Egyptian (?) Sorceress (very WIP still)

Okay, trying another one, tho the previous zon skin probably was better. :(

Like the last skin, I'm trying to use a piece of reference artwork to put together a design. Actually, it's not very 'Egyptian' in theme IMO, but it's the only description that comes to mind.

This one's definitely not done, and I could use advice suggestions on:
-face and eyes/eyeshadow color (if any): sure, I like how the (barely visible due to the hair spikes in front) tiara is progressing, but...
-hair: both the shade of 'black' and if I should even attempt to put those accessories in her hair (wrapping back there sucks)
-shoulder pads: not sure if I want to keep team color visible or make it into a 'shape' on the pads, nor do I know design to give the pads themselves (as they're obviously not on my ref material)
-knee covers: the gold 'pads' above the sandal straps I mean by this...can't remove them, yet again having no ideas how to skin them

Two files attached, one of the reference image, and one of the current skin version. Obviously, I can't do the EXACT artwork's design on the Sorceress model, so keep that in mind. Also recall this is still very early. ^^

Feedback/remarks/suggestions?

Psy D

ooh, she's sexy ! ^_^

I like it ! :D
the portrait looks really great, she has really a serious look
the clothes are good, but maybe add more contrats on them ;)
oh and I like her hands ^_^

keep up the good work ;D

Pretty good job on the skin and Accuracy on the skin i would give it a 9/10

verry sexy... verry

i'm loving the chest design verry much...
shes more of a spider queen or something then egyptian ^ ^

hmm lets see.. suggestions...

for the shoulderpads, i'd suggest something with a spiderisgh desighn... maybe make them that dark blue shes got going on with golden spiders on them...
i wouldnt attemt to put anything in the hair... that'll be iffy
for the feed i dunno i think they look quite good actually...
make the eye shade (whats now reddish) more dark blue/purple, like het top...
the head thing (diadeem?) looks great..

and you picked one cool concept art to go from.
sexy too...

Ok, here's an minor update for anyone that's still interested/watching this skin. ^^

Only three changes so far:
-Hair given more contrast and made a bit darker
-Eyeshadow changed from a red-pinkish tone to a blue-purplish one to match her, um, 'dress'. ;)
-Shoulder pads' team color removed, made to match the dress color with gold fringe.

Any further remarks/suggestions? ^^

Psy D

Wow good improvements cant wait to see when its finished

the improvement is great indeed... the color abve the eyes and the shoulderpads just finish her off... they make it a whole, verry nice.

the shoulderpads still miss a little something though... they need some pattern i think... maybe cobwebs?

I think that you should keep the team color, it looked good. Its a very nice skin, and the portrait goes great with the model, good job 9.5/10.

Hmm, it just seems kind of plain to me. The colors don't strike me anything fancy, that's probably what it is. I think a darker, richer violet would look much better, but I can understand if you like to stay true to concept.

Anyways, I really don't like the black outlines you put over a majority of the details, I think it's more of an issue with how much detail you can cram into the tiny image rather than anything else. It's hard to shade it accurately when you have such a small canvas, which I can understand.

I like the design on her dress, but I think it needs to be shaded more like cloth, I'd give it a V shaped shading on it if I were working on it, although I'd have to check the unwrap to even see if that were possible. I think that some parts of the trim and the golden stripe above it could use some work with rulers to even it all out, so it doesn't have wavy appearance like it's not the same thickness all the way around -- this could also be due to unwrap. Looks like the details in that golden stripe are blurred by some stretching too, that's a shame.

On her legs, I'd give the top of her knee pad some brighter highlights and also down the front of her shin bone I'd give a V highlight that dimishes in brightness compared to what she has now. Or maybe start the V a little lower because of the shadows created by her kneecap.

You did well with her face, although it's not altered all that much, I hate that face Blizzard made for her; it's also used on the Assassin blp if you ever work on that one. I would make her eye shadow darker though as it goes to her eyes, because of her protruding forehead. Also a little brighter highlight on her pupil and a little ring of darkness around her whole eye will bring out her eyes more, you'll have to touch and go on this though.

