Animation: Specialist Study 2: Research

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.