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.

Monk-y Redo

Hey all, long story short my trusty old tablet finally broke and just got a brand new Intuos5. Hadn't really had the chance to break it in until now. Finals have started for me this week and I just wanted to get that off my mind, so I decided to retry the female monk from Diablo 3 again without lines. I had taken a couple old demo files from one of my professors and tried to figure out how he painted them. Reverse engineering a painting is rather fun when you manage to achieve similar results. She did kinda get stretched since I wasn't really paying attention to anything but how to paint.

Anyways this came out better than I had hoped, considering how unwary I am of using so much color, like the blues/purples in the shadows. It really does make the end result feel... nicer, not really sure why yet.

Monk-y Do

I figured I'd complete the set, and do the female monk from D3 as well. It also allowed me to have some fun with the post titles. You'd think it would go faster this time. It didn't, something about drawing ladies seems to slow me down immensely. I think it's some sub-conscious thing. Drawing a guy is easier in that our brain can let them be a little rougher and not as pretty. Then when you're drawing a girl, it's harder because you want them to look nice. Then again it could be the fact that you draw what you know easier. I mean was born and been a guy for 22 years, don't know much about being a woman haha. Both are valid reasons in my mind.

Anyways, the colors were the second problem for me. For the longest time I couldn't get them to look 'right'. Eventually I realized the problem was I was color picking from the female monk concept art for D3. So I ditched that and went with a set of 3 main colors: red, gold, and orange. (Brown is a shade of orange btw) Then the color's just seemed to work out right, and from a distance I think they match the general color palette for Diablo 3. Skin seems a bit too orange/yellow-y to me now... I might go back and make it paler.

Monk-y See

Well what started as a spaceman, ended up as a monk. I blame the Diablo 3 open beta, I really like Monk class. I did try out a new method for colors that I picked up from Carlo Arellano when he dropped by our school awhile ago to give a lecture on creature design. Basically you do your base colors, and then use it as a mask, and you don't have to worry about additional coloring outside the lines/borders of what you want. Which is a real time saver, and it was a fun lecture learned a lot about character design, and got to listen to some fun industry stories. Back on topic, I didn't reference the pose so I apologize if this isn't a proper stance. I just based it off of all the random martial arts I've seen in movies over the years haha.

I also seem to have broken past 3k pageviews now, which I have to say was a lot faster than it took me to get to 1k, and 2k haha. Anyways, thank you again to all my anonymous visitors. I know you're out there.

I won a contest!

Sadly, not for my art but for reading something correctly. Still a win is a win, anyways I entered a contest for Blizzard Entertainment way back in January, and today I find a box at my doorstep labeled the Shattering Contest, and inside I find a signed copy of the book by the author. First time I've ever won a real sort of contest, definitely a good feeling.

Gilneas

Here are a couple of shots from my Environment project from Hard Surface and Organic Modeling. It's Gilneas from World of Warcraft. Just loved the design of the city, and had to remake it (As best as I could from memory haha) in Maya. It's not too bad, but after Finals I realized I wasn't making it for a game, and I could of gone more all out on detail since I technically didn't have to worry about poly count.

Still though one of the girls in the class did this amazingly awesome job on the nepal city level from Uncharted 2. It was freaking awesome, she even won I believe it was a scholarship from Sony. Makes me happy to rub that in people's faces when they say that my school doesn't teach the students anything.