First Sculpey Sculpture

It's been some time since my last post, since then I've received my clay and tools and currently in the middle of my  first sculpture project. Since this is the first time I'm doing this its very much a learning process which is why it is taking a while, though I have already received my second batch of clay for my next model which is going to be a more traditional human form, my very own superhero model, but for now I need to continue and, at some point, finish my creature model which is the Affa'iik creature that I posted a concept of a while back.

New Hobby

I've been wondering about starting this new hobby for a while now, ever since one of my teachers at university told me that it was a good idea to have a creative hobby next to the normal 3D work and he mentioned making maquettes in clay.

This is something that really interested me and since I want to ultimately become a character artist I also think it is a great way to improve my modelling skills, since I can't make as detailed sculpts in zbrush due to my hardwares limitations. This also has possibilities beyond my portfolio work...

So now I only have to wait for my Super Sculpey clay and tools to arrive before starting this new hobby which I'm really excited about.

Character Showreel 2012

Made a showreel for my three newest characters last night.

Game Character Portfolio Pics

The game character of Captain Kilkenny.

I will do new renders of my character so far in this style, mostly because all the white of the background is washing out the normals detail, especially with the Tribal Alien character, but at some point I will also do some turntable animations for an eventual showreel.

 You can see here that the normals detail is showing much better with a black background, although it might be a better idea to fix the background in photoshop later.

ZBrush Sculpt

I've finished the Zbrush sculpt of the character yesterday, wasn't all that sure about the color of his clothes but thats luckily easily fixeable.

I also added the holster from the concept to the base mesh that you can see in the previous post.

Base Model

I've more or less finished the base model for the Captain, ready to be taken into zbrush to add the folding of the clothes and such.

Concepting

Since my last model I vowed to take the proper approach on future ones... which means concepting ideas before modeling.


At first I continued with the universe of my Vatanashi alien character and concepted a brutish creature intended for grazing the planes of the homeworld.

I updated the design of a creature concept I made during my second year of college.

It has been my intention for some time now to create a stylized human character, which seems to be the norm for the industry in Norway, especially since most of the companies are making indie game.

So I made a concept of Captain Kilkenny, an overly confident spacer.

I would really like to make an indie game with this character, you know the classic third person platforming kind.

currently i'm well into modelling the character and he looks to be well on his way to kick some alien butt

Gun Complete.

I recently completed the gun model for the Vatanashi character, fairly happy with it. I went through two different designs for it, the first was more organic with flowing armor pieces along the barrel but I really wanted some hard edges for once, something that actually also resembled a traditional gun, of course I had to take the characters physiology into account when placing the trigger and how he was going to hold the gun. I swear this will be the last model I do without first doing concepts.

I really like the pose for the character you see here, I might use it for a turntable clip in the future.

But for now i'm done with him.

I'll now have to decide what to do next:

Assets
 (plants, furniture etc.)

New Character ( pixar style, stylized which is more widely used in the Norwegian industry)

.....Maybe a little Vatanashi walk cycle?

New Weapon: War Club

I spent today creating a new weapon for my character, as I wasn't happy with the staff weapon, both how it turned out and it didn't seem all that pratical to use for my character. So instead of making a sword, which everyone immediately does, I googled some inspiration and I got :  The War Club.

I might rework the low poly mesh of this weapon and re-project on it to better catch the detail from the hi poly.

Testing Rig

I've rigged my character with a simple rig, still need to iron out some kinks when it comes to the painted weights but I decided to test the rig by giving my character a little pose with the TEST weapon before I called it a day (i've since decided that I want the character to be wielding dual-swords along the back of his forearms).

Game Character

After a busy time, I finally managed to get back to work so I could finish my character model, this is a render of the final game character, although I will probably do some polishing on the texture maps in photoshop.... now to create some tripod-hand friendly weapon designs which should be great fun!

 

Alien readiness

My Alien character is ready to be decimated and I now need to start working on the low poly version of him so I can project the details, the pain is going to be deciding on how hi poly I can permit the torso armor to be so I can capture the shape of the folds without going to the thousands of polys.

