Little yap session about the Zeno - No Gloves mod.
I feel my thought process about how I ended up with the final hands could be interesting to some people. Making mods usually happens because I really like and care about the character so a lot of ideas and thoughts go in making mods for them and to try and bring the vision to life to the best of my abilities.
The idea has been in my mind for a while and when I started working on it I already knew I wanted an infected hand texture as an option. This made really only one option viable for hands for Zeno: using Leon's hands. I'm going to skip over the technical parts that is moving, posing and skinning hands to make them work for zeno and skip to the good part that is design.
For a project like this a straight port is not really how I like to work so I went on with my understanding of the character and what I thought would fit best. After talking with fellow Zeno fans friends, the vision ended up being well maintained/manicured hands.
To achieve this vision, I started by modifying Leon's hand by lengthening and then slightly reshaping the longer nails. I went just past the finger tips to keep the lenght groomed instead of unkempt. Then it was time to move on to textures. Texture work was necessary to match the skin tone at the very least so it's what I started with. It took quite a few attempts but I think I ended up with good results.
Then came the little detail, to add to the groomed hands I added some slight color to the nails, you can see it in some lighting that the nails have a slightly more pink/mauve color to them. I stopped there for the bare hands and used that as my base for the infected hands.
The infected hands required a slightly different work and thought process. I lenghtned the nails as well but only on the fingers that weren't affected, leaving the lenght untouched on those. Then those nails got reshaped a little as well and I moved on to textures. I did the same as before, color matching and ensuring the black marks stayed black. To keep both hands consistent, I rethought the nail color a little, going with a pink/mauve color but desaturated and added that color only on the healthier nails.
Now for the ring: I wanted to add a little something and I put some thought into that. Considering Zeno wears an earring and wears a collar pin, I thought an accessory wouldn't be out of place. After some thinking, I settled on a signet ring which felt most appropriate and went on to read about ring placement. Because yes, I like details and like to not leave things to chance so the left pinky placement is not random. That placement is usually to signal social status, which feels like a choice that fits the character fairly well and feels natural. The choice of the ring was fairly easy as long as it fit my criteria of the design being generic enough and did not belong or allude to any organization or religion. I have no intention to allude to something when we know little about the character. When it came to the ring texture, I managed to use the material that is used for his earring to make sure it fit with his existing accessories and did not stand out by looking too different.
There you go ! Some rambling about my process and vision for this mod. I don't usually do this but I think going over some of the creative process that goes into making mods is something that may be of interest.