Do you plan on changing the cloth draping on her arms? I think the grey sticks out and detracts from the whole skin, if you wanted to keep them like that, I'd suggest tying the grey in with another part of her skin, that way it wont feel so hostile to my eyes.

I like her fingers, but in some places it's just black, rather than some shading, I'd try to touch that up some but that's relatively minor.

I do love the necklace though~

Good luck and I hope my suggestions help, don't take them all to heart.


P.S. Why does the moderator give such vague comments? Rating the skin and giving a pat on the back isn't much help. Also, this is the correct way to give feedback, take notes in case you ever want to give me feedback.

it do looks like the ref pic, but i find the "0"s shapes on her robes looks like "o"s..there is few 0's but more o's.
changing the pink over the eye would fit it more, and maybe longer eyebrows...beceause in the ref. pic it's hugggge.
another suggestion would to make the hairs a tad blueish instead of pure greyscale.
and i dont think if it's possible, but you can remove her loin clothes and draw a bikini on the top of her legs, that would be creative, but i dont know if it would look like good.
awesome how you managed to reproduce the helmet, even the tiny ruby that its hardly seeable.
its great, but theres always some space left to make it better.

Ok, I gotta reply now so I have to a chance to get any further remarks, as unfortunately starting tomorrow I'll be away for a week and unable to touch up this skin. Starting from the v2 remarks:

ShadowFury: Thanx, hope it keeps improving. ^^

Ertwen: I actually was trying to put a golden 'spider' or sun-shaped symbol atop the pads...however, the wrapping/stretching up there is horrible for symbols. <:

Mantis: Thanx. I still may go back to team color, depends on what use this skin has (if any) in a map.

Kain: First off, much thanks for so much feedback. ;) Let's see:

-While I would like to stay close to the concept, I could see increasing the tone of the dress-color to something more blue or purplish instead of the pale mix the concept uses. I'll probably give it a try after detail changes.
-The black outlining is really just darker shades of the colors, with too much shading probably. As you said, just trying to do too much detail on such a small expanse isn't helpful (of course, in normal game views if say her thigh-bands didn't have an 'outline', that gold/yellow would be quite hard to see).
-The dress (I assume you mean the skirt, particularly the back) is a spot I knew that I wasn't done on. Currently it's just a generic/random pattern I whipped on the fly as a placeholder. I know what you mean by V-shape, as I had it in one stage of the previous sorc skin I tried, so I'll try to implement it here. As for the trim and gold stripe, I have to blame the model for the most part due to unwrap and stretching. I'll try to tweak it a little cleaner and more evenly, but basically the lower you get on that skirt, the less 'friendly' things get.
-Legs, good, I desperately needed some idea of what to do with those pads. ^^ And I'll work in the highlight on the leg itself.
-Yeah, the face is mostly the same still, just tweaked in color/shading a bit in some spots (mostly the sides)...and yes, I'm familiar with the hated Assassin's face, tho I"ve gotten it to look decent in a skin or two (tho still too 'long'). I'll work on the shadowing around the eye and eyeshadow to make them darker and the pupil as well (tho it's very hard to see here, of course). ;)
-I'm open to working on the arm-draping-cloth color, as it is rather drab, even in the concept work. I might make it more black than gray, or possibly to match her hair (which I'll mention the change I'm thinking of to in the lines below to raisinhumide, so keep reading there).
-The hands I haven't touched from the original Blizzard skin yet. Not sure how to 'fix' them really, other than putting some dark browns/skin color where the black is right now.
-Thanx on the necklace...probably was the most fun part of the skin along with the sandals/leg-straps and the 'webs'.

