Francois, Continued

I didn't see much of Francois yesterday, but today I worked on refining the topology for animation and threw a multi subobject material on him with some basic colours for fun:

He still needs a luxurious goatee and hairpiece and so on but I think he looks p. cute :)

Introducing Francois the Fancy-Goat! (WIP)

Recently I've been coming up with some more ideas, one of which produced FRANCOIS THE FANCY-GOAT! I started modelling him today.

He's very fancy, even his horns and hooves are made of gold! This is a quick sketch I did of Francois, I made it into a reference image so I could begin to model Francois in Max:

He is beginning to look like a fine fancy-goat indeed.

Newfangled Gunhands!?!?

I got an email from Jack Mamba's concept designer Tyrel a couple days ago asking me to add a special detail onto the character. Tyrel, thanks for sending me the concept art today despite how university is keeping you busy! I spent the day with your concept on my laptop monitor while I upgraded the hand in Max:

Seriously watch out for this guy. What if his finger twitches?

It was a little bit of a challenge but there you have it. Ready for detailing!

Quick Head Update

Just a quick update on the head. More tomorrow!

Sculpting the Head and Solving Issues!

Making excellent headway in head sculpting! Har, har! Joking aside, I fixed some significant issues that the low poly model had with the pose/structure of the head I noticed when I moved it over to Zbrush... I had to deviate from the references a bit but I'm pretty happy with how it's shaping up, but I have a long way to go with it still. The head is at just under 200 K polys so far, there's plenty of room to add detail and refine the shape.

For the sake of my computer, the displayed model is at  lower than max subdivision level.

Our Jack looks pretty humourless!

I still have a lot of refining to do, but it's coming along well :)

I'll continue working on this today for a little while and hopefully have the face done by tomorrow. The pieces are starting to all come together! Tyrel, I hope you'll love the finished product!

Jack, Continued

For the past couple of days I've been working on further detailing Jack's jacket and worked on his lower body.

I would like to add more finishing touches, but I'm having major memory issues at this point with my machine. I'll see how this plays out as I finish more pieces of the character. Maybe I'll win the lottery and be able to afford a sweet computer :)

Jack's Jacket... Part One

I did work on a jacket today:

There is still some fixin's ups to do!

There are still small details to be added, but I think the beginnings of it are starting to shape up nicely. I aim to have this jacket finished by tomorrow and start on the next slice of this Jack!

The Shiniest Hat

Starting today until hopefully no later than the end of the week - character sculpting! I'll be sculpting from a base mesh that was built in 3ds Max 2011, but I have to break it into several pieces before importing it to ZBrush because if I don't, I'm pretty sure my computer will explode.

It already exploded once while making this :(

If all goes according to plan, hopefully I'll have some Jack for this hat of Jack to be worn upon tomorrow.

Skull Time! Learning Digital Sculpting

My  four years at university are over (Aw...), but I feel that I'm not yet ready to present myself to the CG industry.

After a great week of being a Student Volunteer at SIGGRAPH Vancouver 2011 last month, I decided to work full time on my demo reel for a couple of months (thanks very much to my supportive family who allow me to do so), until I feel proud enough with my work to feel confident to present to potential employers.

I want to take this time for working on my reel to brush up on my texturing and rigging skills. I want to learn the industry standard programs that were not covered by my broad fine arts New Media major in university. I want to invite you to share with me my pathway to finding a career! :)

First on my list of things to do is to learn how to do digital sculpting. In the New Media program at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, we take a variety of courses: traditional art, drama, music, film, graphic design, and as a liberal arts university I had to take sciences and social sciences as well (astronomy was my favorite of these). I decided to focus in 3D art as best I could, but there were no in depth digital sculpting courses. So, for the first time, I tackled the ZBrush interface and created my first digital sculpt:

Lovingly nicknamed 'Murray'.

I used several different images as reference, and tried to pay close attention to the anatomy of the human skull. I think the next step for this skull is to try some vertex painting, and place it in a scene for presentation. I think it went really well for a first go, the biggest struggle I had was actually setting up the scenes side and front reference views :S

It can be pretty intimidating learning new software solo, but I'm excited for what I'm working on currently...