Willemoes' model shop

[Willemoes]

Hello

For a while I released various models on jkhub and I thought I'd share show some progress on upcoming models and projects.
First a short introduction, I am currently studying to become a technical artist but I do have some experience in the gaming industry. I like to draw and paint and just generally keeping my hands busy with something is generally very good for me. I am in a jka clan wouldn't you know it which is called JoF and I go under the name Dr.Thundercock, I just chose the first ridiculous name that came to mind. However here I go by Willemoes.
I have played since Jedi Outcast where I was in a group called KOTOR and met someone named KOTORmrJay whom I happen to find on this forum as well!
I mainly work in Zbrush, at least for the sculpting and polypainting part.

Some years ago when I thought of getting into all of this, I actually just wanted to become a concept artist and at the time one of the many concept artists I looked up to was this guy called Chenthooran.
Brainstorm held these art challenges where you could get some free exposure, the challenge was to Redesign Darth Vader and instead of posting one concept Chenthooran posted one every day.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/48Zkl

I decided as a tribute to him to start on the first model:


This is how far I've gotten with it:




He's kind of like an emperor vader if anything, I really like it. Sort of like a mixture between Vader and Barron Harkonnen from Dune
Anyway I will be eventually posting some progress on this on how it will look when the texturing is done and also ingame footage.
I hope you like it!

[DrXann]

Interesting.

[Willemoes]

A tiny update with some info on my process

So usually I start out with sculpting and polypainting the model in Zbrush, I then bake out the material and polypaint as a kind of base color to the texturing process. But before I can start texturing I need to have unwrapped my character properly and that's when I retopologize my character meaning I will model a lower poly mesh that I can use later on when texturing.

This is it:



Considering the details I think 8500 tris is pretty good and should not affect performance. 

After having made my UV map and having baked out my polypaint I project details from the highpoly model onto the unwrapped one.
Then I start texturing and this is how far I've gotten:





I hope you like it

Take care!

[ZelZel]

Incredible design, I love it. Great job!

[Willemoes]

Hello

I ended up uploading the Vader model on here to anyone who want to check it out:
 

I'm happy about the result, though there is room for some improvements on the cloth I'd say, but all in all pretty fun project.
________________________

I'm working on something new!
When I started playing Jka again after a long break in around 2016 I didn't know zbrush at the time nor was I very well versed in modelling, but I still drew something in case I should ever get interested again and learn these programs
It started out as small drawings which I eventually continued to do iterations of.

here are some of the sketches of the development:
 

Spoiler

I began sculpting this a few days ago, but guddam there is just so much detail. I've chosen to take some liberties with the design and make some changes here and there, but overall I like the shape language of it now and how it's progressing.






This is a stage where the details are a bit rough and undefined, the goal is to of course refine it as much as possible so that the texture baking happens naturally.
I mainly use Zbrush as you would have guessed, but for the retopology I like to use Maya.
This character was originally meant for a different unreal game, but I thought it would serve as a nice challenge for jka. The idea was that the guy behind the head of this guardian shell is controlling it. It's a bit hard to make out in the pictures here, but the body of the guy controlling it is cut in half. Something about him surviving by using the energy force of this guardian.

I hope you like it!
If you have any questions just ask

[Lancelot]

@Willemoes

What you're doing with your models is outstanding. Each original character not only comes with a different design, but also with a different background based on your own world and concepts.

Your designs are very reminicent to the Yuuzhan Vong and the works of H.R. Giger (who created the concepts for the ALIEN films) and Rob Bottin (who created the creatures for THE THING, LEGEND and TOTAL RECALL).

[Willemoes]

On 9/4/2022 at 2:41 PM, Lancelot said:

@Willemoes

What you're doing with your models is outstanding. Each original character not only comes with a different design, but also with a different background based on your own world and concepts.

Your designs are very reminicent to the Yuuzhan Vong and the works of H.R. Giger (who created the concepts for the ALIEN films) and Rob Bottin (who created the creatures for THE THING, LEGEND and TOTAL RECALL).

I'm very humbled by these comparisons, they're all artists I have aspired to understand throughout the years. I also really like Allen Williams(artist behind pans labyrinth) and Yoshitaka Amano.
Here's an update on the model, it's currently weight painted and @Einaris now working on making the caps and helping set up the shader

Here are some images of the textured version of it of how it looks so far.





