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!