Got an official portfolio site!

Montagu3d.weebly.com

Go and check it out if you guys want, but there's nothing really new there. But I sure do feel more professional for having one.

Davy Be Done

Well I finished Davy, and so here he is. Wasn't happy with Maya renders, so I tried it through Marmoset Toolbag. Guess this is equivalent to a realtime game render? Anyways I also learned what the heck an emissive map was, which wasn't too hard to get to work. So yeah here's my stab at the SC2, Gears, Halo armors with a bit of my last sci-fi soldier all mixed together. I believe 5992 polys ends up being about 11k tris, if that's more your thing. Almost the same as the Berserker from Gears of War 1 I have sitting on my external hard drive. So, I think I did alright hopefully, my professor say it isn't low enough. So I'm gonna try harder with my next character for portfolio. First time I've managed to get a real character all on one UV page before as well, and at 2048. I'm really happy with how this turned out. Now to get crackin on the next one, only 6 weeks left for me... no pressure lol.

Davy

Well I had started another space soldier character in zBrush about a week and a half ago. It's not done yet, but I was working at school on it Friday and zBrush or the computer wouldn't let me get very far without crashing every few minutes for whatever reason. So to blow off my frustration I decided to sketch him out instead. I needed to fine tune the final look of his boots, gauntlets, and gloves anyways. Funny how none of that came to fruition when I got as far as I did with this. I'd like to work more on it, and I might in the future. It seems decent enough to stick in the back of my portfolio or website somewhere when I get those ready. Not really sure about the pose, it was just how the original sketch ended up, and I wasn't really thinking about it when I started. Also his name is Davy, one of my friends decided that was what he should be called, and from that point on it was so.

I even managed to work on this in a way that kind of looks like a tutorial, so I figured it couldn't hurt to upload that. So here's the process behind Davy:

1 - Rough Sketch

2 - Block-In Lights and Shadows

Did this in a new layer under the sketch.

3 - Refining

The longest part. Just defining each part better, adding finer details

4 - Atmosphere

Rendered out some easy clouds with Photoshop and stuck 'em over Davy. Erased the area over his arm to make atmospheric perspective more apparent. Easy to remember as well, darker = closer and further away = lighter (actually by lighter I mean closer to the background color ex. the sky)

5 - Fancy Lights

This is just me trying to get more bang out of this, I already had highlights but I felt like he needed some more. Just went around with the soft brush and painted in the lights. Then went back with the brush at around 10% opacity and built up the glowing aura around each light. It was the same process for the highlights I intensified on his visor and shoulder.

Here's a little GIF of the whole process above, enjoy. 

Hope this helps somebody out there.

First Contact

Well since our group finally put up a website for our short, I felt obliged to post a few of the worthwhile things I did for it here. The soldier pictured here though was the final version I wanted for the short, which addressed some issues with animation of her arms. Time however was not on our side so it got left by the wayside. Below that is her gun, and if you notice there's a R+H on the side view. We decided to stick that there after the events that befell Rhythm and Hues. Finally there's the creature of the short, whom we affectionately called Coco. Fun fact, from hi-poly to low-poly (Ha, not really) to textures and rigging, Coco was completed in basically a day. Our previous creature had become a horrible nightmare that was unusable, so I jumped at the chance to save the creature. In the end it worked out for the better, Coco was much much more menacing than what we had before.

Be sure to check out the short's website here: http://artoffirstcontact.weebly.com/

Winter is Coming

After my last post I just had to make another one just so I could use the line from Game of Thrones. So, here we go with Winter.  I'm not too happy with the pose, I tried to get more of an extreme twist from her torso to her waist. I ended up scrapping that because I didn't want to end up spending hours noodling the pose till it was just right. I didn't want to copy the pose I did for Summer, but after putting them together in the second image, I don't think it would of been too bad. Colored Winter just like I did Summer, also colored lines are make things pretty nice lookin'.

