Dagger - Finally Done!

So I finally took the time to complete the dagger I started on a long while back before being interrupted by christmas and the artwar contest among other things. Anyway here it is!

Blade of Eternal hemorrage by cobrabird on Sketchfab

I do think that my colour skills are improving, as well as my skills in the handpainted style, but I could still use a lot of practice. Should probably keep making many more of these weapons so I can really nail the style, fortunately I really like working with it. :)

Model in 3DCoat left, concept right.

I am not sure if I am completely happy with how the blade turned out as I think the concept actually looks much better, especially the colours. But compared to the textures I made around this time of year 2 years ago I would say that it is a significant improvement, in design, modeling and texturing.

#Artwar Character Contest: Briannon | Final

This morning was the deadline for the #Artwar character contest which I am participating in. Was going to post my final entry last night, but then their forum went down. :S
Now it is posted and the deadline passed, so I just wanted to share the final result (although it is getting ahead of retopology and texturing parts.

This is the very first art contest that I am participating in and it was definitely a challenge. I am not sure it was the best idea to try and learn so many new things when working on something like this as it did take me a lot of time that could have been spent to make the model even better. But I did learn a great deal of new things, and why not push yourself? It is definitely not perfect and would not have minded one or two more weeks of just texturing, but I did finish the character and within the deadline.

Although I would like to continue working on it, I am going to do the hard thing and let her go. I am just going to accept that this is what I could do at this point, with this amount of time and resources at hand, and move on to other things. I do want to brush up my animation skills and learn more about rigging creatures, so I will probably use this character to experiment with that however. But the rest is done. (Trying to convince myself)

Briannon - Centaur Druid by cobrabird on Sketchfab

Dagger Update

Its been a while since my last post so I wanted to make a quick update on the dagger I started working on before Christmas. I chose to continue with the s-shaped dagger and based on the feedback I redesigned it by combining elements of the concepts I made and tried to tie the elements together better. For instance actually making the top "points" holding the vial into the teeth of the skull instead of having both.

I also finished the model and UV-mapped it, currently it is about 1400 tris. I got some feeback during the modeling phase to straighten the blade out, to make it look more like a functional dagger, even though it is a ceremonial weapon rather than one used for fighting.

Even though Christmas got in the way, I have started the texturing, but I have not worked on it for awhile since I have decided to focus on my entry for Cubebrush's #Artwar contest. But I will get to it as soon as I can and post some more updates and eventually a finished dagger that is looking totally awesome and portfolio ready!

Next up I will write a post on my character for the contest!

Dagger Concepts

Since I already finished my sword, I was advised not to spend more time on it just because, but rather spend the final weeks of the Brushforge class applying what I have learnt on a new weapon. Since repetition is key to learning, I started concepting a dagger.



I went through the journey of coming up with a story, developing it with the help from some feedback, sketching, self doubt, sketching some more, wondering how others manage to create such intricate an gorgeous details, finally coming up with some sketches that do not look like complete trash and finally testing some colur.



Although I thing that my weak spot is still probably mostly in design, I really feel that I have leveled up in regards of colour, which I considered one of my greatest weaknesses before. There is still room for improvements, but if I may say so myself, it is a massive improvement from the coloured sketches I started out with in my last post about the handpainted sword.



Hopefully I will get some more of that awesome feedback that I don't know how I am going to do without and take one of these to the next level and then actually modeling and texturing it!

Handpainted Sword

Over the past 7 or 8 weeks I have been taking a class from Brushforge in handpainted weapons, where we have gone through the process from design to finished textured 3D model.

This is where I started out with my first coloured concept sketches:



During the first two weeks, a lot thanks to some really awesome feedback, it developed into this:



It is a sword that belonged to a paladin, ages ago, given to him by the High Lord. Whenever in the presence of danger it would transform and show its true power.



The modeling went pretty fast and most of the time have been spent in 3D Coat painting the textures, and I wish I had discovered a lot earlier how amazing it is for handpainted textures. I especially love the ability to export/import directly to Photoshop. I had a lot of fun painting this, and I think I have learned a lot throughout the process. Compared to the first sketches I made the end result is definitely leveled up. :)

And here it is!

Hand Painted Sword by cobrabird on Sketchfab