Slime

[Mathias]

This is an interesting challenge. Took me by surprise how difficult it is to get a goopy jello-y transparent look. More should jump in.



Not happy. I'll be back.

[yaomon17]

This one feels a lot less muddy and dark

[Mathias]

Yes it does. You've made it lighter, are using more vibrant greens and less deep shadow. More speculars, too.

You have to decide what surface properties the object needs - dull matte, or high gloss.

Obviously, high gloss. Then what about translucency and subsurface scattering?



Do you want #1 or #2?





Here's the start of my attempt:



Basic surface shading almost done. Next, will need to work on reflectivity and transparency.

[Mathias]

ATTACK



Done with it. 70% happy. Not enough transparentishness. It looks like opaque green material covered in baby oil, rather than subsurface scattering translucent stuff. Oh well. Next time.

[Ymedron]

Perhaps a better solution is to look at jelly:
http://easyscienceexperiments.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/jelly.jpg
Seems like thick imperfect glass (-> distorted refractions) might be a good start for it?
The slime strands to me make the whole image feel flattened out, like the slime has been splattered on paper -> the rest of the picture is derived from that.

[PixelPiledriver]

That's a cool slime Mathias.
Maybe try changing the color more as it gets thinner like the second photo.
Also reuse that red.
It's a really nice color.

[Mathias]

Perhaps a better solution is to look at jelly:
http://easyscienceexperiments.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/jelly.jpg
Seems like thick imperfect glass (-> distorted refractions) might be a good start for it?
The slime strands to me make the whole image feel flattened out, like the slime has been splattered on paper -> the rest of the picture is derived from that.

Yeah, I think that's the perfect reference you found. I'm savin' that.
Also agree - I cheaped out on the 3D appearance. The slimy tendrils and blobs flying off of him all seem to be co-planar. Quite cheap! My primary focus here was achieving a good slime material, though. Course, I failed at that as well haha.
Good observations.


@ pixelpiledriver    Hey, cool edit. There really should be more color refractions in his body. That helps. As for the red in the tongue - something helping there is a layer of subtle, gradient hot pink clipped to the tongue that gradually makes the tongue color more and more pink it reaches the tongue's end. Subtle color shifts here and there seem to help realism, I find.
I was unpleasantly surprised how hard this was. What I did manage to achieve took many passes and very slow, gradual volume building with very low opacity brushing. Time-consuming.
His lower body especially looks like a cheap, air-brushed mess.

[yaomon17]

More improvement I hope.

[coffee]

I'm not extremely well experienced in digital art but I think your newest version looks a bit too static, like a sculpture or mud.
I would probably also add some more vision inside his mouth and define the shapes of the inner shades less, brightening up the areas which are very shaded.
Like the direction Mathias & PixelPiledriver  took. A slime would "gather" more light.

[Ai]

I have to comment that your original avatar, although it looks neat, is not actually very slimy, light-physics-wise. It actually looks carved, which may be why your renditions are contrasty and somewhat more rigid-feeling than I'd expect from a slime.

I find it hard to describe the exact quality I mean, so have a blender material-test render on a rough sculpt of your avatar:

('subsurface scattering' is your friend for organic materials)

Mainly what I want to point at here is the way light is transmitted -through- the surface. both of mathias' examples have a decent level of translucency and reflectivity, with the result that unless a plane is at a very sharp angle, or a blob is very voluminous, it doesn't get very dark (some light is received from the other side of the surface). It feels like you are using the lineart as a 'cast' somewhat, whereas for something this soft you might seriously consider just dropping some temporary lines to layout the positions of major features and just value-paint 99% of it.

The other thing that I find odd about both the original avatar and your latest CG is that the blobs (clusters) don't feel like they're trying to run together, rather they convey a plasticine sort of consistency, that they're sort of squishy but hold their shape. I assume that for a slime this is not what you want.

But yes, IMO it is a significant improvement on the last version; more readable and structured.