Anyways I quickly stuck Summer and Winter together in one image. Kinda surprised that it worked so well, at least I think it kinda looks neat. I also didn't realize how much taller Winter would end up being. Wasn't my original plan to mash them together, but it works. Who knows I might just finish up this lady/swimwear/firearm/season theme I've started with these two. I mean I'm halfway there already haha, just Spring and Fall should be fun to do.

Summer's Bookend

Well I meant to post this at the "official" end of summer on September 21st, but I kind of forgot.  Anyways, I embraced being a male of my species for an hour or so and drew a pretty girl without much clothing... So, I wanted to try something different when I did this and just played with the gradient, lasso, and hue/saturation tools in Photoshop to color this. I thought it looked neat and graphic-y, and was simple way to color. Kinda has a military-girl vibe to it, in which case be careful she knows how to use that gun haha.

Red Wizardz

Here's another one of those 30 minute speed paints. Topic was Red Wizard. This was as far as I got in about 30 minutes. Probably would of been further if I hadn't kept changing my mind about it. Made me waste a lot of time, lesson learned.

I think I said this before in another post but I'll say it again. Going into a project headfirst is not always the best way, planning things out or at least figuring out your goal before starting really really helps.

Anyways I spent about another 30 minutes trying to do something with it, then I scrapped that and put in another 30 minutes and ended up with this.

I think it's better, but it has a non-existent pose and I should of just started from scratch all over and saved myself an hour messing around. Doing these paintings has really been forcing me to think about stuff a lot more than I'm used to.

Double Feature

Two posts in one night, back to back! I'm on some kind of a roll. Anyways I kinda wandered into a daily paint group on FB. Thirty minutes, no photos, pure painting, random topics everyday. It's pretty fun considering how hectic I felt under the gun. I'm just more impressed with how far I got in that time. Nice to see that I can still kind of paint.

Pumpkinz

Well our final turned out to be a simple pumpkin. Not wanting to accept something so mundane for a final (albeit we only had a week...) I tried to make the headless horseman instead. So I banged this bad boy out and set off to build him a suit of armor.

Then Sunday night rolls up and I couldn't get anything I sculpted to look the way I wanted. I think the problem was I went ahead and didn't think this through the the get go. I should of designed my horseman as a whole before I dove in. I would of had a plan all worked out on paper as well as a defined look and goal. Alas, hindsight is 20/20 and so I just colored it up in zBrush and turned it in somewhat disappointed with myself. My professor thought it was cool, I just wished I could of made it more in the time I had.

Met Jackson Sze, and here's a door

Before my usual blurb about whatever I posted have to say I met Jackson Sze at a workshop at our school over the weekend. He's a really good artist and a damn good painter and he's worked on some cool stuff. Ended the day with a signed copy of Battle Milk 2, it was a good day haha. I really want to paint after his workshop.

Now back on topic, and something out of my comfort zone but homework is homework. Had to make a door of any type (Sci-fi, Fantasy, etc.), and originally I had planned a pretty elaborate sci-fi door. However, two days before I had to turn in the assignment I realized I had no idea how I was going to texture the whole thing let alone unwrap it.

So after a bit of freaking out I redoubled my efforts on a fantasy door. What started as a dwarf head/door I came up with this instead. Some kind of door to an otherworldly dimension of demons or miscellaneous other bad things, or good things I suppose anything's possible.

Took a lot of shortcuts to get this done as fast as I did. About 30k tris, and an texture pass greatly helped by dDO. It's all on one 2048 as well with plenty of room left to cram some smaller extras in to. When you gotta get stuff done, you have to get it done though. There was supposed to be light beams coming out of the central crack in the door. My alpha cards only rendered straight-up green, despite my alphas. I'll just ask my professor when I get to class tonight. I will admit I totally stole the Darksiders' Horsemen logo though, I had the largest mental block figuring out something to put on the door.

Also looking at it again, it should be noted the door opens inward, and thanks to my friend Chris (Same name I know.) for letting me use his lighting rig. Makes things instantly prettier haha.

Programs used: zBrush, Maya, 3Ds Max, 3dCoat, dDO, Photoshop

HUDs Up

Work in progress render for the HUD/face of Marie for First Contact. The changes from the original (albeit rushed) first version are pretty dramatic. Having actual hair for one was a pretty big deal haha. Only thing left for me to do is play with the spec map to behave more like I want, and I'm calling this done. Gonna be a nice improvement over our placeholder.

