http://djwiley.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-clean-sheet.html
So January 2nd at the start of this year I made a list of all my work in 2012 and looked at what I did, where I needed to improve myself and where do I need focus my art and study in which direction.
At the start of this year I made a list of what I needed to do:
What I need to accomplish for 2013 (for my art):
- Human body: Perfect Female Sculpt and do More male sculpts
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| Human Sculpts 2013 |
There are repeats in each of these sections but that's because they feed into each other. My body sculpting is getting there, nothing perfect but I think I have the right direction. Like all art it is just working with it every day and just study muscles and perfecting areas. Looking at these I think my feet are the next area to focus on and back to hand sculpts as well.
- SOMETHING with hardsurfaces i.e. Robotics, Metal
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| Hardsurface 2013 |
This is where I have failed this year, This is my only Hardsurface character which I have actually gone back to and started sculpting and modeling him again; I have looked at more concepts and drawing and don't know what I was thinking. So this is a "
must fix" for 2014.
- More HDR work and rendering
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| Rendering 2013 |
It sounds kind of silly but I am proud of my compositing HDR rendering work. I love the re-render of Hester and Rosa. Dion (top center) is one of my more realistic renders but there is still so much more I need to figure out to get it to that nearly perfect place. The Real Monsters (top right) did turn out well and all posed and render with Zbrush. I do need to perfect my render setting outside of Zbrush. From this the toilet toy (bottom 2nd from the left) is the only thing not rendered in Zbrush.
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| Low Models 2013 |
2 of these are WIP, my hardsurface character is not my favorite of the year, I see so much wrong with him and I kind of wish I could yell at my old self about how bad this is. Granted I am yelling at myself about things I did in March. Need to do more low modeling; depending on the project I will jump from my import alphas or start with a dynamesh sphere, I really enjoy dynamesh but I need to do more retypos on those models then. I also need to generally improve my maps and posing too as always.
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| Drawing 2013 |
I have been doing more drawing and sketching, I think I went through 3 sketch books. I have stared doing something that has been very helpful for my drawing and modeling work. At the start of all my sketchbooks now I have the first 4-5 pages of nothing but simple anatomy drawings and I keep redoing them for all my sketchbooks.
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| First 5 Pages |
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| Creatures 2013 |
A small start, but I do need to work on my quadruped animals and less on the biped one. And do some more alien focused anatomy and design but I think I will start with studying other peoples work and then do some of my own design.
- Mouths from a Dynamesh Model, so I don't always have a closed mouth on the
model.
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| Mouths 2013 |
I said this because all of my model had all their mouths closed and it felt like a really weird thing to point out but I wanted to get more expression out of my characters. This is really a mute point but I have started more sculpts with my alpha meshes, so the mouths are already there. I paint them in Zbrush but its usually dark and I haven't had a large open mouth something to worry about.
*A new addition to the start of the year*
- Other peoples concepts and style
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| Others Concepts 2013 |
So I did a little bit of this when I did Daniel Araya's Batman; which I think I will redo; and fydbac's Adoptable. But I have recently and I believe successfully modeled the style and work of both Toby Allen's(
http://zestydoesthings.tumblr.com) Real Monsters and Stephen McCraine's character (
http://doodlealley.com/). I am thinking about doing some comission work. I won't make it super expensive and I will sell my self sort for a little awhile; I want and need the practice of working on something that I did not choose myself.
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So my new list for 2014 To Do:
- continue to work on human figure
- More hardsurface characters: Robots, Hardsurface, Fantasy Armor,
- Improve my rendering outside of Zbrush: Mental Ray, Softimage,
- More time on the low models: retypo's and more alpha modeling.
- continue drawing and sketching concepts; have a more finished concept before modeling it.
- More Quad animals less Bipeds and more alien designs; others concept and mine
- Work more with other peoples concepts
So there is my list of things I need to improve during the 2014 for myself and to improve myself in not only being a character artist but as a more well rounded artist all together.
