Hungry Like the Wolf

I should try to base all my post titles around Duran Duran songs.

Anyway, finally got back to modelling in preparation for the film kicking off. So with that in mind here's the progress on the Wolf character model.

It's coming along. Still needs a lot of work though but hey not bad for a few hours work and my first time properly using zSpheres.

I Am Sculptor

So I've spent the last week or so getting to grips with Zbrush. The tutorials (the basics anyway) are done and dusted but whenever I find myself hitting a block (often) I just need to google it and there's a tutorials for it.

A lot of it seems to just be ezoerimenting though. Trying to find a solution to a problem. And that's something I've always loved when using 3D max and it's hightened in ZBrush.

Anyway, I'm having fun with it. Here's the film updates:

Turnaround

First turnaround for Setanta. Next time: Less naked! Off to block out the model in 3D and then maybe move into ZBrush!

More Designs

Man work goes much quicker when you can just scribble in photshop. More character costume ideas. Going to try to get a turn around done over the next few days.

Character Concepts

So having set up my wacom to give a more sketchy feel when used in photoshop I did the only thing I could do: I sketched.

Here's a few concepts for a character for next years film. Face prolly won't change but the hair and costume are still up to debate.

Woof

So started work on a model for next year. Of the four potential characters I decided to work on the puppy character first. Not sure why.

It's coming along nicely but is sitting firmly on the backburner at the moment as I've been doing plenty of ZBrush tutorials. Hopefully I'll have some ZBrush sculpts to add soon. For now here's my progress on the puppy.

1 year down, 1 to go.

So ADA 1 is officially done. Now on to the business of ADA 2 and our individual films. I'm hoping to do the film in Maya and have started tutorials for that reason but we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully I'll be better at updating here over the Summer than I was over the last few months of leading up to the end of the year. For the next update might have a model to display.

For now, some concepts for next years film

Busy busy

Been a crazy few months. Things are really starting to kick into gear with both college and personal/professional work.

And because of that I have a brand new showreel!

http://vimeo.com/20877085

Ok, by brand new I mean updated.

I've also been doing alot of sketching and the like lately. Hopefully get some of that scanned in and posted up soon.
Alright back to work I go!

Scarecrow

Got a chance to get a run at the modelling for the Scarecrow. Think he's turned out nicely I have to say.

Just need to make him less symmetrcial and affix him to the body and such.

Then a crash course in Ink & Paint cause I be having trouble with it.

Showreel

Woohoo finally got all my editing and fidgeting around with my showreel done. Looking forward to adding to it (began an 'idle' animation for the thief character in there. Fun and unlike alot of animation I've done. Very subtle) and getting back to editing and fidgeting with it some more!

Here's the YouTube vid for it. Alternatively here's a link to the high quality Vimeo video: http://vimeo.com/19306888

Back to work on my flying animation and the four legged walk!

Re-Cycling

So finally got my ass in gear and re-rendered some animations. Namely the cycles I've done.

first up Run and Walk cycle:

And apparently youtube hates me so here's a direct link to the run cycle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkvE79pQtSQ

And a new one: Sneak Cycle!

Gonna upload these to Vimeo to get better quality.

Walk the Walk

Well I finally got my 'Thief' character finished and rigged. Now to get down to the fun of animating!

First up: Walk Cycle

I'm fairly happy with it... There's something not quite right. I think it's the neck/head. But I'll leave it for now and come back to it.

Livin' in a box, livin' in a 3d box...

Ok, that's a pretty weak title name but that's how I feel. Really gotten back into my 3D work this week after a pretty long hiatus due to college and a dip in motivation.

But I'm back baby, and I changed the model of the crow for our film. Voila:

I also built the rig. Everything's ready to go except IK (he says as if that wasn't the hard part). Here's the rig:

Now on to the next thing I've lost a chunk of my week to: the thief type character. He's done now. Not going to texture him for now cause I wanna get to animating him. Here he is:

And a wireframe

Really looking forward to getting animating with this guy. He's gonna be the model I use primarily for my games animation showreel. Roll on SCRUM list!

Quoth the... Crow?

Finally crackin' on work for the group film. Went back and reworked the crow so he looked more fun. Smaller body, bigger eyes, bigger wing-tips (to use like fingers)

Here's all 4 views

And a wireframe of the head. Turns out it was more difficult to model from a sphere.... Well kinda. I hate eye sockets and eyelids

Now to texture and rig. Looking forward to getting an animation test done.

Refresher Course

Hey it's not 6 months later! Score one for Emmet.

First day of ISACON 2011 today. Really good day. Neil DeBurch was brilliant and it was great getting an insight into games and game pipeline from Graham Gallagher. He also showed us a showreel which inspired me to get my butt in gear and get back into my 3D more.

Also, I needed a refresher in preparation for Production.

So here's what I've been doing this evening.

This is actually an old model that I started in October of 2009 (yikes) and keep coming back to to work on. There were a lot of problems so I deleted the head and the feet, gonna rework the hands and arms (yikes, look at those elbows) and completely remodel the head.

I got the inspiration to return to this model from seeing these: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=097394

And I think the whole Assassins Creed/Prince of Persia influence is pretty obvious. Here it is with a bit of a texture. Prolly change.

And from the back...

New lighting in Max is weird. But man does it make it look nice!

Post, The First

Well I finally got around to making a blog. Since I haven't had the inclination to create a blog in the past you probably won't be surprised to realise I don't have much to talk about.


So instead of yakking, I'll post what I consider to be my best work. It's also coincidentally the most fun thing I've done, most frustrating I've done and I learned the most whilst doing it.  I love using these models. They're an incredibly simple mesh (and therefore not pretty), and I used Character Studio for them aswell so you can do alot with them. They're also good fun to faff about with (as you can see from the banner above).

Here's the original:

And here's the first person view:

So that's that. First post done.

See you in about 6 months!