Toro - WIP

So I've been tweaking Toro's textures. Trying to get my hand painted style to be consistent throughout all the characters, which is devlishly hard after spending so long on the course making realistic textures.
It becomes very easy to fall into a routine when creating different surface properties in photoshop that I sometimes forget to make it more stylised. 

I've been noodling about with different chest decals for Toro, I'll scan and upload them here soon.

*(amended)
Here they are - 

Design 5.

Design 6.

I'm going for the 5th design because it's not so obvious and it is the original design from my Toro concepts. I've become quite attached to it (I know, you shouldn't be precious about your work, blah, blah, blah, I'm sorry). 
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Here is a quick update with plans for more revisions -

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This is Toro's current state of completion - 

I'm going to add more variation on the surface of the chest and a few more little touches like nicks on the edges of the armour, studs on the leather straps and his boots. 

I want the balance of details to read well from a distance without becoming to noisy. 
This may take a few iterations but I will focus on creating the remaining Minions first and remedying the minor issues towards the end.

More to come............{^U^}/

For now here is a little dance......

Toro, Toro, Toro...WIP

At last - Toro! 

He was pretty easy to make and was modelled in close to a day. 

I've been splitting the Materials of my Minions into Multi-Sub Objects to enable Modification to their textures in a similar fashion to DOTA 2 characters. 
This also gives me more texture space for the entirety of my characters. 

More to come.............

Drake.....WIP

So....................\{>n<}/
Drake took far too long to make but he was my guinea pig. I had to test the rig, the textures, etc. 

There are still some areas of the Diffuse texture that need amending but I will get to them on my next pass. 

I've introduced more colour to the feather so as to separate it from the rest of the Diffuse when viewed from a players perspective. In hind-sight the blue wasn't quite right. 

Right now I'm happy to leave Drake and continue with the other 3 Minions. 
He's ready to be animated and the adjustments to his textures are fairly low priority. 

Experimental Test Bonanza

Here is a concept for the ruins that my Minions will eventually be posed in -  

I want there to be recognisable architecture from around the world, mashed together.

In this concept we have an Egyptian Pyramid, a Mayan Relief, Roman Columns and a Celtic Ram Figurehead.

The Minions will begin by emerging from a Mayan manhole. 

For now it's just a straight line through the diorama but I plan to focus on making it visually interesting.

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This is just me messing with hand painted textures and different surface properties. 

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I'm contemplating making multi-sided assets for the diorama. Whether this is just me being a bit miserly with the textures remains to be seen. It could potentially create a very awkward asset or a very convenient one.

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To test out the hand painted textures I built a quick stone block and dropped it into the UDK Foliage level - 

I tried out another, less developed texture -

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Here is the model of Drake uploaded via Sketchfab - 

There are a couple of isolated vertices causing some smoothing errors in this model which I have corrected. It's just one of those things that happen after you collapse symmetry. So far he is unwrapped (finally) and just requires texturing and rigging. 
Then it's onto the next Minion, which should take considerably less time. 

WIP - Unwrapping a Duck-Man can be troublesome

At this stage I've been focusing on unwrapping and rigging Drake. 

He has proven to be a real pain in the a**. 
Whenever I tried to relax faces in the UVW modifier it crashed 3ds Max. \{>O<}/
So it has been a very staggered, stop start process. 
Luckily I'm finally past that stage now and can look forward to what problems can arise from rigging a duck-man. 

I've split Drakes UVWs into 2 maps for Drakes body and another for his lance (still to come) using Valves DOTA 2 characters as a guideline. 

Main body

Character accessories and modular items

Drake's Lance

DOTA 2 Character Art Guide by Valve