Something Cartoony

Just wanted to get something out there that wasn't 3d. Plus, I couldn't sleep. So I drew Marie without her helmet. I wanted to do it all fancy-like but I couldn't spend too long on this. As I type right now my eyes want to close so bad haha. Off to bed as soon as I post this.

Forgot the Spec

Totally did not notice, her spec maps had somewhere along the pipeline got disconnected. How I did not notice till now amazes me. It also means our short was rendered without her spec maps as well... crap... Ah well, live and learn right?

Last One I Promise...

Just had to try a couple more...

Rendering Experiments

After my last post I felt like taking another stab at lighting, which I'm not too great at. This time around I lit Marie with three lights, one blue (side), one orange (back), and a slightly red main light source (front). Somewhat happy with how it looked I tried it again messing with the focal length of the camera and depth of field. Which resulted in a neat upshot I thought so I put it up here as well. Now I know that presentation wise it's best to put the model on a 50% grey background, but I'm a big fan of Chiaroscuro and having the black background is just kind of an aesthetic I've grown to like. Although the lights are far too bright here to achieve the proper effect haha.

In other news, I'm sporting a pretty powerful new computer, it's been kicking some serious a** in all my 3d applications. (It did cost me a pretty penny though...) Got these renders with extremely high settings all checked-on done in like a minute each. It's been night and day compared to my old computer. My old one served me well, but if I'm going to make this art thing a career I needed a better workstation.

Also big shout out to our Rigger Mike Swann, for rigging all our characters for First Contact. Went to hell and back getting our characters to work, my hat goes off to him. All that fancy rigging code and script is all black magic to me haha.

Red Light

Found a render I did of Marie while cleaning out some folders on my portable hard drive. Figured I might as well load it up. I think I was playing with rim lighting in Maya when I did this. Not much else to say haha.

Tree House

Now for some more recent work. Here's a shot of one of my homework assignments for a class this quarter. Based on the concept by this guy http://deevad.deviantart.com Ignore the leaves they're kinda lame cause I'm not really up to speed on zBrush's fiber mesh functions like I am other areas of the program. It was fun to do though, not really used to stuff besides characters, which made doing this pretty slow, but I got it done more or less.

PACIFIC RIM

First of all let me say, Pacific Rim was the greatest movie of all time and Grown-Ups 2 should of never of beaten it. Anyways, while waiting for a guest speaker to show up at our school, I tried to sketch out Cherno Alpha from memory (This was before the movie came out) I kinda had the right idea, the nuclear smokestack was far too narrow though. So sad that it *SPOILERS* dies so quick, it was favorite Jaeger.

The second image is a scan of what was to be my entry into IGN's Design Your Own Jaeger contest, but I missed the deadline. My fault for trying to get this done on the last day of submission haha, I wished I got it finished. My theme was tall and narrow with like some sort of bladed armor. It would fight normally of course but it's armor let the Kaiju maim itself as the fight wore on. (Which I though was a great idea after seeing the movie.) I will congratulate the winner of the contest though, his submission looked pretty cool.

Espacio Pistolero

I think this was a quick sketch during one of the many burnouts I suffered while working on our Production Studio short First Contact. Again it was Marie but no face mask this time around. I think I was trying to figure out how her face would actually fit inside of the helmet. Much to my dismay when I tried it in 3d, they didn't line up haha.

Doing these little sketches every now and then between all the hard work all most of my team was doing was probably the only reason most of us didn't lose it. Probably that and lots of angry car rides home...

I'll be sure to post a link to the short when we fine tune it some more, which should be soon hopefully.

Jedi Somethingorother

Had no sleep for the last two days of our massive two-quarter project for our Production Studio class. After school had kicked us out when it closed we went to a friend's house and brought some computers to continue working. I was mostly in a supervisory role as I couldn't do much at the time, so I drew in a friend's sketchbook when I wasn't needed. Originally it was going to be Marie, which is what we named my space marine character in the short, but I took a different route and it ended up as some Jedi-esque character.

