Soma Yakihira - Low Resolution Model

While I'm still finishing Lord Beritra, I have decided to start what I want to be another fast project. This time, I will create a low resolution model of 'Soma Yakihira' from the popular anime and manga, 'Food-Wars'. 

This project has a few goals that I wish to address:

• Low poly

• No normal maps or specular maps, all just hand-painted colour on a single texture

• Easily animatable (such low-res that it skins easily and moves well)

• Possibly paint directly to texture map in ZBrush, instead of Polypainting?

This is the progress so far. The hands are not yet sewn onto the arms and the shoes have not yet been fully modelled. The arms also need some work while I try to get them in the right position. His face has no detail; all the facial features will be drawn on in the texture, with the idea that it could be animated using a sequence of 2D frames. Also of course parts of his model are not made at all here either, which is the next step of progress.

A State Alchemist - Fullmetal Alchemist

I've been working on three projects at a time lately, as much of a bad idea as that is....

So I've finished project Xiahou Ba finally, though I'm looking to get a small animation of him rendered out at some point, so will wait until then before posting his final renders. Since then, I have started a torso sculpt using Xiahou Ba as a base. The final outcome however, should look nothing like him. He will also be a simple sculpt, nothing more.

Alongside this, I have been recreating my old Jo White project, mostly to address her low quality yet high resolution texture issues. However, when I started to look at these issues I found a bunch more with her general design that I will now address too. These were all problems caused by not spending enough time on parts of her, especially towards the end of the project. 

My third project came to me while watching the original 'Fullmetal Alchemist' anime, as well as seeing what Koei have been creating with toon-shaders: 'Arslan Warriors'. This is the subject of this post. 

This is my 'State Alchemist' model so far. The end result is a hope of a reasonably low resolution model that makes use of toon shaders to look like anime.

The above image shows some design ideas behind the model, as well as future corrections, and a quick paint-over to figure out details later on. Many of the details will be achieved through texture maps as opposed to geometry to keep polycount down for this project. 

The first image shows blue arrows following the extended cloth areas. They signify that on the final model, these parts of the model will be rigged up to be dynamic cloth. They are modelled spread open like this to give them more surface area, allowing them to crumple and fold more realistically when gravity takes hold over them. 

The second image shows areas that need correction after studying the design I'm going for.