2013 Year Review: what to do 2014

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

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

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

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.

• Work on lower ver models

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.

• More drawing.

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.

First 5 Pages

• Monsters, creatures,

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.

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

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.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------

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.