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.

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/

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

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.

Death con Color

Tis' Colored! Got done yesterday, and today I see all the problems with it. Mainly with the back of his torso, it's crazy dark as is. I guess it looked better the other day or something. Which is why it's a good reason to get an outside opinion of your work, or just take a break and come back to your work. Seeing things with fresh eyes helps out a lot when your doing anything. I've probably spent over 50+ hours on this thing, and it took me a good night of rest to see problems I couldn't see yesterday.

Anyways, I'll probably go back and tweak this some more, fix the back, and also try messing with some color choices. I tried to keep to the color scheme I was referencing, but the boots and gauntlets (that I made up) were from a different 'armor set' and don't quite mesh with the colors as they are. It could even be a design issue, and I think that's the main reason. The boots are a completely different style compare to the waist armor, and I think that's what breaks it. Might just have to go back and remodel those.

Just when I thought I was done, I find more work I have to do haha. Reminds me of the quote from Leonardo DaVinci - "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

Darksiders 2 Death

Been awhile since I posted, but only for a lack of material to post. So wow... almost 1k pageviews again and I'm getting hits from places like Kenya haha. So thank you again to all you anonymous vistors. Hopefully the amount of work/me rambling about art stuff in this post will tide me over for awhile again.

Anyways, here's my sculpt of Death from Darksiders 2! Did it in less than a week as well, I would of taken longer if I had more than a week to do it in. As you may or may not be able to tell I had to rush through some stuff just to get it done. I would of liked to of figured out how to make certain armor pieces as I saw them in the concept work, but I didn't have the time. The gauntlets however are of my own design, as I couldn't find something more than simple, and less than epic in the images I looked through. I think they look like they fit in surprisingly well, but I had spent the last few days doing the rest of the armor so that helped me along with their design too.

Doing my best to nail the art style was also quite a challenge. Only going off the concept will get you so far, you really have to look at some normal anatomy also to figure out what 'that muscle' looks like so you can exaggerate it properly. Case in point I did not realize that the muscles over his shoulder blades were actually his shoulder blades, till I looked at some normal stuff and saw that those were the exaggerated muscles on your scapula. It also does not want to obey the normal rules of proportion most of the time. To make the head look right I had to extend the neck up quite a bit, but overall it looks right doesn't it? Having your own style is cool and all, but the rules are there for a reason. However, knowing when to break them is quite possibly one of the most important things you could learn.

Anyways his coattail/kilt parts (I don't know the proper name) aren't ragged yet cause I figured it would be easier to do when I make my low poly version with some alpha maps. Speaking of which, this almost 4.6mil poly model will be pretty useless unless I can get a nice low poly version finished. Which is also my next challenge as well as unwrapping/texturing this whole thing. Wish me luck!

The Mother & Daughter

Here is our unnamed mother and daughter for a story beat in the beginning of our project. Not much to say about 'em. Both designs were started by my friend Lee who you can check out at http://deadpoolrus.deviantart.com/. I ended up modifying the designs again, just because we wanted all designs to be similar. The little girl is barely changed and the mother's body shape was the only thing I kept from his. Originally the mother had a ponytail off to the side, like her daughter. However this made her look like an older sister or something. So I settled on a bobbed kind of hairstyle.

Also on a side note front views always make my characters look weird now that I'm looking at them again... not sure if that's normal or something I should be working on.

The Hero

Here's the Hero of my Production Studio project, the "T" stands for Trojan (As in Trojan Man, get it?) Anyways all immature silliness aside I think I like this the most out of all the characters. Knowing the plot also makes me feel kind of bad for our hero, but I won't give anything away till it's finished.

Again not all designs are mine here. The alter ego again is mine, but the hero costume design was originally done by my friend Lee, and then another guy in our group took it from there. I finalized and refined the design into what you see on the bottom image.

The Villainess

Well here's some turnarounds from my Production Studio class. Tis' the ice based villain of our story, complete with alter ego as well. The story has quite a twist, at least we think so and despite it being so dead serious I think it'll be fun.

Not all here is my work, the super villain costume was created by my friend Lee, who you can check out here http://deadpoolrus.deviantart.com/. I edited his turnarounds and I guess you can still see the eraser marks from his original line art. Her alter ego is all my idea, and I had originally drawn her head too big, thank god for photoshop haha.

Anyways hopefully the costume scan looks ok, I didn't scan it myself I don't have the original.