Concept
Character: This project started out as an anatomy study. I didn't feel like making a standard human, and wanted to make something interesting...something that'll keep me hooked to the project. So, I decided to make something that I can relate to, and thus started my first attempt at creating a new character design. I've studied a lot of existing concepts and sculpts for inspiration, and I've always been fascinated by Blizzard Entertainment's Artwork. Tauren Shaman from the World of Warcraft and the Minotaur by Aaron St. Goddard totally inspired me to create a character that is part human and part animal. The human part was there so that I can study human anatomy, and the animal part is to keep me hooked ;) I had to choose the 'animal' part of the character. I'm crazy about Dinosaurs, so it wasn't hard. But I didn't want a simple 'Dinosaur Man',so I added in the Minotaur bit which inspired me in the first place and that’s how the 'Dinotaur' was born. Dinotaur or more precisely 'Dinotavr' translates to "Bull of the Dinos". So, I wanted to capture the feel of a strong Warrior, instead of going in the 'scary monster' route.
Armor:
Again, a lot of Blizzard inspired stuff here ;) But I added in a few more things that I love : Samurai Armor Design and a bit of Dinosaur armor too, for example the spikes on the tail were based off a Stegosaur, and the claws on his left hand were added for the 'T-Rex' feel.
* For those who wish to know whatsup with the "Dawn" thing: I wanted to get back to basics and start anew. I had no idea what I'd be making, so the project was codenamed 'Dawn' to reflect my desire. Even after I'd finalised my 'Dinotaur' design, I didn't feel like dumping the 'Dawn' from the name...So I named him 'Dawn', though it doesn't sound like the name of a warrior, it just had to be it.
Modeling the Body
This was the most exciting part of my project. I was deeply inspired by Kolby Jukes's attention to detail, and I wanted to make my Dinotaur as muscular and organic as I could. This was my anatomy study and I spent a lot of time on studying the human form before I started sculpting.
I started blocking out the model in 3ds max using the box-modeling technique. I basically put the major forms and the overall proportions in this stage. I had 2 image planes with sketches of the silhouette I wanted. I found that using the DirectX shader will give crisp image quality on the planes.
Once I had the blockout in place, I started subdividing to add more form to the mesh. I wanted a moderately dense basemesh without any of the minor details. I spent quite a bit on getting a good meshflow and found it to be very important for a basemesh. I've tried to keep triangles and 5-sided polygons to the minimum as they would cause distortion later in the sculpt. I found the "Relax" brush in max to be very helpful in cleaningup and spacing the edgeflow for an even topology. The final basemesh turnedout to be roughly 10k triangles. I've unwrapped the mesh using Pelt Mapping in max and exported it to OBJ. I double checked my Pivot in max to make sure that it’s at the absolute center.
At the end of it, I had the basemesh ready for detailing in a sculpting app, in this case, Mudbox.
Sculpt
While sculpting I had 2 things stamped all over my mind:
1) Concentrate on getting the form correctly
2) Try to get as much form as you can in the current division itself before going to a higher division - sculpt one level at a time
I spent most of my time in the first 2 subdivisions of model.
I will try to explain the process division-wise but before I do, I must mention that digging into the human anatomy is crucial. Start with understanding the various bones in the skeleton, then move on to the individual muscles [what the purpose of each muscle is, how the muscles stretch, how they relate to each other etc]. Try to study as many pics as you can [checkout muscle charts, sculpts, pics of real humans. Sketching them out will be a good exercise too]. Many informative pics/references are available in the CGArena forum reference section.
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