Animation

Peanut man brief:

I have started my sculpting process with four head busts based on my sketches (creatures in human form) I wanted to experiment a bit

After, I took one design and tried making a realistic skin map. Results were not that great. I tried tweaking material presets, but the skin would still look like it is plastic.

I did some renders with light and without as well.

As part of studies we took some reference pictures. I tried to transfer their features onto this sculpts. Well..I tried.

That is when I have started working on my main character ( alive version and dead). My first attempt was to make him resemble human as less as possible, that is why I tried to make his skull stand out. Instead of having a mouth model teeth and jaw, as well as add some deep skin cuts and make it seem like it is decaying.

After a while, I thought that this design will not function, because if it is going to be rigged, the character will look weird talking and expressing emotions. So I had to step back and rethink my design. I have additional development sketches and settled on this final design.

Same thing with my priest character. I didn't like how this design looked (too simple probably)

Final thing after adding mask and sculpting his vestment.

There was still some time left before handing in work, so I did some color variations for my 3rd character.

Final works

3d print

Evaluation

Overall, I think, I have progressed if I were to compare my works from Specialist Study 1 with this project. I have improved in sculpting cloth as well as different assets and detailing them. I have also found out about 3D printing, learnt to prepare my models for printing. On top of that, my problem solving and development skills improved drastically. A while ago everything seemed impossible ( I kept telling myself that this project was way to ambitious for my skill set at that time), especially sculpting a full character, but with practice and determination I managed to pull it through and make additional studies.

The things I would add/ improve would be:

to research texture mapping;
improve my retopology skills;

practice fold sculpting more.

Idea:

Riccardo Federici

Chet Zar

Movies:

DmC: Devil May Cry

One of the main things, that influenced my idea was the newest Devil May Cry game. I have played this game 3 times and was still fascinated by it's characters and environments. Each level got more crazier and destroyed than the previous one. By far the most interesting was upside down level.

Simon Lee

Self taught sculptor and designer whose works include Guillermo del Toro's ''Pacific Rim'', ''The Strain'', Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic ''Noah'', Angelina Jolie's ''Maleficent'' and Dough Liman's ''Edge of Tomorrow''.

Technique:

I've started researching character production pipelines (Zbrush workflows) in order to familiarize with it myself so that I would know whether I am on the right track.

Character Design essentials

I've a couple of helpful videos regarding character designing, to help me boost my development skills.

This video is aimed at intermediate level artists who already have working knowledge of how to make 3D game models, but need guidance to obtain more professional results. Although some technical instruction is given, the main goal of this video is to improve your work from an artistic stand point.

This video goes into general elements and principles that are used by professional artists in order to create successful artistic images. Such as: form, function, space, line, color, texture and value and shape.

This video is exploring a Character Design workflow of starting with a thumbnail silhouettes to more refined thumbnails.

This video was very helpful in terms of character variation. It good for those, who have settled for a particular design and are trying to resolve it, create color maps and clean the drawing.

Sculpting

Making of Gladiator is a part of 24 videos by Aleks Kirilenko which is a very helpful guidance towards discovering a new strategies in your workflow. In my case I use a combination of Maya and Zbrush software, because that way I can be in control of my work process as well as geometry of my model.

Fold sculpting:

For fold sculpting I've studied a couple of videos including Michael Knowland's Clothing Sculpting.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?182967-Naughty-Dog-UGM-Extended-UPDATE-3-Frank-Tzeng

Sculpting character heads with Adam Fisher both videos were immensely useful for me. Especially how to detail model's face by creating wrinkles and pores.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUe2IHN_isU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmury2eT_io

I've used this video in order to help me pose my character. I don't know where I went wrong but everything kept distorting.

Performance and motion capture

3d printing

What relates to 3d printing I was attending a couple of webinars held by Zbrush Workshops. Plus Zbrush Central uploaded a bunch of helpful videos from 3D Printer World Expo. All of the artists gave an essential information regarding model printing (like preparing your model for printing: hollowing, creating separate parts, exporting, adding presets) Everything from A to Z. I have used Joseph Drust's videos as a guide to prepare my 3D models.