Summer Time Projects

Ok well I figured I'd go ahead and start on a WIP blog instead of ruining my friends' Newsfeed on Facebook. Here I'll post what I'm working on and the progress I've made during the day (ambitious daily blog type of deal).

Being home, I rummaged through my old Bionicle collection and reminisced about those old flash cartoons I used to watch with the Bionicles. Upon looking them up on Youtube, I discovered that yes, they are still as awesome as they ever were. This gave me an idea since I had nothing else to do besides look for a real job and play League of Legends.

I picked a video and decided that I would recreate it frame for frame, with a few exceptions, in a game engine (Video above). After watching it for some time, I began the modeling process, starting with one of the smaller Bionicles and working my way up to the somewhat larger ones.

I found this to be difficult because my love of Zbrush stood in the way of this demanding hard-surfacing. Not wanting to make more work for myself, I moved the process to Maya and will later add small scratches in Zbrush whenever I start the normal mapping.

Right now I have finished the small Matoran, named Hafu, and basically the body for the rest of the Matoran. Having made that, I moved onto something a little less important to see if it would hold my interest and use pieces to be recycled for the immediate next model.

The model I made next wasn't in the Part II of the video, but was in the first part, which I later decided to include, considering it wasn't full of action but set up for the plot of the skit. The Maha (left) was easy, except for the head which took me nearly 3 hours because I couldn't decide how I wanted it built. The arm was recycled from the Matoran and I knew that those legs and the head would be used for the next character which is Pohatu.

I am currently working on Pohatu, but with him I am most excited because his base is the basis for most other 2001-2002 Bionicles which I will probably make, now that I'm building a library of parts.

So far the masks seem to be the most difficult to make, considering Hafu's mask took me the better part of the day (after scrapping the Zbrush sculpt because it was too blobby). If you'll notice, some parts are missing several details because of polycount restraints and also trying to stick with the Flash-video style. In the Flash-video those characters had several details missing which I liked, because if I wanted realism, I would've stuck with playing with the sets, despite the fact that I'm 20 years old.

I'll be posting more tomorrow, but until then, I'll be working.