FMP: Week 1&2 - Kled Skin, Modeling

 For the first of my Final Major Projects, I am choosing to work on a skin of Kled, The Cantankerous Cavalier. His voice lines and character dynamic with his cowardly steed Skaarl are always such a funny addition to any match I see them in. I was thrilled when I found a great fan concept by Philip Karlov, picturing the crazy yordle as weathered pirate and his mount as the cutest shark dog. I asked Philip for permission to use his concept as reference and I immediately got to work when he agreed, thank you Philip! 

I started by researching current Kled in-game models to see how many meshes I should create and what the topology would look like: 

I also had a look at Kled's Champion Spotlight  to better understand his mechanics and animation. I realised I will need 4 meshes:

1x Kled
1x Skaarl
1x Map (can be either held by Kled or attached to Skaarl by rope)
1x Weapon
1x Harpoon/anchor attached to the saddle as well

In the concept, there was no design for the pistol included in his 3D models, and since it would be attached to Kled's back anyway, I decided not to concept it due to time constraints. I have also noticed that some skins show Skaarl with wings, while the base skin shows him with wing-ears, I wanted to double check that there are no hidden wings I am not seeing on the concept so I messaged Philip to confirm and I'm now waiting for a response, though I think it will be just the case of Skaarl being super cute and having floppy ears! :D

The modeling went great, I think I'm really lucky for having a site like Teemo.gg model viewer which allows me to see the models from all angles, with all animations, to get inspired when modeling.

Starting with Kled's face, mix of polygon modeling and pushing faces in Zbrush. GoZ makes the bridge really easy. Definitely felt a bit flat at this point. I noticed there was more topology in the area of eyes in the reference, but I had to take in mind that there will be an eyepatch on one of the eyes, therefore the topo doesn't have to be too complex there. I also knew the final head won't be symmetrical (only the ears will), because of the beard, but it was easier to start modeling with sym.

I kept jumping back and forth from Kled to Skaarl to avoid getting too used to the topology and not seeing mistakes. Base is  polygon modeled, polygons pushed and inflated in Zbrush again. Skaarls "hair" strands were harder to figure out as the concept was from the top down view, but I spent some time on them and dont hate the variaions that come later.

 

I drew some ortographics for the tail wing so I could polygon model it easier.

Modeling the sword, Philip's additional weapon concepts were very helpful. (The formatting of Blogspot is giving me headaches and taking so much time to fix, I'll just stop trying to show images next to each other :D)

Modeling the map from folded planes and progress on Skaarl. His tongue was quite different to other models and concepts, more dog-like. I extended it out so it's longer. I will probably rig the tongue or re-position it to one side for the final mesh position, as per my tutor's feedback.

Back to Kled with a much more finished look. Use of instances, FFD modifiers, symmetry, and good old polygon modeling. I also decided the jacket won't be symmetrical in this case as I tried to model its seam over the symmetry but the overlap didn't look great and would be pain to rig. I decided to go with the cross on the hat as opposed to the skull in the other concept because I found that the blue provided a really nice accent when put next to Skaarl. I also added some wear and tear to the hat for the patch to look more in place. For the bottom teeth geo I inspired myself a lot by the Model Viewer Kled models - they showed the gums and teeth as a geo which looked connected.

Almost final versions. Things left to do modeling-wise:
- Connect hands to gloves
- Model the harpoon and attach to saddle
-  Separate and delete half of symmetrical geometry
- Go over the topo to see if it's as efficient as it can be
- Enlarge Kled's weapon to get closer to its in-game look, I feel like it looks bigger there