Friday, November 10, 2017

Days Gone 7 - Meet the Cast, pt 2

The second character in my little tale doesn't really have a name. I sometimes call him Bobby Lee, but that's mainly because he's based on the Bobby Lee character I created for this illustration in another story.

One of the illustrations I created for Roger Keel's story,
"The Children Game"  © 2017 Mike Mitchell

Another look at Bobby (M4 character, rendered in the usual way)
© 2017 Mike Mitchell

After I created the Bobby Lee Character for the Michael 4 figure, I decided to modify it a bit and re-purpose it for use in my Days Gone story. Even though keeping his husky body type caused problems, I wanted to differentiate him from all of the other muscle-bound barbarian characters out there and provide a little diversity to his body shape. I also didn't want him to look like another Michael 4 clone in a comic (if you know 3D figures, you can easily play "Spot the Michael Version" and identify ver 3 from 4 at a glance).

Alas, this diversity also created some problems. My initial costume design included the figure with a simple baldric draped over his shoulder. Even though this should have been simple, it wasn't. I just couldn't get it to hang perfectly from each direction. I briefly considered converting it into a dynamic prop, but adding animation to the workflow was bound to increase the amount of work and time needed to get this story finished.

Bobby Lee sported a whole new look for this story, including
modifications to his face design and tweaks to his weight and abs.
© 2017 Mike Mitchell


So, I went shopping for a new chest harness. After considerable hunting, I found this beauty, which includes lots of useful fit morphs: Prae Epoch for M4

Product image from Renderosity.
© 2017 Prae

Obviously, I wasn't interested in the funky mask or the skirt, but the chest harness had just the right amount of detail needed to give Bobby a little of that barbarian look that I was going for. And this thing was LOADED with fitting and shape morphs. Seriously, this is one of the best products I've encountered in ages.

Hero Leaps: This illustration features the updated leather chest harness
© 2017 Mike Mitchell

As you can see in the image above, this is a pretty cool product and definitely adds a hint of "Swashbuckler" to the character.

NEXT TIME: A fiery "co-star"

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