It's Crunch Time!

My last post was on Halloween...and it's already December! So what have I been doing in this time period?

To start with, I mulled over doing the WoW contest entry, came up with a few concept, but was overwhelmed by the amount of other work I had to do, mostly school assignments. If it's still going on, I may get back to it. However (and I had a reason for mentioning this), I did get quite a silly product out of my concepting in Zbrush with an idea I just had and ran with it. I present to you...whale shark man!

I'll definitely come back to this and work on him some more, maybe even give him a body! But this was a quick hour sketch (including polypaint) so I'll have to refine some lazily done areas and work on my lighting in Zbrush right now. It's time to get rid of that old standard lighting...eugh.

Anyways, aside from that, I have been working on my thesis, mostly doing rigging on the characters. I don't know the last time I even wrote about them, but they are essentially retopo'd and UV'd. They have their polypaint on them, but I still plan to do some clean up texturing. I am currently working on Taluun's rig and though the skinning is currently messed up, I have him posed. I will put him on a pedestal after a lot of cleanup and have him viewable in Sketchfab.

Here is him unposed. He is low poly and is roughly 18,000 tris. I didn't want him super low poly, but low enough so that he'd be game res...just not next gen.

On a side 2D note, I did a little quick project in one of my classes concepting some Wizard of Oz characters in the Spiral Knights universe. It's still a work in progress, but after 3 hours of work, I'd say its starting to come together. If nothing else, it was fun. I basically slapped the eyes and shading on there haphazardly, so uh, yeah...it shows a little bit.

I also added a new page to my website for sculpts and took 2 pages off. Some of that content was quite old and needed to be removed.

That's all for now, but until next time, you should check out the new page on the site!

Happy Halloween!

Thesis Progress

Well, it's been a while since my last post on my blog. Still working on my thesis, but I actually have something to show this time!

Elia went through some changes, even changing her jacket's color (gasp) but then returning to it's original color (phew). So anyways, here's a posed shot.

Not the pinnacle of perfection, but this is the sculpt with polypaint. I am currently retopologizing her and will be doing some rigorous texturing to make her look perfect. 

Next I have an update on Taluun. He's not posed, but here's my progress so far:

GAHH! He's blue! Yeah, he is. Remember the sculpt a few posts back of the guy with the helmet? Yeah, that is Captain Elim of the Aeroica City Guard and is the same species as my thesis character, Taluun. Taluun was the first of his people. I originally wanted the race to be a dark tan, but after making Elim's sculpt blue, and upon suggestion of my professor, Taluun and the entire species has now turned blue, which to me makes it considerably more exotic and interesting. I'm not saying blue people haven't been done before, but it is different. 

Anyways, it seems that the fun is over for now for my characters. What comes next is many weeks of retopo, rigging, and texuring/UVs. Yay. 

Until next time!

VGREMIX IS FINALLY FINISHED!

Hoo boy. That was fun, and my quote of the night is "Now I don't know what to do with myself".

I finished my Polycount Contest Entry and pretty excited on how it came out. If you want to see my submission, click here: POLYCOUNT VGREMIX SUBMISSION

I'm nervous and excited about how this is going to turn out, but I had a ton of support and I can honestly say that if nothing at all:

I learned a lot of things I didn't already know
I found out about Sketchfab (amazing!)
I had a few followers and wonderful supporters, so I know my art touched at least someone
And most of all, I finished a project in a small time limit amid also vacationing and general life

This was definitely fun and I think I may have found a new portfolio piece :) At least for now, anyways.

I'm tired from working, so time to chill for a bit. Until next time!

Thesis update and Polycount contest!

Hey there! Ok, so last time I posted I had a tidbit of information on my thesis and my progress. Well in my down-time I have been working on a few other things so that I don't get burned out (which tends to happen).

First, I've been keeping up with my daily sculpts...but not uploading them. The time it takes to render a turntable, edit it, render that, and upload to YouTube is exhaustively long and takes a lot of time out of my day where I could be doing more interesting things. So yeah, stopped the Vlog, keeping up with daily sculpts. Speaking of which, here's a dude!

Secondly, Polycount started up a contest which I have been very interested in, and considering that it is only 3 weeks long, I decided to jump right on it! So I don't clog up the blog, here's a link to the thread: POLYCOUNT VGREMIX ENTRY!

The basic premise is a diorama based on Pikmin mixed with tabletops like D&D and Heroscape. Below is a sketchfab with my latest progress!

