2021 Halloween Artistic Challenge - That's a (mummy) Wrap

[cranlox]

Sarra
https://www.mediafire.com/file/0imjsctgisazmsq/000_Sarra.rar/file

[BentonGrey]

Very cool, Cranlox!  I don't know the character, but great work!

[SickAlice]

My interest is piqued as well on whom that is, tried to look it up but couldn't find a match. Elegant work. I've been playing a lot with hair, fur and moss myself lately.

[cranlox]

A previous version of Wonai, although I can't get the hairs on her wrists with volume. And the hair moves unevenly in some actions.
He comes chasing the trail of Sarra
Wonai
https://www.mediafire.com/file/a66upmsyff58adx/000_Wonai.rar/file

A more realistic version of Gorutta Jones
Gorutta
https://www.mediafire.com/file/pnc4wfigb0le12x/100%2525_Gorutta_Jones.rar/file

[SickAlice]

They look good anyways. The trick is Nifskope for wrist hair otherwise, it's a bit of a patient process but something I'm using on other stuff myself. The above Lady Death actually for some dress/costume parts. Like the sloppy but easy is take hair parts from say the Beast nifs out there, put them onto the forearm of the desired nif, position and size them. The long way is make a 3d model yourself (or just steal one from one of my nifs, I make these things on and off) and use the method of creating hair/fur with the alpha channel on the texture. Looks much better though it doesn't work for spit in the first game given the flaw in rendering alpha channels.

The right way is to use particle emitters to create hair/fur like in the Monsters Inc. movie for example but I can not figure out how to get that to work at all. I know at least you have to know how to control the speed and movement of a particle which in this case you don't want it to move at all and then the height/distance as well so you can just make this long particle basically then repeat it all over the models body and/or select sections of the body. I've watched videos of the effect and it is very pretty, also it's supposed to be nice and easy on the game engines resources (fur models otherwise have a lot of faces of course to load and render).

But the alpha trick works just as well. When I release Lady Death feel free to look at those wrist parts and how it's done and recycle it, pretty much the overall intention of that project was to create a way for skinners to do stuff like that anyways. It just became the Lady Death character since she had enough costume variation to be used as an example for it. I'm looking at this winter for that release, I have a lot of keyframe work to pound out on that one yet that's very time consuming, real delicate stuff there.

Though aside the point you're texturing skills are above the grade enough anyways that I don't think it makes a difference and in game those would look excellent. A good developer knows how to beat the odds just using the texture and you have that down pact cranlox. Too bad we can't utilize normals, that would solve a lot of that but it doesn't look like they fully implemented that function these games.

[doctorchallenger]

Coming out of the shadows...



Part of a larger project. Details to follow.

[Randomdays]

This challenge has some great work entered, and brought, as Doc just said, people "out of the shadows".

Daglob would be very happy seeing the response the challenge has gotten.

[Randomdays]

Every witch should have a toad to go along with her cat... either for a pet or to throw in the cauldron.

A poison toad from AO. comes with blinking eyes, a long sticky tongue and an alternate blue skin. The black on top is the alpha problem again.

I've also got a more traditional giant frog/toad from NWN2 that could be rigged to the same armature with luck.

[cranlox]

auwww what a cute amphibian!

Thanks for all your patience Alice explanation.
I'm sure I'm going to fight with that to see if I can. Relatively I am satisfied with the characters. Although they could always be better.

[Deaths Jester]

Benton of the Grey Lagoon.

Ortho:

Spoiler

Action:

Spoiler

[WyldFyre]

Awesome Sauce all around!!! The great DaGlob would be proud!

DJ - Benton never looked better!

[BentonGrey]

Like I said on Discord, I love it!  He (I?) looks great!  It's a great Halloween treat! 

[SickAlice]

All this stuff is just pretty guys, seriously. Just top notch work going on in here.

