Pogo Pandemonium Cortex

An original Cortex skin themed after the Crash Bash minigame, Pogo Pandemonium!

@gravilla_nc

Making of: A recap of the creating process

(no one asked but I wanted to share so screw it)

The Design

Choosing the theme

I wanted to make a Cortex skin for several months now, but I couldn't find a theme I was fully interested in. I was going to make him a skier, then I was gonna make him a biker, then a sheriff like in Warped, so on and so forth.

The main issue with these themes is that they all consisted more or less of "Cortex but he has a cool jacket and some goggles/sun glasses". Which is way too close to models I had already done before (Biker Tawna, Surfer Crash), so I pretty much knew how do to these already. One of my main objectives with modding is learning to make new things, so I really wanted to make designing and modeling the skin a lot more challenging on myself. Doing a jacket and goggles for the 3rd time in a row felt very cheap for this.

The Pogo Pandemonium theme presented me with the challenge of modeling a jetpack, a labcoat, modeling organic looking hair, balancing many vibrant colors, learning about particle systems in Unreal, exploring several character ideas, etc.

Cortex the Character

Aside from challenge, the other main main reason why I picked this theme is because I wanted the first skin I ever made for Cortex to stand out and show my interpretation his character in IAT.

Whatever theme I picked had to allow me to show a deceitfully whimsical, playful, super energetic and show off-y attitude... But also one that is marked by overwhelming spite, aggression, unstability, and, most of all, an unhealthy obsession with destroying his enemy.

Crash Bash turned out to be perfect for this afair due to it's colorful artstyle and playful music, as well as it being a party game, which means I can explore agression through the concept of competition (let's face it, party games, specially Crash Bash, make you want to kill everyone around you when and after playing them)

The Model

The Geometry

I tried to retain efficiency and not make the model ultra high poly. For context, the default Cortex model is 18. 793 tris, and the blaster is 4. 226 tris. Some of the skins in the game are almost 30k tris, so I established that as my limit. The final model of the skin itself is 25. 509 tris, and the paint gun blaster is 3. 788 tris.

The hands and legs are heavily edited versions of the ones on the original model. The shoes, labcoat, torso, gun, kneepads, jetpack, hair and dog tags are all unique pieces of geometry made by me, and I gave them fairly clean topology.

The Textures

Following way the game's textures are designed to make the models look good before hiting the engine, I set out to hand paint shadows and highlights onto the base color texture, making the model better at standing on it's own, even when unlit.

I also shaded the area surrounding the  eyes with subtle dark red, and in-engine I made eyes slightly glowy. This paired with the paint splat intends to make him look more unhinged than usual.

The normals map were baked from multiresolution in Blender, and aditional depth details like the thickness of paint, cloth textures, and details on metal were done in Substance Painter.

Extras

Jetpack Fire

The particle system of the dash animation was replaced by a unique fire effect coming from the jetpack's exhaust. It consists of a flame mesh, shaky electricity rings, a light effect, some sparkles, and a subtle glowy dome. Everything in it is extremely low poly, and it doesn't emit too many particles, so it doesn't slow performance compare