So that's pretty much it. I will be continuing my entry, continuing sculpting, and getting back to my thesis AS WELL AS updating my portfolio which I feel...kinda needs it. I like my old stuff, but I think it's out of nostalgia. Anyhow, winning the contest or not, I am proud of the Pikmin entry and will be placing that in my portfolio.

Until next time!

Thesis pictures incoming!

Hello there! So last time I posted I was talking about getting inspiration for the project and doing a daily VLolg. I am still doing it, but need to streamline the process because as it turns out, editing the video is proving longer than actually doing it. Anyways, I have 6 speed sculpts up HERE.

Anyways, what else have I been doing? Well of course, my college thesis! And without further ado, the pictures of my progress so far on said thesis:
**NOTE: THESE ARE IN PROGRESS! JUST LETTIN' YA KNOW**

The first two images are of the main protagonist, Elia. She is very strong, fast, and courageous (though she is not quite sure of her full potential yet.) Some ideas behind her design were that I wanted someone with some idea of aerodynamics or fast, without being completely speed based. If that doesn't make sense, maybe this will clear it up. I wanted to give her a red color because I felt that red often signified two things: DANGER! and Fast. Think about red cars and the feeling you get from them. With her bright red jacket and tabi with orange markings I figured that it would make her look dangerous yet somewhat fashionable. The teal color I felt would bring back the extremity a little bit by cooling down her overall form along with the grey in her pants. 

The second two images you may have seen before of Taluun: God of the Sky and the "Grand Architect", though recently huge pain in everyone's ass. It is up to Elia to stop him, as protagonists do, and show a counterbalance of speed over pure bulk. Now, Taluun's colors are not all grey (because that's boring) but I am having somewhat of a hard time with deciding his scheme. I could go classic green and purple with black but I'm afraid that may be too cliche. I want him to appear light, as he is the God of the Sky and can fly, so maybe some yellows and blues. I will play around with it, but that's my thoughts so far. 

Thanks for taking a gander at my images and if you have any comments then feel free to post them below (I'm pretty sure this thing has a comments section anyways). Until next time!

New Vlog and update on thesis!

Hello! Well I have a few new exciting things to share.

1. Remember that mic I talked about? Well, I recorded some test lines for Taluun, played around with some filters, and I think I have a good sounding voice for him. Soon, I'll be recording all of his lines and making some animations based around them to get a general feel for the character and also working kinks out of the Unreal 3 pipeline so that later down the road, there isn't a problem.

2. I also played around with Taluun and made some progress on his model, however, I won't upload any more pictures until he is completely finished. I also made some adjustments to Elia and hopefully by next week I can upload some update photos on her.

and finally:

3. To keep myself from burning out on my thesis and to motivate my art skills, I decided to start a Vlog called "1000 Bad Drawings" with the concept that every artist has a 1000 bad drawings out and practice makes perfect. Essentially, its just a digital sketchbook, but why not make it interesting?

Anyways, here's my first video and I'll be uploading daily (yes, daily). I am terrible with keeping up with these kinds of things...so let's hope this goes well. I will have to push myself harder than ever before.

Enjoy! And until next time...keep updated on my new youtube Vlog!

Getting it together

So, it's been a bit of a slow week as far as work is concerned, what with it being my birthday and all, but I have been getting some things together and doing some 2D work.

I went into Photoshop and quickly whipped up some squares for story boarding which I will be using to get a general idea of how the scenes look and composed. So far I have 2 pages which isn't really much but like I said, it's slow going. Once I get the storyboard done, I will be scanning it and will post it.

I also recently purchased a microphone for recording dialogue. So far I really like it for the price range. $70 Samson Meteor Mic with USB. I will be playing around with different audio software to see what I can do for voices and synths for the previously mentioned character: Taluun.

I am very excited to continue working on this and I hope to get Taluun finished in the next week or so (high poly I mean) and can start recording lines. Oh, the fun will begin when I start rigging. I may hold off on that or flop back and forth between Elia and rigs in order to not get bogged down and bored of the single project. I tend to find that working many hours on the same thing as tedious and can make mistakes doing so from looking at the same thing.

Anyways, I'll be posting hopefully some good stuff next week!

Until next time!

It's the final stretch...

Not of life or something like that. If anything, it's the beginning of my life. And what better way to start it off than with an overly ambitious thesis that I will lose many months of sleep over!

Remember the girl from the previous post? (If you're on the feed just scroll down literally one post. I don't update this thing much). Well she will be the star of said thesis, though I plan to rework her as she has many flaws (and too large of breasts).