Thanks again for all the suggestions, and I'll try to work most or all of them into the next version. :)

raisinhumide:
-As I said to Kain above, the wrapping and subsequent stretching on the bottom parts of the skirt gets pretty bad, which is why some of the 'O' symbols are either smushed or too long. Very tricky to fix.
-The pink eyeshadow was changed to blue-purple in the 2nd version already. As for the eyebrows, I'll see if I can make them a bit longer without having them stretch to the sides of her head (again, tricky spot there).
-Hair: That's one problem area I wanted to fix still. And I think you're right about there being a blue tint in the black hair of the concept art. I'll work out the gray and make it more 'healthy' hair. ;)
-Yeah, that's one spot of the concept work I knew I couldn't do from the start. While I do have handy a custom model of the sorc which removes team color from it (and hence, lets me alpha out the loin cloth in front), the problem is the skin for the loin cloth comes from the outer corners of the skirt, so making the front transparent will also take a big chunk out of the skirt as well. I was thinking of perhaps putting the bikini 'lines' visible near her waist, but if the rest is blocked, little point to it I guess. *shrugs*
-Thanx on the tiara (which looks pretty good closeup) and indeed there's always room to improve on a skin. ^^

Thanks everyone for the comments so far, feel free to make more and maybe I'll catch them before I have to vanish for a week...perhaps even get another version ready before tomorrow, but it's unlikely. <:

Psy D

(this isn't a deliberate bump, it IS an update to the skin here)

I just got back from a week away, so here's another quick update. I'm bushed, so the list here's going to be quick and simple:

-Shaded eyeshadow, pupils and eyes more appropriately.
-a little more face tweaking
-small gold sunburst or spider symbol added to shoulder pads where the wrapping wouldn't mess them up royally...not much, but it's something
-hair is now more of a black with blue tint than the drab gray it was
-arm cloths changed to match the hair chnage
-kneepad shading fixed
-some ridges/shading changes to skirt
-dress base color made more, er, colorful than pale

I think that's all for now. ^^ Might start another skin soonish on a similar theme, tho w/out a ref to shoot for this time. *shrugs*

Enjoy.
Psy D

You kinda copy/pasted the amulet on her next from the origional picture.. not that I have a problem with that because if your basing something off concept art its best to have it almost as good as the art.

The choker around the necklace is kinda crappy to me.. Seems like its wrapping up her next instead of hanging down.

To me, compared to the concept art, I think that net-type-thing on her legs is way to long.

The spider-weave type net that is going up her shoulders kinda stops out of nowhere.. as if its glued to her chest or something.. Personally I think it should go all the way up.

The hoops around her legs look kinda slanted compared to the direction her legs are facing.


After all that, I still say this is a 10/10 because its great.. but with all that it would be 11/10 :D

Nokarot, okay, let's see what I can say to each tricky spot:

-The amulet itself I definitely did NOT copy and paste directly onto the model from the concept art. That was done completely freehand using the artwork as a reference. Yes, I was trying to draw the exact design of the ammy onto her here, but I did it all manually.

-The wrapping on the Sorc's neck sucks IMO. Too much space used by too little actual skin, and it's very difficult to get it go completely 'straight' unless doing a single line of pixels (and that even looks jagged).

-The sandal straps to the knee pads area is, erm, creative license. ^^ They're obviously a lot shorter (with no pad at the knee) in the artwork. Since the Sorc model has those damn way-too-open-boot-openings at the knees/thighs (like practically every female model in WC3 :< ) which can't simply be alphaed out (you get holes in the legs, usually in back), I instead extended the straps all the way up so they'd meet the knees instead of just having 'floating' knee pads.

-The web weave nets...again, they seem to stop due to me not wanting the same problem as the neck stuff...the wrapping around the neck is horrible and when extended all the way to the shoulder you end up with the weave also on the vertical sides of her neck (which looks bad). Again, just a pick between the lesser of two evils here.

-The thigh bands aren't so hot, but yet again, the wrapping is mostly to blame for it. You might notice that they bend in one spot toward the outer side of each leg...and even that they don't exactly 'match' even with the other leg's band. I can try to tweak/balance them a bit more tho...

Thanks for the feedback/compliments tho...they ARE helpful. ^^

Psy D