Ancient Robot - Shuddie

Here are my final renders.

Concept

Decorative patterns are mostly from archaeological findings of San Xin Dui, both bronze and jade artifacts that represent Ancient Shu civilization. The item on the back shares a similar shape as jet propulsion engine and could be connected to the magic bird pattern from San Xing Dui.

Materials are heavily oxidized bronze from thousands of years being buried under the ground and jade on the eye. Very small areas of highlights are bronze that is a little oxidized with very thin patina (shoulders, belts on the body sides, big joints, edges on the feet, and eye lids).

Base Material

There are dark brown oxidized bronze, green patina, turquoise patina, verde patina and light brown dirt plaques (higher than the surface). Theoretically lower surface areas are easier to grow patina layers, however, for Shuddie with thousands of years under the ground, the patina layers almost covered the underneath bronze completely. The turquoise patina could look from closer to whitish to bright light blue. 

Worn Effect

The right "antenna" has some noticeable cracks and the left "antenna" has a piece broken. Shuddie has edge wears all over. The decorative patterns mostly have non-smooth blurry borders. The dirt plaques may be classified as worn details. 

Other worn effects like scratches, stains or paint peel-offs are not really applicable for this concept.

refined head and body.

continue refining by comparing to the references.

Fixed an issue on the eyes.

modified the eyes.

Update entry thumb.

Modified the body texture again. Feels much better now.

Refined the texture on the body.

Tried some different settings in Iray.

Before working on the details on the rest, I am trying to see how the overall color and material match together on this ancient Eddie. The head and body involve more ancient tastes and the rest would be pretty much modern but the two need to be able to match together. 

Worked on the head and eyes only. Sorry for the scary screenshots :)

Made some progress on the head and body.

I got the idea from really ancient artifacts but I would like my Eddie to be understandable by modern tastes. Modified the patterns on the top and back. My reference is below.

Added a bit different patterns on the face and front body.

To refine the texture of bronze, I realize that I need to make a significant modification. So I cleaned up my current work, got useful masks and surface details out, and reapplied to the mesh. The benefit of doing this is that I could re-bake my curvature maps to include all of the surface details that I want to keep. I can save anchors for new surface details now. 

Digging more images related to bronze. These seem the most important ones to guide me in refining the textures.

Update the entry thumb a little bit :)

This is my first contest ever and I am now getting used to the Play by Play fashion. It makes me feel that I am not alone along this creation journey and this makes the contest more about the process of learning, practicing, communicating, and enjoying, rather than the final announcement of the winner. 

I have received some critical feedback for lacking the details of the textures of bronze. Initially, I thought bronze is something people are no longer  well aware of nowadays other than those from the archaeology-related domains. I do not want this Ancient Eddie to be totally archaeological taste. However, after simply searching through more images about bronze, I am so surprised that similar material is still being appreciated in a wide range of designs from robot, home decorations, to jewelries. The corrosion of metal is not only linked to being aged or outdated, but also purposefully utilized for artistic effects. 

To be honest, I am not very confident that I can make the true beauty of bronze appear on my Eddie. But I want to give it a try to see how far I can get. I really like the rich natural color on it! Below is the reference I gathered about bronze.

Continued adjusting the settings in Iray render.

Tried to render using some different display settings.

Added a small decoration to the shoulder.

Looking at my Eddie as a whole, I am happier of the details on the legs  than those on the arms. It is good if the details do not stand out too much and the style of this Eddie needs to be strong  and a bit ancient. So I tried out a bit different on the arms.

Continued adding surface details.

Added some surface details on the head.

I am trying to turn the item on the back into a jet propulsion engine.

I was inspired by an archeological finding in southwest China since the face looks a bit alike. With that idea, I was trying to see if I can mix this ancient pattern well with the modern shape of a robot. The above was my first trial. After carefully examine the original reference where I got the idea, I changed the color theme to below.