But anyways, I will explain my thesis as concisely as possible. If you want to skip the rambling and just see cool pictures then I don't blame you. Scroll past all of this until you see the out of context scary-looking guy. Otherwise, keep reading.

The thesis will revolve around showcasing the skills I know and have obtained at my time at Mount Ida College. Hopefully, I will be successful in the character art, environment art, rigging, and animation all using the Unreal 3 Engine, Maya, and Zbrush. The idea is to make a game ready real time cut scene using the characters to premise a boss fight. As I was told by my advisor (and wisely so) to NOT make a 15 minute epic, I can't help but agree. I hope to knock out most of the character art and some rigging by the end of the summer so that I may dedicate more of my time to the rigging and animation as well as putting together the scenes and storyboarding and yadda yadda the list goes on, and it is quite daunting.

Anyways: Lore!

The following is a character by the name of Taluun. He is a god of the sky, grand architect, and overall asshole. He will be the boss our protagonist, Elia, fights. Quick back-story is that he was created to guard the people of this city in the sky which he built himself (no, it isn't Columbia or Cloud City because it doesn't float.) There were two other gods which were also sent to guard other regions, one of them being a love interest to Taluun. They both were jealous of the power of the shark god so they went to his realm together, tried to fight him, and lost miserably. They decided to take a different course of action and went to the source of their creation, powerful mystical crystals, with the reasoning that if it had the power to create them, then it could easily make them stronger. Adrianna, the other god, absorbed a few crystals and became horribly deformed. Taluun reasoned that this was so because she had not sacrificed anything to allow the crystals to enter and that's why it had adverse effects. Taluun then, as anyone would do, cut off his own head and infused the crystals with the now gaping hole and created a new head for himself. He found himself incredibly powerful and did not see himself as horribly deformed like Adrianna. They then went their separate ways and things happen that aren't really important to what I'm about to show you.

Basically, dude cuts off his own head.

So this is all I really have so far. I've been working on him off and on among other things so that's been keeping me busy. I'm going to start scheduling myself and make deadlines so that I can start focusing on other things now such as storyboarding and audio. Until next time! Enjoy. 

"That's a woman?" --Danny DeVito

     So what have I been doing lately? Last time I posted I mentioned something about working on a Bionicle Mod, which the work somewhat fell through for preferably undisclosed reasons. However, I've been keeping myself busy with other projects galore so that I am not idling.

      So, in Game Art, what am I most afraid of? Well of course, the only thing there is to be terrified of; Human Anatomy. Not only that, but female human anatomy. I don't know why, but something about the female face is difficult for an inexperienced sculptor. So naturally I wanted to tackle the process and hopefully overcome my fear. It was difficult at first because I fell into the "it's stylized" trap and didn't want to budge on my style. However, I soon realized that even the smallest differences can make a style pushed to drastic measures. Where I stand right now, I'm pretty satisfied with my result, but have to continue to finish the character, retopo, and texture her. This is what I've got so far.

      Yeah, I've got some things to work on, but I really wanted to add her to the spring show so I rendered a quick image of her head to submit. So far I think she's heading in the right direction but is by no means finished.

On the other hand, I've been working on some other sculpts that aren't my own design. Nicholas Kole is one such artist that I worked on a concept of his and was honored to actually have his critique. He's quite a genuine guy and gave me a lot of tips, at least with working on stuff in Amalur style. Here's the original concept and my sculpt by comparison.

School is coming to a close and that means summer (which also means more time to work). Hopefully I can get this girl finished and work on some other cool projects.

Whoah, where have I been?

Ok, so wow, it's been busy. I got to a point where I was working on a ton of games and never finished my environment, yadda yadda.

So now I have a game in the making, working on the Polycount Escape Contest, and I was asked by a modding team to do my dream job...make Bionicles!

That's right, my Bionicle project from last summer paid off and now I'm working on a Skyrim mod with Bionicle characters and environments. And the fact that I'm working with a team really kicks me in high gear. So where do I start? Aside from continuing on working on Po-Koro, I've decided that Le-Koro is the next village that I tackle. So what does this mean? Of course watching MNOLG videos on Youtube (yay)!

I think that the transition from Le-Wahi/Onu-Koro tunnels to Le-Koro is a good place to start, so that means tons of rocks and trees. Woop.

To get me started on the project, here's a little mood board of Le-Koro/Le-Wahi

Can't wait to get started!