The Clean Sheet

2012 has passed. I look at ALL of my best works and doings and see what I did and where I need to improve and set my sights for next year.



Make a list of what I need to accomplish for 2013 (for my art):

• Human body: Perfect Female Sculpt and do More male sculpts
• SOMETHING with hardsurfaces i.e. Robotics, Metal
• More HDR work and rendering
• Work on lower ver models
• More drawing.
• Monsters, creatures, 
• Mouths from a Dynamesh Model, so I don't always have a closed mouth on the model.

I did some work over the Christmas break/season and finished Zatanna. I also added 4r5 to my system, the auto save feature is really nice, but I hate how the model disappears for a second when I reengage the software.

 It was fun doing the frill/fabric on the corset.  Her hair was the hardest part, it just didn't look right. But then I looked at the Tpose of Rosa and realized, that it's because the face has nothing to it. No Expression

 So I started posing and was shift through Tumblr, and found a image of Zatanna with a cool pose. The over all pose turned out fine but I realized the most important part and something I need to work on. Is the mouth. I need to find a way to sculpt the inside of the mouth for my models in Zbrush. Usually I do the inside of the mouth when I make a low poly version and texture it that way.

I did some drawing as well. Something I haven't done in a while; it was nice to do something outside of tech land.

 

Clockwork Man, Rosa, HDR work

I have done a TON of things and they have all turned out really well so far.

First: I finished my submission for the Train your Brain Contest and my Clockwork Man turned out really well. I have been work on this concept for so long and I feel that I have final gotten it down.

"Where does this piece go?" The Clockwork Man does not know where the turn key goes, the head or the heart. 2 of the most important pieces to the being a person are both missing one piece. So, where does the last piece go?



 

So I built him in Zbrush and Softimage, rigged and posed in Soft. Lighting, texture and color were done in Zbrush. I like him and I am really glad it turned out well. Even better than I had thought it would. I was planning on this one being a Hardsurafe study but it turned into more of an anatomy study. 

Second: I have revisited Rosa. I look back at my old model and really, really hate myself for it but this time I got her down.

 

I still have a few odds and ends to add, but so far so good. I am work with Spotlight to texture and paint and I do not know how I lived without it. I want to make her "wet" so I am messing with modeling water on her skin. I want that out of the shower kind of wet and I really haven't tried anything like that in Zbrush before so I think it will be fun.



 

Third: I am trying more HDR work and what not. I want to do something with Faeris and I haven't found images online that I could use for good lighting that I like.

This isn't great, so I need to go hunting for some free HDR images and panoramas which isn't as easy as it sounds.

 

 

 

 

fydbac's Adoptable

I am continuing my work with someone else's design. I am working with other people art to show I can work with someone else concept and practice with single angled artwork. I am up to 2 models,  I would like to do 1 more.

I need to pick something that I wouldn't normally do and something that I wouldn't like to do. I know how that sounds but it isn't how I mean it. I need have someone else pick something, work on something that I have no real say in. I would like to have a robotic character, machine and so on. I really need to work on the hard surface machine and tech. Maybe something that I can use fibermesh and robotic.

Last time I work with Daniel Araya's Batman JLA design:
http://danielaraya.deviantart.com/art/JLA-CG-Concepts-Batman-180836600
http://djwiley.blogspot.com/2012/10/batman.html

 Now I am working with *fydbac's Adoptable Creatures. 

http://fydbac.deviantart.com/gallery/5687042?offset=48

He designs the "eggs" and then "hatches" them. I really like the idea of doing to designs on the eggs and building up to the character. His style is really amazing, everything feels soft and warm. I hoped to give that same feeling in the model.

I choose to work with his first Adoptable Creature: Faeris.

http://fydbac.deviantart.com/art/Adoptable-01-01-301701101

 I chose this one for a couple of reasons. I haven't done anything with fur in a long time and wanted to sculpt some fur. It was one of the first adoptable fydbac designed. I also had some experience with monkeys when I was working on Rosa's Squirrel Monkey.


I started with the dynamesh sphere and sculpted in Zbrush and the next day I added the paint. I had some difficulty with the face. Like DanielAraya's Batman the single view made things a little hard but the challenge is what I needed to make sure I improve. Painting this character was really fun too, I loved doing the fading and pink strokes on the fur.


Faeris Naked  Tpose

This was faster than Batman because it did not have so many parts (the armor, cape, belt). The clothes were easy to pose and move to the naked model, plus I wasn't planning on this character doing anything to dynamic.  Sculpting the fur was hard because I forgot that the fur would have to bend with the model on the shoulder and neck. Hence some of the harsh stretching in on the fur on the shoulder.

 Posing to match the reference was difficult, I could not get the head to turn and tilt as well and the tail was difficult to bend. I should mention I did not make a low model version and have to pose in Zbrush manually (masking and moving).

Compare

I posed him as best I could to the artwork and came up with this final design. I will try and do some environment work and maybe place him in a temple/forest setting. I have tiny details to work on and when I get to the lower model I can make some tweaks.

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I plan on working on this some more and hope to have a better look alike later. I need to revisit my other projects and need to improve them.

I was planning on doing fibermesh for the hair instead of sculpting the hair. I have a lot I need to work on. I have a drawing I want to work on but I feel like turning it into an oil painting.

My reel is in limbo for the moment. My rigger had some tech issues and I need to wait for my character to come back. Worst case I may replace the spot on the the reel with my Chinese dragon to so that I can model and composite a character into an environment.