How would YOU go about building this creature?
computersandmore
Posts: 131
in The Commons
Hey guys. Trying to do some illustrations for a book I'm working on. The primary alien antagonists are described as "bats if they were about 3 feet tall, quite rotund, and no longer capable of flying."
Here are some of my key concerns on how I will be able to do this:
- Wings: They don't need to have wings, they can have arms & hands...but it would be nice if there was some way to at least give them some vestigial under-arm skin or something that hints at the fact that they used to be able to fly. or maybe I put tiny wings on their backs and still give them regular arms??(they ARE aliens after all)
- Face: I know I can use the bat nose and bat ears to dial in most of the face, not sure if there are enough modifier to make their heads as "round" as I would like though. I don't wan't a "taller-than-wide" human style head.
- Body: Here's probably my biggest question. How am I supposed to get the body shape I am after? They need to be about three feet tall, comically round around the middle, and have almost no neck. I tried playing with height modifiers but the bodies still look way too "human". Think short arms, short legs and short neck coming off of a nearly-round body.
- Hair: I've got Garibaldi Hair so I guess I'll just be doing a ton of work styling and layering it since they're described as having multiple colors mixed into their fur coats. I have NO idea how to do hair with textures so I'm not even going to try.
So, ideas ladies and gents? I really need help on how to get the body shape/size where I need it more than anything else.
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Comments
Custom sculpt...
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here is what I've got so far. I just discovered that you can turn off the "limits" on the shaping dials by clicking the little gear icon on them and selecting "parameter settings". I'd used the gear before to reset a setting but wasn't aware that I could turn the limits off. Only had to do it for one or two small settings though. I started off by scaling down a normal G2M figure to about the right height and then using the normal shaping dials. The skin is from the chimp model but I'm going to be working on that.
closer image. going to start working on hair and skin coloring.
I like the chimp skin as a base...
I was going to do a quick sculpt...and even had a decent WIP done, except I forgot to export at base resolution, so it won't import. But it looks like you've got a handle on the shape. Be warned, though, using the shaping sliders/morphs with limits off may introduce posing problems. To fix, you will need to adjust the rigging and possibly need to create JCMs (same for sculpted morphs).
yeah I didn't use limits off for anything major like limb lengths or things like that. think maybe for the ears a bit or something like that. made sure to only do it on things that "shouldn't" be affected by posing (hopefully). thanks though, I'm doing fur coloring now and will post back shortly.
1 - forget G2m. Go to Genesis. Vastly superior array of creature morphs, plus once you've got one gender you can just dial in the other.
2 - pick up this: http://www.daz3d.com/strigoi-the-ancient-vampire ; It's got the geografts for wings and the proper anatomical structure and this: http://www.daz3d.com/street-rat-the-rat-man which has the headshape, texture and correct hands and feet. Plus a LAMH preset.
3. Mix and match and dial in various combinations 'til you get what you like.
For the wings alone, the Strigoi would be worth moving to Genesis (as opposed to sticking to G2M).
...for Genesis, DarioFish over on Rendo (can't post a link here) also has a set of alien moprhs: HFS Shapes for Genesis, that include both full and partial body morphs which include three and four fingered hands/feet and different leg/foot geometry.
If you already have Gen X2, you can transfer any Genesis morphs to G2M/G2F.
Yes, but not the geo-grafts, unfortunately. And then there's the fact that Genesis can load any M4, K4 or V4 skin, something that's incredibly useful when there's only one texture set out there that's close to what you want.
Okay I got HFS shapes, and I know that I already have Gen X2. How would I go about using the HFS shapes on my G2M figure? Thanks!
nvm, thought I had GenX2 but I don't. looks like it only transfers stuff from Genesis to Genesis 2 anyway and I've already just about got my character finished. Wouldn't I have to start from scratch to use it?
It looks like you've got a decent base for the creature you want. But I'm with many of the others here, If you plan on making custom creatures, Genesis is the way to go. There is simply many more morph forms availible for G1 than there are G2, and then there are the Geographs, such as Mermaid/Gorgon tails, four arms, wings (succubus and vampire as well as angle/eagle), Horns, and many other things. I attached my bat creature below, made with a few dial slides of MS-Lycon, Anubis, and Raw-Bacon. rounded out with Strigoi wing geograph. He is clearly not what you are looking for, and needs some tweaks, but thought you might like to see Strigoi wings in action.
Agreed, that and Sickleyeilds' mermaid handwebbing... both geographs saved me so much time.
cool. I will definitely do all of my future aliens with Genesis instead of G2.
I'm a scifi author so I'm always needing to illustrate what my aliens look like. I've done a few before, but this little guy was the most "alien" out of them yet.
GenX 2 transfers anything that you have clone figures for to any of the Genesis 1 or 2 figures. So, I can transfer characters even the most extreme characters for Gen 3 to G2F or G2M, as well as transfer all your expression morphs for Gens 4, 5 & 6. Including back and forth between G2F to G2M.
Sagas of the Terran Imperium
Okay guys. I think I've finished him. He's got dark brown fur with a few little streaks of yellow in there. Going to be doing some elders too though and they'll have lots of salt & pepper and some different color combinations as well as aged features and even fatter/uglier.
Skrikk Lieutenant is a major character in the first book of my new Sagas of the Terran Imperium series. If you're interested you can search for the Facebook page which has lots of other artwork (ships, planets, characters, etc...)
Looks really great, well done.
thanks
...very nice.
I have an old SF story I shelved a long time ago as I originally planned it as a graphic novel and saw how daunting that would be as a 'one person show" not much less finding a publisher.
Would be interesting to attempt creating the characters in 3D, however I would need something like Zbrush (which is way out of my budget) for creating some of the details, particularly one species which has two opposable thumbs (most likely would require creating a geograft and rigging it). Would also need a stable modelling programme to create the ships, structures, and other hardware. I still have a small file cabnet filled with the notes and sketches for it.
Even with Daz, a somewhat stable Hex, a decent Python VN engine (Ren'py), I've been working on a Scifi interactive choose your adventure story for over 9 months now, and am no where near ready to even launch a demo.... It is a lot of work... but I'll get there eventually.
Hi There!
Alien or not I think he is awesome and cute as heck!
Keep up the great work. :-)
~Dave
I will be doing some other members of his species soon, will post up results.
Look at the various goblins and occasional hobbits, especially those made for kids.