Finished my first Character, critique needed

@theluthier

Hi, can you check if i made  any  major modeling errors?  I was told to tag you for  any  creation questions .

"Error's" is possessive.  "Errors" is plural.  That grammatical error is the ones that annoys me the most.

williamatics The ones :)?

williamatics  My sincere apologies for the inconvenience. But do you have anything to say about the given topic, apparently my grammar seems to be worse then the modeling i ask about?

Dominik the design of your character is pretty interesting. The clothes seem well made. Did you use a special program or did you sculpt those? Unfortunately I don't have a great eye for things like proportions and such. She seems good to me in that respect. The part that sticks out to me the most is her face. It seems a bit static. For example in the eye winking pose. I half expect there to see the upper cheek to raise slightly and the eye brow to compress down a little bit . Without that kind of facial definition it makes it feel a bit flat. But this is for games so that may be the style you are going for.  Cool stuff Dom. Keep at it!

williamatics respectfully, Dominik asked for a critique on the character above not on his grammar. I'm sure there are screen writer forums that would appreciate your attention to grammatical detail. Here it's about the art and it's a disservice to leave such a comment and have no input on the topic at hand. Please keep that in mind.

Sorry, it's just that it really, REALLY annoys me when somebody gets a basic element of grammar wrong.  (You're right; I did make a mistake.)

It depends on what your goal is.

If your goal is to create a comic-like character, you've achieved that.
Doesn't look too bad, especially not for your first character.

What I find a little bit weird about her facial structures is that there are barely any "extremities".
The cheeks are flat, the nose is rather flat, her chin is flat, her lips are flat, her eyebrows are flat. Try to get some more variation in there to imply bones and muscle structure, like maybe inflate the cheeks a bit, or have her eyebrows come forth a little bit more to give the impression of a bonestructure, drag her lips a bit outwards.

That kind of stuff.

Other than that, looks good so far. Keep at it! :)

(You can google photos of people and observe shapes of their faces and whatnot, that should give you a better idea of what I mean.)

phoenix4690  Thank you alot for your feedback, the details of the clothes were sculpted. I was actually not going for that style for the face, i am just really bad with face rigging and weight painting, that is one of the things i really need to improve on.

@elensanima  My goal was a comic-like character. But i agree the face needs more work. Thank you.

williamatics  It is fine, to be honest i did learn something about grammar today because of you, so there is that.

pprojekt154 Dominik you did a good job I think. I also feel there's something off with the face of your character, maybe her eyes are a little bit too far away from each other. Try to get them clother to the nose and see if it looks better ?

Otherwise I like the character style, quite simple and basic colors yet very effective result.

Also, but maybe you're working on it as well, the weapons are lacking details in comparison to the character, and could have smoother edges so it better matches the overall style/mood of your character.

tbrbn  Thank you for the feedback, i tried pulling the eyes closer to the nose and that result felt really awkward to me. About the details, i went out of ideas... and i purposefully made the edges sharp so it  would look as durable as possible, is that a "wrong" approach?

pprojekt154 

There's no right or wrong :) It's also personal preferences. To me the edges seem to sharp, she could cut herself by holding her weapons with bare hand. Small chamfers could help, it doesn't need to have a big radius either.

On the image bellow I pinpointed some edges that I think are very sharp. Then again, it's personal preference, don't feel the urge to change you model just for my sake lol. I really like her equipment, you did a great job with their design!

The blade holder is also very jaggered (red dashes) and I think a smoother curve (orange dash) could look a bit nicer (plus it would match the curvature of the blade).

tbrbn  I see, not only is this preference its more like logical that that should not be sharp. I totally missed that. The Sheath was  on purpose like that because of performance reasons if this is going into a game engine. The Blade + Sheath  both have a total of only about 4700 Triangles and the sheath has only 286 of them.

This looks great! I love the cat headphones touch.

As for constructive feedback, the anatomical feature I notice the most is that the legs seem far too short, but maybe that's just the perspective. If none of these are orthographic view shots, it can help to include one.

The thing that detracts most from believability for me is the lack of texture. Perhaps this isn't your focus for this project, but it is important to consider in the long run. I don't think a model can be considered done until proper texture has been applied. I only see stripes on her hair and the inside of the headphones, for example. If there is texture elsewhere, it is too subtle. Even for a cartoon style, she looks a bit too perfect. This is just a side effect of using a computer for art. As artists, we must fight the perfection of the computer generated image and add our own imperfections. This will make the art closer to reality. Consider adding subtle tonal variations in the skin, some sort of hatch texture to the shirt to represent fabric, perhaps with the help of a normal map. Things like this really make the model shine. For texture help, the Piero and pancake hobo tutorials on here can't be beat.

