Death Prophet Dota 2 Workshop

Been working on a number of sculpts, starting out with my first Dota 2 workshop hero.

First the concept, I am referencing a lot on the Phantom Queen or the Morrigan, a Celtic God of War. I am working around these few quotes(if you can open the image above in a new tab you can see all my references in text) -

"Her role often involves premonitions of a particular warrior's violent death, suggesting a link with the Banshee of later folklore"

"Her role was to not only be a symbol of imminent death, but to also influence the outcome of war. Most often she did this by appearing as a crow flying overhead and would either inspire fear or courage in the hearts of the warriors. There are also a few rare accounts where she would join in the battle itself as a warrior and show her favouritism in a more direct manner."

I really like the second quote because I plan on replacing Death Prophet's ultimate to raven looking creatures.

The main theme I am focusing here would be Raven and the Victorian fashion.

The mask in the concept art is actually following another deity of death by the name of Mictecacihuatl. I later replaced the mask with a masquerade that is probably going to have some raven features instead to fit the overall style. 

This is me quickly sculpting out the shapes and applying quick textures to have a better  feel of the overall look. With the shapes I used zRemesher to get lower poly models and exported them out to Maya for fixing, UV unwrapping and refining.

Here is my current progress, keeping the tri-count according to Valve's LOD 0 requirements and UV unwrapped.

My next step is to bring these to zBrush for high poly sculpting and texturing. Then it will be another round of decimating the tri-count to LOD 1.

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Before this project, I was sculpting a female pirate as practice and a portfolio piece. This project will probably be long term as this is more of a learning process and experimentation.

The concept, rather rough but it gets the idea across.

Sculpting of the face, been having troubles with female faces and in general the eye areas, happy to say I have gotten something out of this.

So far I am quite satisfied with the outcome of the face, so I moved on to blocking out the hair and body. Maybe after body I'll have a new outlook on further improving the face again. :)

All in all, will be heading back to Malaysia for Christmas, probably the Death Prophet set will be done in 1 or 2 weeks. Might have enough time for another set for the upcoming Chinese New Year event by Valve : http://blog.dota2.com/2013/12/become-a-part-of-the-next-dota-2-event/

One more thing, I am open to suggestions and feedbacks, especially on the Death Prophet set. Also thinking of a name to give it, would love some suggestions.