I decided to ditch the leathery braces and shinguards idea and rather continued with the shell/carapace idea I used for the torso armor, the character will, when finished, wield a hi tech staff as a weapon.

Puffs Duology

I've done two animation tests to both test the rig and the skinning....... and just for fun.

I'm satisfied with the character, though I will probably fix little things sometime, like the eyes, they look a little too glassy.

The animation is done purely from imagination and I have not used any reference videos or pictures, which is what I probably should, but hey it was just tests.

This will be the last entry about Puff before I continue with my Alien character.

Puffs RIG-atoni

I've finished projecting the hi poly details onto the lo poly version, going from 8 million polys I think it was to 2578 polys, by no means this is not the lowest I could go but at the end of the day this model is intended for a possible showreel intro not for a low poly competition or a job.

I've also done a rig for the character, almost from scratch, I started with a skeleton from the skeleton generator in maya 2012, and then adjusting them to fit the character before creating all the controls.

Puff Progress

Tomorrow I am going to start the work of adjusting the low poly versions geometry to better fit the high poly character before I do the projection of the texture and normal maps, but also before that....I have to UV map the low character, must not forget that.

New Character: Puff

Started a new character yesterday, more of a logo character for the Christer Mortensson brand if you will, hehe, actually created the original character 2 years ago but lost the files after a harddrive failed.

But luckily I remember it quite well and it's a fairly easy character.

It's a stylized Puffin bird, it is more or less the national bird of iceland and I've always found that it has a quite interesting look about it.

And since I haven't got any stylized characters in my portfolio, I thought it was a good idea to make one.

Still having some problems with the polypainting, but thats the next part on the agenda.

Updated Armor

I refined the lines of the armor, I changed my mind about the armor being traditional looking bone with hard but flexible material underneath but instead going for a kind of over lapping design.

Here you can see how it looks on the character, I also want either some clothing or more armor for the characters hip area, but would rather not have a traditional belt looking thing.

Torso-astic Armor

I thought the character looked a little bare and unprotected, this species has, as I've stated before, a tribal warrior culture and are very agile and good fighters. Now a specialized and bare outfit like the character is wearing now is ok for a stealthy assassin unit or something similar, but what I am going for is the soldiers outfit that would be the standard for this species and I would then want at least some armor on him.

It is fairly low poly (for a sculpt) and low detail, but the intention is for the armor to consist of some creatures bones to protect from slashes and I will want something hard in between them that at the same time wouldn't restrict movement. And I will also need to find a way to make the bones not seem too rigid so that would allow movement as well.

Colors ahoy

I've started to do some polypainting on the character, might end up not being the final design though, but we'll see.

I've continued the color scheme of the head for the hands and feet, where the strongest purple color is is where the roughest skin is located.

I want a shiny, almost wet look for the suit. And the leather bracers should look worn and scratched, but thats for later.

Crows Feet

I actually did this some time ago but I added alot of skin detail on the characters face, mostly lines and cracks, this is definately not a young example of the species, if their signs of aging is the same as ours....?

Suit up!

After doing most of the work on the feet I decided to begin on some of the fun stuff, which is, alpha brushing the body.
It has always been my intention for the character to have a skintight suit most likely made of some kind of animal hide to reflect the species tribal / hunting / warrior culture, and I really liked how this almost crocodile patterned alpha brush looked as it looked hard and rough, though maybe too hard to be used for a skin tight suit? as this is an extraterrestrial being this can't be crocodile hide but perhaps rather an equivalent and with slightly different characteristics.

Though I still want to add alot of scratches and other wear on it.

I also added some wear on the suit where it would be most likely to be some like under the arms, at the elbows, the .....crotch, and also behind the knee. I did this to make the suit not looks brand new but more worn and personal.

not exactly Hobbit feet

Here's how the feet look at the moment, I think I'm managing the reptile look quite well so far, can't wait to add some alpha patterns on here so it looks like proper reptile feet.

Glorious Feet

So I've been reconsidering my original design for the aliens feet, I wanted to have a reptile look for the feet so I looked to incorporate a Velociraptor claw to a humanoid reptile look for the rest of the foot, though now I'm not so sure it looks all that good, it isn't aggressive enough. I have been keeping a basic boot design as a back up but I haven't given up on the reptile look. So I'm now experimenting with creating a foot design based on the Tyrannosaurus, this will give me the aggression I want as they have rather large claws which is something I have really seen this alien species having as an integral part of their fighting style.

