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...
