The last week of the Dichotomous character project! This period has been dedicated almost entirely to the texturing and PBR process. I've been using unreal engine as a way to quickly view how well the textures fit the model whilst I am painting, simply by re-importing the latest iteration and identifying what needs to be done - a quick and easy "trail and error" method of texturing which I often use. Overall, I think I achieved what I set out to do in terms of the art style and quality of work, though if I could have done anything differently, I would have probably made my design a bit more ambitious by adding a few more items of interest to his person, (maybe making him less naked). But enough with all that! Let's see the week's spoils!
So here's the diffuse and normal texture maps. I'd go as far as to say that these are some of the most successful textures I've created to date. I spent multiple days getting the face just right, as making it fit the model proved to be more of a challenge than I had originally expected, but I'm happy with the results. I kept myself from going too far with the detail and fidelity in some parts in order for the texture to support the stylised design I was going for, which is why just looking at the texture map it may not look like much, but when applied to the model it fits very well and is in-keeping with the level of detail in the 3D aspect. Once again I used World of Warcraft and League of Legends as a strong guideline for painting, which helped the textures "pop" as they always have a little bit of lighting baked into the diffuse itself. I was also quite dead-set on the type of hair I wanted to give him - strongly defined, almost HDR locks intertwining with lots of contrast. I figured that the easiest way to do this would be to make a tiling texture for the hair and then I could apply it wherever it would be needed - as you can see from the diffuse map, I pulled it off.
Here's the finished model in-engine alongside the concept I sketched up. I chose to include renders from Unreal 4 rather than Marmoset, because while marmoset does have various lighting options and supports retina resolution, my normals come out funny! I'll be submitting renders from both though, for good measure. For the concept on the left, I decided to put the Hardened Brute making an act of good will towards the Sheltered Princess, signifying how well they compliment each other (more of the Ralph and Vanellope dynamic shoved in there!). The concept actually came out a bit more cartoony than I intended, but it was unfortunately too late to revise at that point in the final week. Still, I believe the model is a decent product of five week's work and it came together well.