The Boatswain - Final Review

 06/05/22 - Week 17

Now that I have finished my projects I will review them over and see where I went wrong, could have improved or what I am pleased with and proud of. 

The Boatswain was the second project that I started in my FMP. I wanted this character to be a bit more stylised and have a bit more complications in it considering the simplicity of the first. This concept really fit the bill, I was also a fan of the style used by the artist and was hoping to replicate it. It also produced the challenge of weapons which is not something I've necessarily approached properly before.

Concept by Venus Bambisa:

I think this is probably my least favourite of the 3 projects simply because I don't think I hit the mark with the sculpt. Proportionally and stylistically, it is wrong. I did purposefully change the length of the trouser sag because it would cause many issues with rigging but this must have thrown me off with the proportions, I noticed this when comparing the placements of the guns and belts on the body. I think this sort of throws off the design features of the concept and I am not happy with the outcome as much as I could have been even though the changes that needed to be made is just a slight lengthening of the legs and enlargement of the boots, or boot cuffs. Similarly to the first project, I also needed to try to get a better representation of the style especially on the face, I tried much harder with this sculpt to get the style as accurate as possible but I still feel I missed the mark slightly. 

I did end up having to rush the weapons a bit too which is a shame, I didn't enjoy creating them too much but I learnt a lot about stylised weapons in general and my approach next time would be very different and with a lot more care in it.

Overall, I did feel that my sculpting skills were getting a bit better and the quality did improve, I just needed to apply this better.

Retopping went alright for this character though I do think in some places I could have evened out the topology a bit better like the trousers and some places on the face. I also had to figure out how to retop the weapons which I ended up redoing as I went very low at first, some of the parts were a bit hard to understand where to place loops and I definitely could improve on weapon topology as I think the outcome looks a bit messy.

The textures on this project were also something that I struggled with, at first I took an approach like the previous project which wasn't right as I wanted to replicate the style of the concept. I learnt about hand painting, replicating style and painting in lighting in my third project so I ended up revisiting this one. I am really glad I did this as before I think it looked even less like the concept, so I feel I was able to push this one slightly and give it some improvements. Even so, I think if I had the time to redo all the texturing I would have as it is just so far off how I wanted it to look and far off the concept itself.

Rigging and skinning in this project didn't go too badly but it definitely wasn't as smooth in the animation process. I found 3ds Max quite annoying to animate with especially because I couldn't figure out how to move the pelvis around apart from rotation which severely limited me and made me unable to have the classic idle pose so I had to get a bit more creative. I didn't want to spend too long on the animations so I tried my best here but I think this one probably looks the worst out of the 3. I also struggled with the pose as the one on the concept was in a quite extreme position. which caused some high deformation on the left arm since I haven't added twist bones to my rig. I am hoping it doesn't take away from my character. Again, I would like to get more into rigging and understand it more as I found it quite fun to bring my characters to life.

For lighting and presentation, I did end up changing the lighting a bit from the concept as I thought it was a bit flat and dark so adding a second back light and slightly changing its position really helped to make the character stand out a bit more. Realising that this character was a bit weak, I also created a toon line shader which I think helped this character a lot to be both emphasized and look more professional, so I am very happy with how this turned out even though the shader isn't the most optimized as that wasn't really what I was looking into.

I also made the decision not to create a proper plinth for this character as I think the set up I've created works well and is much more comparable to the concept. I thought having planks or something of the like would look tacky and not work as well.

Overall, there's a lot I would change with this project and I'm the least happy with it's outcome. I would have liked to improve more on it if I had the time but again, I would want to start over on the whole thing and try to improve from scratch which just wasn't possible in the time that was available. Time wise, I think I gave myself enough for this character but I didn't really have time to go back and fix things such as the gun topology and texturing, this had to be rushed or I had to work long hours to try to fit it in, so definitely more time for error needed to be given.

I feel I have learnt a lot with this project including in Zbrush, understanding texturing and stylised characters so it was a very good experience to have and I think it made it easier to get through my final character. I tried my best on this project and even though it didn't come out exactly how I wanted it I am still happy with it in some ways and I can see the progress and lessons that it gave me.

This concludes my second FMP character project.