Monday 12 September 2011

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...

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