Game Design & Zbrush Studies

Mind Thoughts

My 80 Dlist Boys were recently printed in MIND-THOUGHTS: "Collected" by Adam Kurtz. It's an honor to be part of this project and featured amongst some other fantastic artists.

Check it out here.

Zbrush

I've been playing with Zbrush all weekend. Here are the best results. I also re-sculpted the Bird Queen model that I was working on in Mudbox now that I've got the hang of Zbrush. The results are very different as you can see in the comparison image. It seems like Zbrush has better pressure sensitivity so sculpting in that software is more akin to digital painting where in Mudbox I'm always aware that I'm working on a 3D mesh which likely accounts for the stiffness. A note of interest: I spent twice as long working on the Mudbox version accomplished much less in that time. Hopefully I'll have time to get Buster the spaceman into Zbrush before I finish this project.

Also attached is the new concept art for the Bird Queen. I changed it around so that there would be more sculpted detail than in the original.

One last note: the female bust is based on a somewhat iconic Richard Avedon photo of Jacqueline de Ribes.

Buster (Just about done)

Here are some beauty shots of Buster. There are a few little things with the normal map that I want to clean up and some small details in his face and body, but this is pretty close to the finished vision. My goal was to combine the diffuse, spec, and bump maps in a way that somewhat "realistically" simulates many different kinds of materials.

Even More Mother Concept Art

Some typography explorations and a test render of Anna that I made with Maya, Mudbox, and AfterEffects. The result is coolish, but I think I'd rather draw the characters by hand than use 3d models. The process I used to achieve the flattened effect was to use toon shaders with a highly-detailed bump map (to pick up the strands in her hair) and then in AfterEffects split all the color layers and reassemble them like a screen-print.

More textures for Buster.

Been working on his suit and jetpack. Having a lot of fun with bump & spec maps (plus dialing in the blinn settings).

More Mother Concept Art

Played around with graphic interpretations of the Mother and Gaston characters for the flashback scenes... not loving these! More work to be done.

Also did a test animation using some 3D renders. Kind of like the result. Here's the before & after.

Buster's Colors (A Start)

Heres the first shots of Buster painted up. I've painted his face and hair, the body and jetpack are up next. Also tested out the normal map transfer for his body... a lot of artifacts are showing up that I have to figure out.

A slew of new things.

Have been busy with my graduate animation project making and revising and revising again. Here are some images and type treatments that I'm playing with right now.

Buster's Hands

Did some work on his hands. Still need to tighten the design up, his fingers are losing a lost of volume from all the sculpting.

Successful Normal Map transfer

Here's my progress on Buster. Spent a few hours on hardening the angles in his hair and on his body. Also tried exporting a Normal Map to a low-poly mesh and am pretty happy with how the results are reading in Maya. There are a few artifacts I have to work out, but otherwise it looks much higher-poly than it is.

Buster Updates

Got some feedback on my model and incorporated some edits on the anatomy as well as a sharpening up of many features to make it more geometric.

Buster: Model

Here's a preview of the Buster Model. The first image is from Mudbox with 5 levels of subdivisions and the second two images are exported normal maps on the base model in Maya. Still tweaking him in Mudbox. This was an (unsuccessful) test from Mudbox to see how a normal map would render out for a base level mesh, but there is not nearly enough geometry to support it, causing the ugly shadows. Also a little lost on the textures. I'm caught between wanting to do photorealistic textures and stylized painterly look and just need to decide.

I am, however, pretty happy with the way that helmet is picking up light!

Gaston

A little inspiration for a scene in my final project. Wanted to see how a comic-bookier feel might work. Referenced the ending of Moontide.

La Femme

Another play on Cassandre. This time just using his palette. Very inspired right now by 80+ year old model, Carmen Dell-Orefice.