New 3D!

Wow, it's been awhile! I should probably post some art, huh? I've HAVE been doing some!

So, as of yesterday my Gnomon class is over. It was amazing! I feel very proficient with ZBrush now. Expect many more 3D sculpts!

As for my final project... here it is! It was so much fun to do. I'm quite proud of it. :)


And here's a turnaround...

A larger version can be found on my Vimeo here.

I'm surprised I never posted this... this is a painting I did for my sister for Christmas. It's her D&D character, and she absolutely loved it. It was wonderful.


And here's one of my own D&D characters... D&D is very good for me because (1) I get to create lots of characters, and (2) it gets me to draw. A lot.


That's all for now... I'll try to update more frequently.

Heron Deer model.

Okay seriously... I don't know what to call this thing.

Here's the model sheet I doodled up yesterday:



I guess it's more-or-less a hippogryph. I love herons and deer (both indigenous species to Western Washington) and really wanted to combine the two. I decided this would be a great excuse to do a high-poly model. :)

I'm trying to prepare my portfolio to GDC, and have been updating and fixing up my website -- which, by the way, is here.

Anyway, here's my start of the model. This is three hours of work, and I'm not quite done blocking in everything yet.



I'm pretty excited to see this one done!

Werewolf, revisited!

It's funny... whenever I finally get to my computer to post, I completely forget everything I wanted to say. Bummer.

Recently I've found time to work on my werewolf project again. I finally decided on an environment to put him in. Yay! First, some color thumbs.

The way the light is being cast is a bit off, but I didn't really have time to adjust it. :\ But at least the idea is there!

In the end I plan on taking three or more different staged renders of this scene since not only am I not an animator, but I am shorter on time than I would've liked. His original design ended up looking really doofy, so I decided to add a lulling tongue. So far it's been a blast!

I've been tweeking the model quite a bit, and added some elements. His texture map is a 512 x 512. Here are some work-in-progress renders:

This is my scene so far with the lighting scenario from the color thumbs above. The sky image is leftovers from a course I took awhile ago and is just a place holder for now... It almost makes this scene look like it's on an elevated building or something!

This wolf likes trash, apparently. One of the compositions will involve him digging through the trash in silhouette like this (or recently having done so). Another one, as seen above, will be him in the dumpster with a banana peel draped across his face. He's a classy boy, indeed!

Mudbox Project

Every entry I show something different! D: I hope I can get some of these done soon!

Here is yet another model for my portfolio. He's a creature I designed awhile ago and I love his large claws. :) Here's a drawing of him. I started this model this time last year and forgot about him for awhile... I decided he would be a prime candidate for Mudbox.

Also, a friend of mine offered to rig him, so soon I'm going to hand him off to her now that he's unwrapped. I'm excited that it's going so smoothly so far!

Here are some simple renders of him currently. I had to adjust his edgeloops so now he's a little under 10,000 polys! Once he's put through Mudbox he'll surely be about one million...



I'm quite excited to see how this turns out! Mudbox is deceptively easy to use, so that helped out my confidence in the matter...

Hopefully, soon enough, I can stop spending 10-hour days at school, but we have 17 days until Career Day and 31 until GDC...

Sadly, these longs days won't be ending any time soon.

Werewolf model

Today I did some more tweaks on my werewolf, and now I can call him officially "done". I collapsed his symmetry and consolidated some edge loops to make him even lower poly. :D He's down to 527 Tris.



Seeing how little time I actually have left, I'm no longer planning on doing a high-res version of him... instead, I'm going to create a small low-poly environment for him to exist in. I'll begin doing some sketches for that soon.

For his unwrap and texture, I'm going to be using Alpha channels to give him extra fur texture and emulate the 2D artwork. Below is an image showing the parts of the mesh that are planes that will have transparency:



Fascinating. :D

Anyway, I also did some color thumbs, which I actually can't properly choose from until I know for sure what his environment will be like. I'm fairly partial to the grays.

Hardware failure! D:

So recently I have been having issues with my beloved MacBook Pro performing crawlingly slow, so I figured reformatting was in order. Sadly, it appears instead to be caused from a dying hard drive. :( I really suspect it might've been Boot Camp that did it in.

I've ordered a replacement, and I'll have it installed and reformatted next week. It will be great to be able to work again!

In the meantime, here are some things I've been working on lately for my portfolio. All of these are low-poly models. (I'll have specifics at a later time.)

Here was a model I was intending on having in a game, but it didn't end up working out. Instead, I've fixed up the polys and added a tongue for extra posing capabilities! :) As of yet he is untextured.


Another model for the same game is the chameleon's food-of-choice: a cricket. He'll be posed with the cricket for my portfolio.


Lastly, here's a model I have been designing and making for a production course at school. I wanted to create a stylized werewolf. I'm kind of a classical monster nut. :) As an aside, here's my research and exploration.


I think he's rather charming myself!

So far I have the low-poly version completed. I wanted to make a high res version as well with an environment, and have both models in my portfolio as a comparison.

The low poly will incorporate Alpha channels so I can get the emulate the shapes in the 2D artwork. Here's the untextured model:


Aside from school, I have been suffering from slight anxiety. With graduation fast approaching and many responsibilities to be aware of, it's proven to be a bit overwhelming. With so many things up in the air right now, I'm sure things will be more settled in a week or two... I sure hope so!