Blizzard Student Contest: Evil Mantis Queen!

Okay, sooo!  I jumped in on this pretty late in the game because I wasn't sure if I was going to do this project at all.  Thesis has been eating up all my time, but after a 1-on-1 critique at my school with a Blizzard art lead, I gradually changed my mind on this one.  

1-9-2015

Disclaimer:
Please excuse the crude concept!  I'm not much of a concept artist, didn't spend much time on it (due to time crunch), and intend on making a lot of stylistic changes in 3D.


So my concept is a Mantis/Spider-inspired enemy character with a lot of Chinese embellishments tied in.  I included a Chinese headdress and charm.  I also included tiered plating on the front of the mantis which is more in line with male Chinese armor, making her a little less feminine and war-ready.  The concept doesn't show it, but I want her wings to be open to show a pop of color that matches her other embellishments.  I used real mantis reference for her protruding eye shape and her back hood.  

1-10-2015

This was day 1 of 2  modeling the Mantis queen.  I began blocking in the basic shapes of my mantis, and sorted out some design questions that my 2D concept didn't successfully solve.  By the end of the day, I had just about half the model created.  The model will only be made in Maya (I wont be sculpting in Zbrush) since 1.) I admittedly have very little time to work on this, and 2.) It will remain low poly, anyways, since it's meant to be WoW themed.

1-11-2015

This was day 2 of 2 modeling.  I finished most of my modeling except for the head, the back leg cobwebs, and the wings.  Additionally, I tweaked some small final adjustments.  I tried very much to make this character's silhouette strong, and I wanted to make sure her body made some sense: her back legs are huge to counter-balance her huge front pincers, as long as her leaned-forward posture.

1-12-2015

Today, I finished the final pieces of the model and finally got to UVing.  I made pretty quick work of it thanks to Headus UV Layout and the fact that it's so low poly.  It was pretty straightforward, though, I really need to work on optimizing my seams, as well as UV space.  UVing is something I still need to work on.