Scottish Dooda

Clearly some sort of massively mad scots chap, with a stolen french sword.



Scotland is full of punks, for real (Doodled on the DS whilst cooking).

Win some, lose some

Just 2 quickies. I think the chump on the left has quite a bit of attitude, looks like he's about to go bottle someone.

Taking a break

Decided to take a step back from my project and paint something for the heck of it. Still in the blocking in phase although I tried to put a little emotion into the face. For some annoying reason the head and body don't quite look connected, I can't fathom it, could be due to my mostly undefined light source.



The design is pretty un-inspired but hell, it's fun!

Speedy

Not so pleased with this one, but it gets the idea across I guess.



Just finished another, thought I'd stick em in a group. Pretty pleased with the far right, the yellow stripe got a bit fudged but nevermind.

Done. For now.

If I spend much longer on this I'll get a right telling off! The shoes took a silly amount of time to get right, and I'm still not sure about them, personally I feel legs should end in a more aesthetically pleasing way than feet.

Got any change pal? Eh!?

Sneak preview for project much.


Update:

Quick Studies

The girl could have done with more work. Or less.

Poses wahay

I managed to get about half-way through the rigging process before freaking and just posing the damn thing. It deforms surprisingly well considering it has yet to be weighted, so be nice and ignore the few creases/artifacts!

It is done

Yea, well, it took all day. That's the biggest problem with re-topology; it takes forever and a day to complete and you're left with something that really isn't very impressive.

Meshmess

For once, I've actually been enjoying this particular re-topo job and I'm fairly pleased with the edge flow so far.





Here's a wee test render. Put together using 4 different render passes. Thanks to Rafael Grassetti of Zbrushcentral for his great skin SSS material!

Gosh, these are jolly good fun!

Rather. Incidentally these are done from reference, sadly.





PS. They look better if you don't enlarge them!
PPS. Added the hulking one on the right, could have done with a little more contrast. The fact that the darks are merely a dark green doesnt help. These are hella fun!

Coupl'a quicks

Struck down once again by the evil stomach bug. Damn you stomach bug, damn you! Aside from that, did these 2 super-fast 'life' drawings with my tablet propped up to simulate an easel and enabling me to draw from the shoulder. It's all the rage these days.

Zbrush Refresh

Just making sure I haven't forgotten how to use the ol' zeebee. Reworking an old base model, I'm gonna have to re-topo this chap soon, especially around the feet. I hate feet.

Some more tests

That bloody four-legged little swine just doesn't want to render nicely. I mean, look at this crap:



Even the nice folks over at Polycount haven't been able to help me with that particular problem and I'm sick of looking at the stupid thing. On a brighter note, here are some pretty renders of another model of mine.

Re-Hash

Decided to have another go at messing about with this unfinished chappy. I spent most of today wrestling with the UVs, it's such a time intensive process if something goes even a little wrong. Playing about with rendering and lighting on the other hand is great fun; this is pretty much a standard 'clay' render with a wire render layered on top, yum.

An abundance of skin

This poor blog must be feeling sorely neglected, sorry blog! I've been mainly working on research during the last few days, most of which there is, sadly, very little to show for. Still, I managed to find a few spare minutes to put pen to tablet:





These 3 ladies had their poses taken from reference, as it seems to be something I'm really poor at and working to improve. The skin work is also partly referenced, my ability to pick skin tones is, to be frank, crap. Again, working to improve!

These two on the other hand were just for the fun of it :)

'ere, take your time mate!

Aye, well, it took a bit longer than it should have to get this one finished up. I was working. On other things. Making money mostly, it's a tiring business. Seriously though, I've been brushing up on rigging and weighting a mesh in Maya and also getting some decent time in on my 'social and cultural research'. Incidentally, I'm not planning on putting any of my ideas up on here, paranoid much.

New study sheet!

Adam and I have kinda turned these study sheets into an every-other-day thing, I swear the most time consuming part is finding the pictures to stick into the next one. Here is the palette section of the latest dooda, I actually managed to force this one out without resorting to the colour picker! Having said that, I did check a few of my colours to see how close I managed to get to the original, it's amazingly hard to isolate a colour within a picture as the surroundings trick the eye to no end.

Upon females

A small collection of recent female sketches, taken from reference (thanks to Mjranum for the great stock!).

Finished Lite sheet

Well, I did my best, but blimey, that egyptian mask was plain nasty. Had to resort to colour picking for much of it I'm afraid, there are just too many small colour variations in there.

New Study Sheet - Lite version!

Yes, I know, I'm starting on a new one when I haven't finished the old one, so shoot me! This is the 'lite' version of the study buddy sheet featured earlier, it's a touch more manageable. As before this one was given to me by Adam, so please ignore the er, unique naming of this sheet.



The palette picture here is going to be tricky, especially as I'd like to complete it without cheating and using the eye-dropper. Sadly photoshop seems to be lacking in the colour picking department, why doesn't it feature a colour wheel like Painter? Tsh.

Doodles from life

Wow, it's been a while since I've stuck something new up on here! Had a few days out of the loop with a pretty nasty stomach bug but it's all good now, hopefully. These are just some really fast gesture scribbles done out on the street, capturing a still of a figure in motion is tricky, especially when they're looking at you funny.

DS 'Colours' Doodles

I guess by now most people know about a cool little program for the NDS called 'Colours' which is essentially a bare-bones photoshop/painter to be used on the move. It's taking a bit of getting used to but here are my adventures so far. To see some amazing work produced using Colours have a gander at http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/



These two were done from reference, except for the colour in the second one which was added as an afterthought. I really need to work on my colour stuff.

Quick Action poses

Just a few little pose scribbles, nothing special. Taken from 'District 13' (the french parkour film) and a pose book. I need to do many, many more of these.

Study buddy sheets

Paul Richards over at autodestruct put together these natty study sheets which are great fun to do and hone your 2D skills at the same time (a major bonus), so thanks Paul! The idea is to grab a bunch of interesting pictures and stick them on the left hand side of each column, then thrust the sheet upon an unsuspecting friend who will try to fill the blanks in using the correct technique (Masses, palette etc). I think the faster you do it the better, although for me the palette ones proved very taxing, despite cheating and using the eyedropper (baby steps). Both of these came from Adam (yourlocalhero) and not marth or Ada wong as one might be lead to believe.

Oh, these pics are pretty big too.



Er, this one isnt finished yet, as Im sure you can see. I'll get it done, honest!

Inspired by Android!

I recently watched a great video by Andrew 'Android' Jones of Massive Black studio which went over his workflow and some of the techniques he uses. The following are my attempts to create something in a similar way, purely as an experiment. I wouldnt have the first clue how to actually use these for a concept!