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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Alien!

Was reading through some forum posts on a design for an alien species. So I did this up as a potential candidate from their descriptions. At least for a humanoid type of alien. No referencing the original aliens, just wanted to see what I would make on my own. A fun fact about the design was that there was a desire to appeal to asian audiences. So I based the silhouette on samurai armor, and from a distance it looks samurai-ish I suppose haha. Mocked this all up somewhere between 20 or 30 minutes

Greyscale Marine

Again, playing with my new Space Marine design. Been getting out of practice with Photoshop. Have to get back in to gear again. Not to happy with the overall image, but I think I pushed in the right direction.

Space Marine v2

Naturally later in the week in my Art History class, I took another stab at my new-fangled space marine. Which I think lost some of the look of the original. I suppose it's not as bulky as it should be. The helmet also being thinner took away from all that weight the first one suggested. Anyways, I can't really think of much else to say. Some tinkering and noodling the design will eventually generate something I'll like. Again, you can't really bang out a design on the first try. I think of designs like really wrinkly clothes, you have to really iron them out to get something nice. There's always something you can change or take away for the better.

Of Monks & Space Marines...

Here we are again with Humanities. sketched up a "Monk" I had the upper torso more or less sketched out, and wasn't sure what to do with it. Then a brief mention of Buddism during my class got my gears turning, and bam I drew a Monk haha. Ideas really do come from everywhere.

So finished with my Monk, I just drew a shape. Which I stared at for awhile, and said to myself that would be an interesting helmet. The shape became the head of my "space marine" next to the monk. I thought it made for a nice change to the usual design for space marines. Almost knight-like or papal in the way it looks. I'm sure it's not entirely practical either... but I like it. I really liked the concept of it all when I finished.

Art History Notes

Well here's the official start of my sketches I've been meaning to post for a awhile now. Again these are from my Art History class, and for once actual notes again. It's amazing I know, but anyways not much to say about them. I just kind of went with whatever my hand ended up drawing. The only sketch here with any thought put in to it is the naked one. Some student in my class did a powerpoint on pin-ups and well... yeah.

N7 Art History!

My anticipation for Mass Effect 3 is driving me somewhat into an insatiable frenzy of any Mass Effect related news. Which is something my brain normally reserves for all Blizzard games. Anyways, I got the Artbook for Mass Effect, and subsequently ruined the major story points for ME3. I caution any ME enthusiast who buys the Art of the Mass Effect Universe to avoid going into the Mass Effect 3 section, there be spoilers! Anyways, it's a decent art book and I liked all the ideations they did just to establish the look of Mass Effect. So during Art History, I cracked open the art book and sketched up a somewhat cartoony but still Mass Effect style armor/character thing. All while correctly answering questions from my professor during the lecture, love that class.

Art History Man-ified!

I've been drawing those, what I'm now referring to as "Paul Richard Girls" a bit too much. So I felt drawing some guys would help to counter-balance that. My Art History class as always seemed to be the perfect time to sketch and doodle. So I did up this space armor suit, I kind of wanted it to be like a beefed up armored Sith, but he ended up as a pretty run of the mill space guy with a gun on his arm. Didn't end up finishing the feet. I have to admit they are a weak point for me, I just can't seem to care about shoes... Anyways I then went cartoon-y along the side of the page. Playing with what I could do with an over extended lower lip. Which I got some fun results with.

Everyday I'm zBrushin'

First of all, my apologies for not posting lately I've been really really sick. Anyways this is what I've been up to lately in zBrush. My first official complete Character. Anyways I was going to do my character Ka, but I modeled the body wrong. Should of made the base model complete with gauntlets and the like. That's getting off track though, if you recall a few posts back I redid my Mercenary girl and used that as reference when I took my character down a different direction. I embellished some things, and ignored some of the accessories simple because I don't think I can model them yet. Also changed the hair style cause I couldn't get it to look right from all angles. So I remembered Akima's hair style from Titan A.E. and repurposed that. Not too much going on in the color department, but I like the simplicity of it. A bit of Tron definitely influencing this. Black and Turquoise were already one of my favorite color combos, Tron: Legacy just cemented them in place.

On a side note, this keeps making me think of Kelly Chambers from Mass Effect 2 if she was a mercenary.