]

i like the asymmetrical balance of the design, with one side having a thicker gauntlet, and belt pouches.

also, the silver gauntlet on his left arm looks freaking incredible  ;)

ALSO (hehe), i'm digging the very subtle use of texture on the green parts of his costume.  very cool.

[murs47]

Very cool, I really like the skinning job on the visor. The only thing that looks off is the neck to chest connection. All the green has nice seam work done to it, but where the neck meets the upper body it's just cut off. Maybe just put some green at the very bottom of the neck so you could add some more killer seam work in. That's the only flaw I could find if you even want to call it a flaw. The skin is quite beautiful. :wub:

[Carravaggio]

Looks good Lunarman, its great to see  you back on the wagon, so to speak. Nothing 'wrong', per se, just some thoughts, and these are small things at that...
The green in the visor, you have it as a gradient from white to green, i would have the white iin the middle fading to the green at the edges told you they were little things)
I'd be interested in seeing an inverrted colours version of this costume, that is, black where the green is and green where the black is.
the neckline where you have a green shape, i feel (personal taste is at play here) that the hood/mask of a costume shold, mostly, match that colour. I find using the black mask with a green neckline shows the limits of the mesh/mapping of the skin. Even a short neck line on the very bottom of the neck coloured green would work better, giving you a Deadshot type mask/neckline.
There is some large expanses of colour on this costume, mainly the chest and shoulders rendered in black/very dark grey. Consider using some seams to break up the shapes (look at C6's golden age characters, eg, crimson avenger etc. their costumes had obvious seams that make them look more like an actual article of clothing/costume rather than coloured muscles)
the only other thing i would suggest is moving away from a straight C6 base. CHange it, merge it with other bases, replace parts, paint over parts, make your own, ANYTHING. C6's bases were godsends in their time, and we appreciate them, but, man, you could be doing your own now.
All in all a very solid effort, I hope to see more soon :)
EDIT: I reckon Solar man would look more menacing if you changed his silver to black.

[Lunarman]

Thanks for the detailed comments guys. I'll gonna have a look at him again. Hopefully (inspired by Murs) I'm going to knock out a 5 step skinning tutorial today. And I'll rework Acidnite at the same time (that is, if I'm not playing the new GW).

Sadly I start Sixth form on Monday so it's unlikely I'll get time to for anything FF related save posting here.

Lunarman

[UnkoMan]

Yeah, this is sweet.

Crits? Well the neck thing was addressed. I will mention another seam thing though. The bottom of the green undies? You use a bright line. It should be a dark line, unless your skin is underlit for some reason, which it clearly isn't. Easy fix. The light grey line on the black parts can either stay the same, making it a molded seam, or turn into a slight shadow, making it green trunks over a black body suit. That's up to you. Oh, and as for C6 bases... throw in some crotch. I know, I forget to do it a lot, myself. I wish people would remind me. C6 bases are devoid of... people bits. Weird to talk about, but it looks lots better with them.

In other news, his arm bracers are totally crazy! Crazy awesome. It's a really neat design, and totally classic which I love.

[Lunarman]

Well, I was true to my word. I didn't post anything :P but it's the holidays now

This is a first ember of a team that never I designed but was never skinned.


Detail in here VVVVV
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Background: I was planning on making a space super hero team. Each of them based on an object found in space. They were to be called the Quantum Quartet (like a take on Fantastic Four) and consisted of Nova, Asteroid, Black Hole and Nebula. Nebula is an android made by Nova and he performs a versatile role in the team (think Mesmer, you GWers). He has acid burn attacks, radiation and knockback, as well as some direct damage energy moves, he can phase through objects also. Nebula is crafty and calculating but often coldblooded and violent; doing what needs to be done to achieve the objective.

You may see Blackhole or Nova (the girls) next week, if WoW goes down again on Wednesday :P

Comments and Crit are welcome :)

I'm not really happy with this one but I need some advice on how to fix it. For one, I'd like his stars to be more visible. Are they alright, or can you not see them (they're on the black btw). I dunno, any bigger and they look intrusive, but they're too hard to see :banghead

Also, the rust/corrosion on his metal just isn't right, but I dunno how to make it better. I know Car and DJ have done rust recently, any tips?

And finally. In my sketch the gaps in his body are filled by a cosmic energy in the shape of the missing part. Maybe a purple energy field thing (like the margonites in GW) or like Bao-Dur in KOTOR2.

[spoiler][/spoiler]
I tried skoping a smaller male_basic underneath and skinning it alpha/purple but it didn't work. Bits of the inside energy field would always clip the mesh. Any ideas?

Thankyou

Lunarman

[AfghanAnt]

I like the alpha work but I dont get the mouth piece? I love the idea though.

[Carravaggio]

I like the idea, as for the mouth piece I'm guessing its the 'speaker' that Nebula emits sound from?
Coming from one adorned with stars, I'd suggest copying the layer of stars and setting it to overlay, OR set it to screen then alter the contrast and brightness to make the white whiter and the darks darker.
I made my stars by googling a pic of a sky full of stars and simply overlaying above the black part of my Av's costume and overlaying a blue colour field above that.
Some comments:
The 'black' of Nebula's costume looks more like a dark brown to me. It might be a consequence of the background its on, but it really looks like the colouring they used on African's in golden age comics rather than the blackness of space.
A useful hint one of my painting teachers let me in on was that a deep blue is darker than the blackest black. The eye perceives the deepness and richness of the blue black to be deeper and more total than a flat black.
Either way you might want to revisit that dark colour because i'm not getting a space feel from it (yet). Maybe also get a star field that has a higher density of stars on it, that one looks a bit sparse.
Rust: Well i just googled pics of "rusted metal texture" and slapped (on overlay) that over the high contrast grey tones i had already worked up. It needed a slight colour adjustment to get the brown of the rust to show through. Then i used a dark tone to pick up the edges and detail i wanted to show through.
The energy idea...well i had a go at it myself to see if i could get it to work, i had a few ideas on how to tackle it...
First i just trie alphaing the clear parts to a half transparency, then coloured them purple. So far as i can understand it that should work, but i couldnt get it to, the alpha'ed parts were either completely showing or completely not. If you can get a 50% alpha to work, then that should be the easiest way.

Secondly i thought you could have a look as the lightning nif that Revenant used on his latrest storm skope. if you copied that, fit it inside the legs and arms like bones and increase its size until it  filled the appendage, then coloured it purple, you should have an animated energy field inside your character.

Thirdly i considered i considered skoping fire fx over to fill the gaps, but as of this writing i've yet to figue how to skope fx, they are tricky buggers. Although its just occured to me that you could copy some for of power FX from the game, in nif form and plonk it in there instead of the usual fx we are used to.

He's a a unique looking character, and you know how much i like originals, i hope you manage to avoid the foul beast known as WOW long enough to create another addition to this curious quartet.

[vamp]

Secondly i thought you could have a look as the lightning nif that Revenant used on his latrest storm skope. if you copied that, fit it inside the legs and arms like bones and increase its size until it  filled the appendage, then coloured it purple, you should have an animated energy field inside your character.

I was thinking something very similiar, except keeping the lighting small, making it look like wires or bare muscle. Granted, mine would be a lot harder, but both would look good.

I was also thinking about putting the fire_elemental under there, but realized that the little tale thing of his would get in the way.

[Lunarman]

I couldn't decide:

Clean version and Rusty version



I think I like the Clean one more, it just looks less confused.

[Carravaggio]

Yeah i gotta agree, go with the clean one.