You may not want to go back and retexture now, but it will add life and believability to your characters in the future. Applying proper materials also helps, which is in the tutorials above. 

Overall, a great start, and I hope to see more work from you!

Edit: Just noticed the texture on the skirt- that part looks great, details like that truly enhance the image.

polygondust  Thanks for your feedback ! I have prepared a few High res renders for you: First the Orthographic view :Then a bigger Front and Back view

And some close ups :The problem was that i tried to cramp to many objects into two sheets, i actually took my time to Hand paint all of the textures.I admit that the Headphone details are really subtle. But if you have any tips on improving please tell me, hand painting textures is the newest subject i am learning. Or maybe the problem lies in the Lighting and Camera setup? (if the details are not big enough press right click on one of the Pictures and select view image)

I have some things to note, as well:

• I agree with the facial feature critiques.  They look a bit generic, a bit glossed over.  Maybe a study of different facial features would help to develop your understanding and give her more personality.  In the image of her head being tilted, it looks like there's a ridge of her nose going up into her forehead.  Might want to review some anatomy to help fix that in the future.
• I think the eyes are a little bit far apart, maybe a touch small, as well.  My rule of thumb is to divide the face into 5 equal sections along the eye line so then the proportions work out more realistically.  Typically, I shoot for one eye length between the eyes and one eye length from the eye to the edge of the face.  Hope that makes sense.
• I think her eyebrows are too high.  She kind of looks perpetually surprised.  Or maybe that's how you rigged them.
• The lips look narrow in a width sense.  The corners of the mouth typically fall in line directly under the pupils.
• Can't tell if it's the perspective, but her elbows look too high, which is pulling the arms up and making them look short.  The wrist falls around the crotch level, then the hand extends from there.  Then split the arm length roughly in half and that's where the elbow falls.  If the character is young, she'll have perky breasts, which sit higher than her elbows.
• I think the lower half of the legs are a bit short.  Legs are roughly twice as long as the torso, and then the foot extends out.
• The palm section of the hand looks a little too "boxy" or "straight," if that makes sense.  It looks like you used a box and then added fingers.  Try curving that out.  Look at your own hand in a relaxed position.  It curves when relaxed, right?  You are your own best reference.  Use yourself!
• Hard to critique the fingers, but I suspect similar proportion issues.  That's okay.  Double check your proportions all the time.
• I like the materials and textures used in the clothing.  Brings a sense of realism.  However, it's hard to tell what those textures are unless zoomed in.  If you want to fix that, go for it.
• The clothing is a bit simplistic in the detail.  Maybe add a decal on the black shirt that subtly shows the character's personality.  Do the headphones have to be black or could you add some details there?  Do the stockings have to be a solid color?  Maybe you could add a snazzy stripe?  What can you tell us about her personality in her choice of clothing?  I know you said you were kind of going for a comic book style, so maybe adding details like that would help tell us about her personality without adding things like seeing the thread pattern.

• Figure Drawing for All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis - An excellent resource for anyone looking to improve their character portraits and proportions.  The art style is older, but the art instruction is sill relevant.
• Anatomy for the Artists by Sarah Simblet - Breaks down each part of the body from bones to the cardiovascular system to muscles and how each part of the body relates to each other.
• Character Design Quarterly - Talks about stylized characters, but has good tips for when you want to design a new character that isn't stylized.

A critique for the weapons because I completely forgot about them:

It's easy to reach for grey when you don't know what else to do with the weapons colorwise.  Fight this urge!  It's another opportunity to show her personality!  You can bring some of that red into the guard, hilt, or scabbard or some section of the guns.  Weapons can be highly personalized, so check some out.  Does she have a personal insignia?  Is she part of a company that has a recognizable logo that's on all her equipment?  Take a look at your favorite game weapons.  Why are they so memorable to you?  What makes them stand out from other game weapons?  How do they tie into the user's personality and design?  Does it make sense in the overall design?  Start developing your critical eye.  You got this.

silentheart00 thanks for all the feedback! Really helpful i learned a lot from this and i will definitely use when revisiting this project.

Funny enough my favorite weapon is the Desert Eagle. But you are right, overall details are lacking, while writing this i came up with a few ideas.

I played with the head around a little and tried to apply all of the ideas.I hope i made a mistake while sculpting, this does not look good to me.