Thursday 1 August 2013

Quick update on the Glutton King

The first pass detail sculpture is now done, onto the finer detail.

 



I began by adding pore and burlap texture to the trousers. however I don't want to add too much detail  in case I end up with something rather realistic and not stylized.




At the same time, I have been working on retopology of this guy.

Thursday 25 July 2013

Returning to blogger!!

I'm back after a month of neglecting blogger.

It has been a busy last month with freelancing projects starting here and there, at the moment I have 3 going on, so time is scarce to do other things.

At the moment, on a personal note I have 2 characters I intend to finish within a month, The Glutton King and Horace Bennett. ( if you remember he is the one from the mixamo contest that I didnt have the chance to finish. )

However I have a few shots on the Glutton King here to share, he is at about 60% done, needing an extra pass of detail, retopology, and texturing.






 

 Almost there!

Thursday 6 June 2013

Mixamo Contest: The Adventurer Progress 2.5

A quick update on Horace Bennett's character, I have assembled the props onto one scene file. and uvs are all done.


Meanwhile I have also began the base mesh for my character.



More Progress to come.

Sunday 2 June 2013

Mixamo Contest: The Adventurer Progress 2

So here is some more progress on my latest character.  After deciding with a design for the face and body, I moved into tweaking it slightly and trying out colour.

So here I present you, Horace Bennett, renowned botanist, zero adventurer.


And re-post his only friend on his trip, the Rug sack.

While working on these designs, I began modelling the props for the bag. 



I will now move onto getting this bag all assembled and laying out the UVs, ready for some Zbrush, as well as the character.



Just to let you know the deadline for this character challenge is 7th of July.


Thursday 30 May 2013

Mixamo Contest: The Adventurer Progress 1

So i will just add the progress done on Horace Bennett character, design is pretty much there. now only need to paint and then start modelling.

Firstly, I decided to develop the face a bit more.

With the previous drawings, I was happy with the last one. So I made him Horace Bennett, a happy, clumsy, charming, intellectual, drunk, fidgety scholar from London.



I then moved to design the body based on the chosen silhouette.


For company Horace Bennett takes company with him, an important lifesaver rugsack, full of tools that will help him on his dangerous travel.... ohh and gather the treasure from the manuscript.

Monday 27 May 2013

Mixamo Contest: The Adventurer

While my king character is progressing through sculpting stages, I decided on take a whole new challenge, a big one this time. I finally started to participate on a competition at the Poly count community forum.  Intimidating!!

The brief for the contest consist in design and model a character, then take it onto Mixamo auto-rig software and use a preset animation.

The Brief:  
 
In the early 19th century a mysterious book, the Voynich Manuscript, made its world debut. Written in an unknown language the secrets within are still debated to this day. Every generation has had its adventurers take hints from the Manuscript’s broken ciphers and cryptic images. From the high mountains of the Himalayas, to the lost jungles of the Amazon, from cities of gold, to buried underworlds, those brave enough to call themselves adventurers must be ready for the challenges the book alludes to. Help us discover the great adventures of the past century and the world’s most mysterious book.

YOUR MISSION:

Starting from the beginning of the 19th century up to modern day, create an adventurer to seek out the treasure of the Voynich Manuscript. Will it be a 19th century scholar from England, or perhaps a German code breaker from World War One? A Chinese medicine man or a hired thug for the Railroad barons of the expanding United States? Will it be a modern day billionaire, searching for thrills, or the descendant of Voynich himself? Use the greatest adventure stories you can think of as your inspiration and create your ideal hero!

Source: Polycount Forum

Being comedic on my character designs, I decided to add a twist my version of the adventurer and I came up with this.


Character: Horace Bennett

Age 59

Setting: 19th Century, London England.


"Horace Bennett , an Englishman enlighten by the discipline of the plants, is a renowned name in the botanical world, primarily due to his discoveries of new species of plants.
Being very intellectual, when he heard of the the “Voynich Manuscript“, he automatically knew it hid information about his beloved plants, maybe a healing plant, maybe a poisonous one or maybe a very rare species.
After many sleepless nights attempting to decipher the manuscript as he expected, it provided him with information about a very rare species of plant only to be found at the very center of the amazon Jungle, South America.
Being a botanist and not an adventurer, he thought to hire a expedition, however as the thought was formed it was immediately discarded, after realising the lack of coin on his pockets, all spent on whiskey which served as a company horrendous nights being puzzled by the manuscript.
Now his only choice was to grab his botanical kit, disembark in Brazil and venture alone to the heart of the dangerous Amazon Jungle in search of this rare species of plants, which could make him some serious gold."

here is where it all starts.


 

Friday 24 May 2013

Trying out Art Rage4!

Lately, I have bought a copy of Art Rage4, So I gave it a try.

I am surprised in a positive, The program has a clean layout, with the essentials tools, the brushes are used in a more traditional way, and often tricky. It has a lot of little tools that help your workflow, Such as tracing or reference tabs, where you can stick on your painting something to refer to. The menus are neat and user-friendly, but not as vast and detailed as photoshop. I am impressed with the program which I will be using from now on.

Here is a my new caricature painted on it.