[doctorchallenger]

Back after an absence. This skin is dedicated to DaGlob. The skope is dedicated to Cyber Burn. Two of the best of all. I will not claim to have been close to either, but their... departure... impacted me. I decided that the best way to honor their memories would be to shake off my lethargy. So that is what I am trying to here.

Lord Orlok

Inspired by public domain character: Count Orlok (from the film Nosferatu).

https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Orlok

Thanks to Murs, Gryphon, Tomato, Courtnal6, DarkJered, and Zed for bases, Texas Jack for the mesh and Grenadier, Ink, and Tommyboy for the pieces.

Lord Orlok recasts the character as a vampire in the Centauri Protectorate, my imagined galactic empire with a Jack Kirby aesthetic.

The design with the helmet was the original inspiration. The design is based on Kirby's  design for Mantis, who was conceived as an "energy vampire" (Kirby simplified the design a bit for the comics). This design serves as Orloks battle armor.

A word about the cape. Kirbys Mantis has this cape that attached at the arms and ankles. Dramatic looking but totally impractical in the real world. I think I came close using Inks Storm and Manta capes. The Manta cape distorts a bit, but in a way that works. I like how they form a bat wing like shape in the flight and hover animations.

The second look is supposed to be evocative of Orlok's original overcoat look from the film. The design is basically a recoloring of Kirby Ikarus design, but I like how it came out. It looks good with the cape too.

[BentonGrey]

Great designs and lovely skins, DC!  These are a fitting tribute to our fallen friends.  They would have loved them.

I enjoyed your descriptions of your design choices, and I can totally see the logic.  They do seem very Kirby-esq, which I love.  Great work!

[SickAlice]

That texturing job is marvelous. It makes me remember I thought about doing the classic Orlok. It was after watching Shadow Of The Vampire. How to pull off the whole rising stiff as a board from the coffin with his arms crossed animation though. I mean you have to have that in there you know?

That loincloths texture assignment. I knew I should have fixed that after I did Ebony Maw awhile ago. Sorry, sometimes I get lazy about that. I'll try and remember to get on a universal loincloth without a jaggled texture assignment. It's a shame for that for be done to such excellent work. I'm trying to be better about that stuff nowadays and go through and fix a lot of the bugs a put into the mix.

[Panther_Gunn]

Just wanted to post here real quick before I'm offline for the day.

doc, I could tell that was an old vampire from the preview, but I didn't think about Nosferatu (but I can see it now).  I did however immediately get that Kirby vibe.  I love it.

DJ, that is just plain awesome.  It makes me not want to be around BG when the moon is full.  Or maybe he needs to be hit with swamp mud to trigger the change.

In case anyone needs a little extra inspiration (although there seems to be plenty of that this year), I thought I'd re-post a perennial favorite from daglob.  He did these a few years ago, and I always like seeing them:

[Panther_Gunn]

Well, here we are, Halloween is gone, which means this year's "challenge" is over.  But as daglob would always say, "If you have something almost finished, please post it anyway, and we'll all look at it and enjoy it."

Honestly, this got way more participation than I thought it would, and it was all awesome.  And while I think he liked any participation (even if it was Mikey's silliness), I think daglob would have loved every single thing that was posted this year.  And for that, I thank you.   

I was going to wrap this up with an old classic, but when I went to grab the link, the site is no longer there.  Instead, the best I can do is post a Wayback link to the image, and you'll all have to go view it yourselves.

https://web.archive.org/web/20041225003955/http://www.stkp.com/POSER/GALLERY/halloweenhumor.jpg

[SickAlice]

I say keep doing these. I think more people are filing in as we head into winter, it's usually the season I become more active here myself for the obvious reasons. I appreciated seeing all of em. I was going to make full on Trick Or Treaters but I'm struggling physically when doing this stuff so my load is going to be pretty light for the year.

[BentonGrey]

PG, I think you're entirely right, and DG would have loved everything about this.  Thank you, everyone who participated.  This was wonderful in multiple ways.