This is the initial results of the new foot design, and I have to say that I'm really pleased with how this looks as oppose to the original idea.

Start your engines

I've started a new project in addition to the Tribal Alien project.
This new one is a motorcycle model, the last time I did a vehicle was during my first year at Swansea Met and I thought it was about time to improve this side of my repertoire.

The Motorcycle I've taken reference photos of is my fathers BMW which I've always found to be a cool looking bike, and also a much more interesting one to model than the sleek modern super bikes that are being produced nowadays.

The reference shots I took weren't the best ones but im making due with what I have, I also have the opportunity to look at the bike whenever I want so no worry there.

This also a good opportunity for me to practice my overall modelling skills, the wheels are for now pretty high poly but my process is now to model high poly and then to remove the excess polys.

Wales Games Development Show 2012.

So, since my game was one of four projects chosen by our program director to be shown at the Wales Games Development Show tomorrow the 22nd of June, I have to get up at 04:50 AM to take a train at 05:50 AM so I can get to where I'm suppose to be in Cardiff.

Much hassle with us being expected to load the equipment we need and everything, thought I was done with the stress for now, but lets hope this is worth it, I think its going to be representatives from companies throughout Wales, so the problem is that I have no intention of working in Wales after I graduate in July. So I don't now if this is really worth the effort, but anyway I've got nothing else to do anyway.

I'll tell you what though, I am for DAMN SURE going to catch up on my sleep after tomorrow.

Continued Progress.

I continued on my new character-in-progress.

To finish off the head I added a dead eye (to make him look more interesting in the same way that the scars do, it gives him a kind of visual backstory), colour for the head veins and a kind of spreading colour from the neck to the cheeks like as if he has a kind of spreading illness or maybe it is a normal feature of this species physiology.

I have also started on the body of the character, since one of the characters for my final major project was a big muscly guy, I wanted to try something more subtle and interesting for this one, I want the character look slim but also like he could be a fierce fighter, so I'm going for lean sinewy muscle type, also change the anatomy and the traditional musculature since he belongs to an alien species it would be somewhat strange for him to have completely human anatomy I think, and it also makes it a little more interesting to model.

I chose for the character to have these "tripod" like hands because, besides the fact that it looks damn cool, it also distances him from the traditional human body shape.

From School to Portfolio.

I've more or less finished my degree and can finally begin doing more work on my 3D portfolio, especially things that I WANT to do, ok the last year major project was pretty much all me without any restrictions but I must admit that I chose to do some pretty boring models, at least character models. I was learning at that stage so I didn't want to be over-ambitious and risk failing completely, but NOW I can start to populate my portfolio with the interesting and ......well cool ideas I've had over the years since I started my degree, and I really feel I am getting better and better at modelling and texturing, the latter just recently as I discovered the freedom of actually painting my textures entirely in photoshop without relying completely on photos.

So, I sat down the day after our degree show at Patti Pavilion in Swansea and opened up zbrush and just really wanted to try another approach to create good and sound groundwork for character creation, which is to use the default heads and bodies that comes with zbrush as a starting point, this way you get correct physical proportions for your character ( if realistic proportions are needed ).

This is a great time saver and really allows you to concentrate on the creative side of the modelling process, previously, when I first started to learn how to use zbrush, I was following tutorials that started the process from scratch and completely built a body using zspheres, which makes it necessary for you to constantly check if your proportions are getting screwed.


Anyway, this new character I am creating sprung from a concept I did when I was practicing my drawing in the second year, An alien warrior.

This is after I had done the first changes to the default head and had brought it in to Maya12 to do some retopologizing.

I am basically just going after what I think looks interesting and since the idea is this is a warrior is from a Tribal culture I also want to add maybe piercings and tattoos.

The first pass of poly-painting the head, I am doing the body and head separately to allow me to concentrate on one thing at a time, I am basically building this race of creatures and want to create the "face" of these creatures.