Monday, September 23, 2013

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.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

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.

Friday, September 20, 2013

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.

Monday, September 9, 2013

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

Saturday, September 7, 2013

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.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

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.