Eddie, the so-called noble.

And here’s my final update.

Sadly, my laptop crashed during the night while rendering…and with the times remaining, I won’t be able to render properly at 4096x2160px…so I hope those images will be able to share the enthusiasm I had doing this project.

After a long and stormy night, his companion was nowhere to be found … is Eddy cursed to be alone all over again? The memories of his creator are fogged and distant … the only thing he can do is using his heart to light the way.

This project was quite the story for me, and nonetheless for Eddie too! The ending was a great way for me to not only build a story through texturing, but also taking the reader through a building story throughout the development process.

The story behind Eddie and Jeffrey the butterfly was a great contrast in so much form. The longevity of each character, indeed, but also the organic and hard surface, the big and small, the contrast of colours, etc. The last scene, where Eddie is covered in mud, looking for his friend, was a dramatic way to present all those contrast in one image.

As any artist, there are so many things I’m not satisfied with this project. But wow I’ve learned a lot, and it was amazing. Thanks to everyone on TheRookies for being part of this little adventure.

Khrooma

Refined the main sections.

Tomorrow will be an all-out micro detailing of every part and the official texturing which will focus on the background story of Eddie. 

Kinda shaping out the main pieces of the puzzle.

I have to admit, at this point I was regretting my concept art quite a lot.

Since I can’t touch the mesh, the UV setup or anything else from the original fbx file, I found hard to be precise just by painting height information on such vertices displacement. But I think that with all the troubleshooting and cursing, the overall exercise is really constructive.

Hope I’ll get something decent once I start looking at the second and third levels of detail. 

Oh and let’s not forget to bake a new normal map to Eddie before officially texturing. 

Concept Art Projection 

Quick masking to get the basic setup

Looking at the Eddie challenge and all those great android already submitted, I decided to take a less "electronic" approach. While brainstorming and preparing my reference board, I thought that the Dwemer creation, which are metal automat supplied by magical gems, would be a great base to start with. From there, I remembered a golem, from Somali and the forest Spirit, which inspired me to include materials other than metal, a type of hard ceramic or marble and some specially made leather maybe. Thinking of how this little machine would work, I started looking at gems and their different cuts. Finally, I wanted to have him wearing some kind of cloth material that would help contrasting with all the hard surface stuff.

I want to keep in mind the general ambiance of the character, which in this case is a magical and curious machine created to act as an assistant for researching and keeping things tidy. Reflecting his backstory, it will need to be able to share some kind of emotional state, which can be seen from his mechanical eyelid.

Quite the late start, I should say. I’m new to this community and to Substance Painter, so let’s make sure to keep it fun and see how far I can go with Eddie before the challenge end! 

Eddie, the so-called noble.

Eddie was once noble in a country led by magical machines which were specialized in runes transcription …at least that’s what he’s always telling its sole friend, Jeffrey the butterfly. Between us, he indeed once lived in a noble mansion, but more as a fancy and glorified toolkit. His long gone creator dedicated decades studying runes that could give life … and Eddie was his last son.

With nothing more than his body as a memento, this curious machine spends most of his time wandering the green landscape, keeping an eye on his arthropod companion …because it’s common say that butterflies are always up to no good.