Thursday 30 June 2011

Ellen Ripley

This week's project was inspired by the new title by Gearbox, 'Aliens, Colonial Marines'. The game looks great and the models are fantastic, but check out this screenshot-

Battle hardened marines anyone? I think I've seen these before somewhere. What made the Alien franchise so appealing to me was characters like these:

This game is being called advertised as a true sequel to the Alien series, so I hope it's got some good female characters in it. All I've seen from screenshots so far are male soldiers, but I'm crossing my fingers for the rare opportunity to play as a female character, even just in multiplayer!

I'm trying to make my own current generation model inspired by 'Aliens'. I'm giving myself one month to try to replicate this image in game ready 3D, rigged textured posed and rendered.

What an icon! The M61a Pulse Rifle was completed last week.


I started by studying Sigourney's face and making quick references of her facial landmarks like her very pronounced jaw and cheekbones.

Then went on to produce a photoshop painting, this took 2 hours and was valuable in understanding the shape of her nose.


Painted topology over a photograph.



Quickly blocked out a head mesh using 3DS Max and the topology reference, then put the mesh into Zbrush to check proportions after adding sockets for the eyes and mouth.



Fixing the topology, trying to get rid of the majority of triangles. This is the first time I saw a hint of Ripley in this model. Adding eyelashes really does make a difference, even at this basic stage. I noticed that her eyes looked a little too large when the texture was on so I worked to make them look more human.





So far this is a WIP model, I'm going to keep coming back to it as I model the rest of her body. The 3/4 view looks a bit off, her nose is wrong and her eyes are still quite creepy. I need to finalise the textures and build up a good normal and specular map, then get started on the hair.


Next Week:

Start on prep paintings for Newt's face and finish Ripley's. I've never made curly hair before!

Model, unwrap, rig and pose a horse. Maybe do some basic texturing on it if there is any time. I failed to make my little creature this week so need to pick up the pace. Crits welcome :)

2 comments:

  1. Have a go at sculpting her face in clay or something physical. I can't help feeling that you;re missing something essential in her skull geometry atm. To my mind, she has a very square head, seen from front on. Might be worth looking at Andrew Loomis' reference, I've seen a page of his stuff that shows different skull geometry. If I can find mine, I'll post it for you.

    You must get this right, as she was my first crush.

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  2. Yeah you're right, I'll dig out some sculpey. I'm desperate to make her look as cool as she does in real life! 62 and still looking great, not bad for a first crush :P

    Thanks for the crits.

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