Again trying to do things quick and dirty, I wanted to add a basic shirt on. This ended catastrophically as I not only messed up the weight paints, but also messed up the blend shape for the mouth so that the one eye flipped. 

In all honesty, it was pretty hilarious to see when I first put it on and started talking, and I usually bring him back out during Halloween.

This was the first version with facial hair as well as the arm tattoo. I also punched up the colors to make him more saturated just a tad. The tattoo has character from all the characters and media that guided me down going into 3D art and game design. As a Playstation kid, I grew up with games like Spyro, Ratchet and Clank and Sly Cooper.

There were still many problem though with this version in regards to the weight paints, and the lack of detail.

Now that I had a solid base, I wanted to work more on getting specific versions of him made for event like holidays. 

This goofy Christmas one was pretty easy to make, and made for some funny moments.

PoKratos, the Spud of War was made just for giggles. I found a version of Kratos on sketchfab, used it to retopo and make my own mesh, and then went through the process of texturing more in my style. I didn't want to capture every realistic detail, the key factor for me was getting the layering of all the major parts done right. 

And that takes us to Version 4.3, the version where I had various outfits, new shirts, pants, a new suit, hidden blade, and toggleable expressions. 

I personally hate doing expressions with gestures, so I made a menu so I could additively combine different blends to make unique face. For example In the pictures below, you'll see the default face, a happy face, and a wide eye shape. I can combine both of those to make a cute big eye shape by enabling both at the same time. 

John and I for Halloween the next year decided to be each other. To keep in fashion of our characters, we still used them as a base as we "made our costumes". For me, I needed to mimic his metallic plating, so I made cardboard cutouts of key pieces, painted myself black in a purposefully bad way, and put on the blend shape that made my face look like his. To finish it up I did a face paint of his lil body. 

This was the version where I feel like I finally cracked it. I redid the texture, so instead of using generators to do soft shadowing based on the high poly bake, I went and did them manually by painting them. I still generated some aspects like the potato eye/dot placement, but other than that the shadowing was hand painted after some modifying from light generators.

I also went through and audited which functions and clothing pieces I used the most and least. I also instead of using shader parameters for adjusting the colors, had a present of organized textures that I could UV offset to give me other colors. This allowed for functionality on quest while also keeping things optimized!

I also made a huge change in the face, where as before I just had the mouth open differently based on the visemes, I added teeth and a tongue for better viseme and mouth shape characteristics. The change was big at first and threw some friends off, but its something that is definitely better compared to how it used to be.

Version 7 brought about functionality for face tracking, more functionality, a slight retexture, and even more clothing combinations.

The face tracking blends are all there, I just need to fix my custom made face tracking hardware to show it off.

This version has a new lever action I can use with customizable attachments, material swaps for even more color variations between clothing sets, and features like preset outfits and a randomizer ( look below for randomized outfits)!

For the retexture, I loved what I did with V6, but starting with a light generator and then painting over created variations I didn't like in the shading between clothing. So in this version I just redid the painted 2 tone shadows manually. To best compare, look at the added detail to the pants here in this version compared to the previous. 

I am pretty happy with this version, and it will probably be a while before I make a new update. These changes have been over the last 2 years of making this avatar and others. It's been really exciting to see the style grow into something so characteristic, and I honestly don't think there's anything else like my potato guy out there!