Welcome!
The names Ali, I'm a 20 year old student whose working towards a job in the games industry as a 3D Character artist.
This blog is mainly me posting crap I make, for a more information about me then please click here
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
The “not-so-daily” Daily Sculpt #1
I’m planning to do a head sculpt every other day starting from today. I did this this morning, it was all done in Zbrush and took around 3 hours.
The last pieces of work for Fletch: 3 posters and some models for the game and soundtrack covers (which is being finalised by Ryan Bradley). The 3rd poster is by far my favourite, there’s just something about it that makes me laugh .Sadly we can only print out one poster for the end of year show, so we’ve opted for the 1st poster since it actually relates to the game.
Now unless my group decides to add/change anything, that’s me done on Fletch, Hazzah!
Edit: I just realised I haven’t put the games X-statement in any of the posters “/
End of year/Uni summary
I did an end of year summary post for the last 2 years of Uni, so whilst I still have a few hand-ins to do, here’s one for this year.
Where to begin, it was probably the hardest year of the last 3 and probably the most fun. Working in a group of 5 people, we created a 3D platformer called Fletch: Dawn of the Golden Eagle, I was the character artist and the animator in the group. Initially it didn’t go too well, the game was a bit shoddy, gameplay wise, and it was only until the start of this year were the game started to pick up and become a lot more fun; to quote my lecturer “its fucking awesome” :D
The character creation part was a lot of fun, sadly same can’t be said about the animation side. This was the first time I was animating and there was quite a bit to learn in a short amount of time, I eventually got there and all the animations were done to a pretty “decent” standard. Overall I created 13 characters and numerous amounts of animations, you can see all the characters here
Outside of Uni work, I’d like to say I’ve improved. I’m now capable of using both 3DS Max and Maya, I’m a lot more confident with using Zbrush, I have a better understanding of character workflows and looking at my posts from the last 2 years I’d say I’ve generally got a lot better. Obviously I know I’m not top notch; there are still things I need to learn and get better at, mainly texturing and understanding anatomy.
So yeah, that’s 3rd year.
https://www.facebook.com/Anatomy4Sculptors/photos_albums
Such a fantastic resource!!
I literally just discovered this site last night because I was cruising around Kickstarter and discovered they have a project on it ahahahah.
They have so much good information hhhhhnnnnngghhghgh. It’s not only for sculptors but for 3d artists or anyone looking for good anatomy references.
Did a bit more work on the Scarecrow character, created the low poly and started on the textures. It’s not quite finished yet though, I’m planning to model a scythe to go with him.
Decided to put off the delivery girl until next week and work on some other stuff. Started sculpting this scarecrow character, hope to have him done in the next few days.
Update on the JSR (Jet set radio) Girl.
I’ve been busy all week but I managed to find time today to work on her. I started sculpting the main features when I started to have issues with the topology when it came to the face (look at the lips), now like I said previously; I’ve never used Zspheres in my workflow before, my plan was to block in the features then retop before sculpting detail.
I’ve never used Zbrush’s retop tool before, so I thought I’d gave it ago. An hour later and most of it was done when suddenly (boom) Zbrush crashes and I lost it all (I wasn’t too pleased about this).
I’m now going to retop in Topogun instead, my original plan was to have the retop done tonight so I can carry on sculpting sometime in the week, but that ain’t happening now.
Edit: After some researching, the internet has told me to go a bit further with the facial features before retoping. Its taken a while but I think I finally understand the workflow for when it comes to Zspheres.
Was originally planning to do some more sculpting on the delivery girl today, but I was going over my workflow on my last model (Oliver) and I realised I kind of rushed the concept part, I did a few sketches and all but I never really solidified the idea. So I thought I’d pin the concept for the delivery girl before I did any more work on her; so this is what I hope to recreate in 3D, now I ain’t the best at digital painting (especially when it comes to faces) but you get the idea.
Now lets just wait and see if she actually turns out like this…
My next character I’m working on is a female delivery girl with a Jet Set Radio theme (love that game). Now my previous workflow was to create a base mesh in Maya/Max and then import it into Zbrush, however this time I thought I’d try out Zspheres, I’ve always avoided using them because of the messy topology it creates but I’ve heard its a quicker procedure then building a base mesh.
So far I agree its a lot quicker, the topology is a bit of a mess but I plan to stick with it until I’ve sculpted the major features and nailed the anatomy, then I’ll retop.
More to come.
In my previous post, I showed all the characters I created for the Uni game, Fletch:Dawn of the Golden Eagle, Some of the character I made I wasn’t too fond of; so I’ve decided to go back and edit a few of them.
Cindy is first up, she’s the second boss in our game, I basically rushed through her original model and well I always thought she looked a bit shoddy, so I did a new concept and remodelled her and I’ve got to say she looks a lot better now.
There’s a couple more characters I want to redo, but I’m bringing back the time excuse again, I’ll have to wait and see.
All the characters for Fletch: Dawn of the Golden Eagle (University game)
I wish I could do some of them again but time has been the main problem with this whole project, still a lot to do at the moment with the game but its slowly getting there.
Now all the character models are done, I can now go into hibernation…
Oliver Twist update - Done! (ish) 14,448 tris
So finally found time to finish Oliver and I’ve got to say he doesn’t look half bad, I think the diffuse map needs a bit of work and maybe I could cut out some polys but overall I’m pretty pleased with how it’s turned out, it being my first character from a sculpture.
It’s been a bit of a learning experience with this model, had a few hiccups with producing normals in xNormals and had some seam issues which turned out to be the renderers fault.
Like Jay-Z once said: “On to the next one”
