Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• It was the right idea to add the skull face, the lighting effects you achieved in the final render work well giving a good atmosphere, The addition of the screen background and light sources also create atmosphere. 

  The armour is well observed and sculpted, I also like the weapons and flag.

  The use of colour red and yellows in the character set off by a complementary blue glow shows a good understanding of colour and lighting.

  For me the forward leaning pose works best, 

  On the documentation I found the font used a little difficult to read. I would used a simpler one that is clear and easy to read in any documentation.

  Dave -Art Director, Microsoft.

• amazing!  check out anatomy statues for more help on anatomy :)  superb non the less.  

• Submission Title:                                  Akazugaikotsu

  Submission Tier:                                   Sumo Digital Rising Star               

  Assessor: Anthony O’Donnell          Lead Artist           Firesprite

   Concept design & Development:

  The development of the character was really good. The first round of reference gathering was strong but it was good to see a second round of research to further refine the concept before diving into sculpting / modelling.

   Technical Art:

  The polycount was appropriate with clean topology. UV’s were well packed. With this said a lot of space was given to the plated armour elements which could have benefited from UV shell stacking. Mirroring areas of the model too would have allowed for a more efficient layout.

  Channel packed textures were used as a memory optimisation. I’d suggest including the opacity mask used in the blue channel of the “data” map as opposed to in the alpha channel of the diffuse as this will be even more efficient or include the “emissive / glow “ map in the blue channel of the data either. The “data” textures were correctly set to not use sRGB.

  Normal maps were in a OpenGL  format and not Direct X as required by UE4 resulting in these details  being rendered incorrectly. This would be one reason why it looked off in UE4.

  There appears to be normal bake errors on the armour panels. The strong gradient across the surface does not match how I’d expect them to come out given the high poly source. The normal maps also seem to be too intense.

  I’d be careful leaving alpha channels in textures when they are not required as they double the memory footprint.

   Creative Art:

  The end result is very good overall. The final pose selections add “life” and character to this undead samurai. The sculpting workflow was straightforward and organised.

  The sculpt of the skull itself is decent anatomically well executed. Proportionally the character’s body is a bit off in areas such as the head/ skull being too large relative to the body. The upper arms are also short and the wrists a touch too narrow.

  The sculpting itself was handled well with some nice detailing of the armour and clothing.

  There is noticeable difference between base material roughness values along with additional surface noise /variation.  Generally the texturing and materials are good and consistent across the model.

   Written Documentation:

  The production diary is very well presented and informative regarding the development of the character and workflows used throughout its production.

   Final Presentation:

  A solid piece overall, the final renders were composed well. I really like the lighting and material definition in the close up shots. The character design is visually interesting and well researched. The final colour palettes for the character and background complement each other nicely. The character as a whole has a consistent style across the model that’s well defined which makes it look more complete and game ready.

• A really good piece, cool concept. Needs a little work on the detailing, but overall a very good job.