Monster Hunter Giant Jawblade

This and my Iron Hammer were both started on old projects I'd finished the models for a few years ago, but then left for other practice projects. I'd always meant to go back and finish them. I made the hammer first because I thought it would be easier, and felt obliged to as a hammer-main. Because that project took longer than I intended, my learning goal with the Giant Jawblade was to emphasize speed.

I started with reworking the original model, with an emphasis on proper proportions.  Proportions are obviously important when translating the look of a subject in general, but I think it's even more important in 3D. So, I looked for the best references I could including promotional art, in-game models for 3D printing and my own in-game screenshots.

Possibly more important than proportions was reworking the model with ease-of-texturing in mind. A big mistake of mine with the Iron Hammer was to make it basically a single model - which caused more than a few problems later during texturing. Thus, I split the Jawblade into several simpler meshes, which saved me a lot of time and frustration later. I also added some extra surface detail to the bone blade just to see how it would work, and while it has messy topology, I kept it.

Thanks to the many, many lessons I learned from my previous project, I textured the Jawblade in less than half that time. Steps that earlier had taken me days instead took me a few hours and while I still was slower than I'd like, it was also much more enjoyable. For the color palette - in particular the bone - I looked to my in-game screenshots the most. Even though they're in a very specific lighting setup, I felt they matched the colors of the metal I'd gone with and didn't contrast as much as the official art did.

One last addition to this that I have - involves an oddly big oversight with the texture. Which is that the metal is all worn out, but the blade of this sword is immaculate. I can't believe I never noticed it, which I chalk up to part "I've looked at this project for hours and hours" syndrome, and part how I was thinking about this project. While texturing I thought of the metal and bone as two discrete things I worked on, even while painting reflected color from one onto the other. So, here's one last adjustment, since I'm not re-rendering all of the rest of the above.

Thanks!