Low-poly Hsien-Ko
If Hsien-Ko was in Rival Schools, it would probably look something like this!
This model was a bit of a wild pick; I’ve never had much interaction with the Darkstalkers franchise, but I was always a fan of Hsien-Ko (AKA Lei-Lei) whenever she cameo’d in other Capcom media. The oversized sleeves, the veritable arsenal stored within them, and her simple, striking color palette lend her such a unique appeal that could only come out of such an oddball series. Plus, those blush stickers are simply perfect!
I’m especially fond of the shape language displayed in this render. Her hair, hat, and arms create a silhouette that’s iconic to any fighting game diehard.
Process highlights
Let’s go over some of the most important parts from this model’s production. It may not jump out at you, but the part I’m most proud of would have to be the sleeves.
The texturing process for the sleeves was a major point of friction for me, being one of the more complex and unorthodox types of clothing I’ve had to render. Unfamiliarity with the principles that form folds in clothing resulted in a first draft that was essentially a kind of guesswork at what the clothes might look like. Unsatisfied, I took it upon myself to study similar materials and clothing forms to give myself a more concrete idea of how I might best represent the sleeves.
A major lesson I learnt in this process was the importance of restraint. Clothing can be very overwhelming at first glance, presenting a veritable storm of seemingly random folds and shading. However, overloading the texture with tiny folds just leads to a loss of direction and a messy, unpleasant look overall. Just as lowpoly modeling seeks to eliminate geometry that fails to provide sufficiently significant detail to the silhouette, texturing convincing, aesthetically-pleasing clothing should first seek to capture the “leading folds” that occupy the most visual real-estate.
In the end, I learned a lot about not only clothing, but my perception of lighting and how different materials and shapes interact with it.
On that note, let’s briefly go over the talisman!
The talisman, as you might imagine, incorporates many of the lessons taught by the sleeves. Again, we have a major focus on “leading folds” and minimizing minute details in keeping with the overall simplified aesthetic of the rest of the texture. Of course, paper differs from cloth quite a lot, and to achieve a crumpled look we want to have little scuffs and folds that go against the grain, signaling a sort of history to the sheet and the journey it took plastered over Hsien-Ko’s face.
My favorite part of texturing the talisman was abstracting the original writing from official renders to pixel art. The techniques on display aren’t particularly crazy- just some light anti-aliasing gets the job done for representing the more compact details- but I feel quite proud of the overall legibility and faithfulness I put out with my pixel-y writing. It does make me wish my parents taught me Chinese… but then again, the writing on a Jiang-Shi’s talisman hardly seems conventional in the first place. Honestly, why are the characters super tall and interwoven in such a way? I guess I’ll have to look it up later.
UV Unwrapping, Death, and Taxes
If there’s one thing I know I’ll be dealing with for the rest of my life, it’s the pursuit of the perfect UV map. It seems like it’s only after it’s all said and done- after all the texture islands have been placed, sized, warped accordingly, their position and scale cemented on the texture- that the obvious optimizations and wasted space begin to show.
Why did I devote such a large space to the back of her hair? Could an arcane ritual of UV stacking allow me to save space on relatively repetitious, similar details? Did the sides of her face even need to occupy any UV space when they’re hardly ever visible? Did the sides of her face even need to EXIST? Such questions and more plague me every night.
I left extra space for blinking and talking faces, but never got around to finishing it.
At the end of the day, though, it’s important to remember that what’s done is done. Sure, it’s obvious after texturing that the back of her hair could be mirrored, and I essentially wasted an entire chunk of texture space… but saving it after the fact won’t account for the entire rest of the texture I painted according to the space I had available at the time. You just gotta save those notes for next time, so you can one day reach hyper-compact UV map Nirvana.
Closing thoughts
And that about covers it! I really came to appreciate how unique Hsien-Ko’s silhouette and composition is over the course of making this model. It’s delightfully simple and quirky, and wholly one-of-a-kind. I hope to push out some designs of my own that capture the same charm in the near future.
Bye-bye!