Death Notes

Had this badboy lurking around in my notes for awhile, totally forgot about him. Did this way back when I did Death's zBrush sculpt. All the notes are from the same class as well. I kinda zoned out for a bit and about 20 minutes later it was break time and this was done. Kinda sad about the closure of the Vigil Games as well, the Darksiders series just oozed style just needed some more substance and it would of been great. Kinda sad I'll never get to see Fury and Strife get their own games now.

Deep Blue Sky

This was a fun little gem I forgot I did way back. When I worked on our class project in Animation Studio we threw around the idea of a mock movie poster, which we never got around to. During break however I did this up in my sketchbook paying homage to Star Wars: A New Hope. It's also super small only a few inches big in my book, looking at it again I kinda want to make a proper version of this.

Sweet Revenge

Annnndddd I'm back, been way too long since I posted anything on here so... Here's the first of many posts of the evening. Dug through my sketchbook and rooted out some decent pieces.

So, a group of my friends took a class and they did a short that was a bit of a spoof on The Avengers and Halloween (The Holiday, btw) all rolled into one. I dropped by the class a couple times and did some fan art. The three villains of the short, and a poster of their version of the Avengers like the movie poster (but I couldn't find it.) Also some sketchiness of Thor on top as I tried to help one of the guys to animate it. Anyways, that's all for this post. More to come as the night rolls on.

Before I forget, go check out their short!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqr9aOprtlU

Also 13k+ views, I'm amazed I've gotten so many (In light of my lack of updates), thanks again all you anonymous visitors!

Workin' like crazy

I've been slaving away like mad over the last few months on a group project at school. It'll be an animated short, that we only get around 22 weeks to do stuff in, and the space marine here is one of the things I've been working on for it. So in about 9 more weeks my Team should hopefully have a finished product that we're proud of. Got a lot of my friends working on the team as well and we're hauling ass trying to be the best short ever made for all time in that class. Plus, I get to see my character move which is cool. I'll try to post more frequently again as well, been so busy I don't usually have anything to post here.

Space Marines!

All finished sculpting! Now all my problems focus on getting this into a working version for Maya to get all rigged.

zBrush Preview

Hey everyone, it's been a crazy few weeks since I've gotten back to school. We're doing a massive group project over 2 quarters, and it's shaping up to be epic as hell. Got all the best in our major at the campus in the class and we're determined to see this through and succeed.

Anyways I feel terrible not posting as much as I used to here, it really is a nagging thought in my head everytime I'm on a computer. So, here's something at least. One of our characters for the short we're working on. I'll upload a complete turnaround once she's finished, also a big thanks to Eat3D's hard surface zBrush videos, they were instrumental in getting this done. Though the second video of the series is the best at explaining the process.

Can't wait to get our project done, we've all learned new programs. Vue, Topogun (New to us!), and dDO. So here's looking forward to my lil' space lady here running around and fighting stuff. Wish us luck all you anonymous visitors!

Sketchy Suit

Been busy lately, starting a massive group project. Should be really badass when we finished. Anyways this is a cartoony version of the zBrush sculpt I'm working on for the short. Wanted to figure out some form of color scheme. I originally wanted her armor to be some sort of color, and her accent lights to be white. It never wanted to look right though, so I ended up with the reverse of what I wanted. Which I don't think looks too bad, I like it at least. Her 'eye' I should also explain is a holographic display thing, I guess kind of like the Cylon eyes. Except this one doesn't always move from side to side, I guess a cyclops would be a better example. We were thinking about maybe doing a kind of inside the helmet shot like you see in Iron Man to see her face as our short goes on.

Hopefully I get the actual model done soon as it is much more impressive than this lil' sketch I have here. Learning a bunch of cool zBrush stuff for hard surface modeling, and I think it looks pretty darn cool so far.

In other news, Happy New Year, and I've also gotten an internship doing some stuff for a local PBS station. Doing pre production work for a short they're planning. I'll be sure to upload that stuff too if I can.