These are all renders so they don't necessarily portray how the character will look ingame. Hopefully not a lot is lost.

I did however take some screenshots of how the textures look in the viewport, which of course isn't completely reliable either but should portray the textures closer to how it will look ingame.





I hope you like it!!

[Willemoes]

Hello

I would like to follow up on some old work I have done with AshuraDX and Einar.

This was based on another drawing I did some time ago 

my sculpting process:

 

I then vertex painted it, I do that sometimes to build a base color. It's not exactly required and I have moved on to different methods since.





I then started texturing it based on this information.









For the mask part I was creatly inspired by this danish artist whose name I just can't remember. It's a bit embarrassing.

Anyway I hope you like it  

[NumberWan]

I think, the latter colourful "Jester' could nicely fit in Jawa's role. I can even imagine the Jawa moving animation on him.

[Willemoes]

Hello

I can see that my last posts was around November 2022. This has mildly put been a year of turmoil in the extremes of good and bad, but things seem to be beginning to calm down as my health is also slowly returning to a better place.

I wrote a long post about my experiences in the last year or so and I was planning on posting it here, however this community does Not deserve bringing in all the negativity that I have experienced and I want to keep the drama away from this place that actually has the nice people who help me. So I have posted that here:
 

 

I’m planning on posting some of the last work I did before I stopped playing, I made a few models working in the rend2 renderer made by SomaZ. I will post some pictures in the coming days.

[Aldro Koon]

16 hours ago, Willemoes said:

I wrote a long post about my experiences in the last year or so and I was planning on posting it here, however this community does Not deserve bringing in all the negativity that I have experienced and I want to keep the drama away from this place that actually has the nice people who help me. So I have posted that here:

 

There is always two sides to a story despite you clearly not deserving mine. I wholeheartedly loved Diego and his memory will forever live on within my heart and by extension, within JoF. As a family, we stand united and your own remarks following members cutting ties with you and us being forced to nearly kick you well before this news broke out will have to speak for itself. To think I even messaged you asking you how you were doing following the horrible news. May you find peace and comfort wherever life takes you my former friend.

You are still only human.

[Willemoes]

6 hours ago, Aldro Koon said:

There is always two sides to a story despite you clearly not deserving mine. I wholeheartedly loved Diego and his memory will forever live on within my heart and by extension, within JoF. As a family, we stand united and your own remarks following members cutting ties with you and us being forced to nearly kick you well before this news broke out will have to speak for itself. To think I even messaged you asking you how you were doing following the horrible news. May you find peace and comfort wherever life takes you my former friend.

You are still only human.

I wrote a reply to you on the post on reddit but as I wrote before I would actually prefer to keep this discussion there, I see you instead decided to write in both places though..

[PreFXDesigns]

I hope you eventually want to continue your workshop as you're a very talented modeler for this community!

If not, I don't quite understand the reason for bumping this topic.

Anyhow, I wish you good health and best of luck with any new projects! 

Weske

[Aldro Koon]

3 hours ago, Willemoes said:

I wrote a reply to you on the post on reddit but as I wrote before I would actually prefer to keep this discussion there, I see you instead decided to write in both places though..

Forgive me but I don't use reddit and so I have to reply here and have someone post there too.
The posts we have of him are publically available on the internet on his blog.
I don't have his will that is correct, do you by any chance have it?

All I have is 12 years of knowing him. From 2009-2011 and 2015-2023.
He wanted to help people, he put his articles out there there in both languages for people to read them.
There are those who have benefitted from it, myself included.

He was an active forum member until his final days and his replies were of high quality, always seeking to help our members.
We chose to try and honour that memory as we believe he would have liked it.
I wanted to be there for you, but both of my messages to you were left on read.

I am very sorry for your loss.

[Circa]

It is clear this is a sensitive matter between Willemoes and JoF. We try to keep a very neutral stance around here and only censor personal attacks and hatred. None of the original post contains any of that, and yet replies and PM’s to Willemoes definitely have. We have hidden those and are locking this thread.

we have no means or reasoning to investigate this enough to take a side. All we can do is provide a method of communication but only if it remains civil and is relevant to the public. He spoke his mind and any further discourse can happen privately if he wants it to be. Any PMs sent that he reports will also be dealt with.

If any JoF members read his post and were hurt or offended and turn around and be vile and toxic to him in response, you are painting the worse picture here and proving him right. If none of it is true, prove it. Threatening his life is absolutely not tolerated.