Tonix's Lab

[tonix]

Thanks for the kind words everyone .

[schUPpor]

That's a bunch of awesome work! I find it very hard to skin a nice helmet as the model is very rough. So it's even more amazing what you made...!

[gerdoner]

Those helmets are just... wow. Actually, they inspired me to redesign my helmet (which once was a Mika Salo helmet but got personalized with every update)... and I've got to say... I'm still not happy after seeing what you pulled off there (and what's possible with the awful LFS helmet mapping/shape).
Any tips or tricks (other then trial and error for hours?)

[tonix]

Thanks!

Well, there aren't any special tricks i came up with. I learned pretty much everything with "learning by doing", so yeah, there was quite a lot of trial and error, spending a lot of time aligning some lines until they looked good to me (due to a terribly low-poly helmet model).

The first thing i usually do when designing a helmet is to define (dunno if there is a word for this, but let's say) the white strip that goes around the top of the helmet. To me, that is one of the most vital parts of the helmet because it defines the angle of the design according to the visor. In lfs i often see helmets with this strip simply horizontal, which makes it look wrong in my opinion, because helmet looses some of it's "aggressiveness" and you don't usually see such helmet designs in real life. Making it more inclined makes it look better IMO, but it also makes it harder to align. There's nothing special to say about drawing the rest of the design, it is always the most time consuming part of the skinning process. The last part (and my favorite is painting and adding layer effects. In my opinion, that is almost as important as the design itself, because color combinations with proper contrast, color effects (gradients etc.) and other effects (multiple strokes, drop shadows, inner shadows, glow, bevel...) really make the helmet design alive. Not too long ago i discovered the usefulness of the Photoshop styles (you can google them, there are thousands of them available, also on dA), they can come in very handy when painting a design.

Anyway, here's my latest helmet and of the the hardest i've ever done. It was well accepted at lfs-forum, hopefully you'll like it too .

Felipe Massa 2009 (public, already uploaded to LFSW).



Download: www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1291413#post1291413

[MAGGOT]

Still blown away by this one. Gives me inspiration to revisit my own helmet.

[CueBall]

OMG now that is pure sex !!!! Well done !!!