Forgot about this 'un

Messed about a little with this guy (known as the 'Leggy Xeno'). Decided I need to do some more techy/hard surface stuff and thought I'd go down the cyborg route with various bits protruding from said Xeno body. I'm not sure about the metal collar flibble, I might stick to vents and hoses and liquid cooling systems (having long legs generates a lot of excess heat). Oh, and possibly an unfeasibly large weapon, which would be directly wired into the body when picked up.

Inspired, for a short while anyway

Watched '10,000 BC' today with high hopes of there being some funky sabre-tooth action as is strongly implied by the DVD cover. Seriously, how on earth could the people who made this film think it was a good idea for the overgrown furball to befriend the main chappy and actually defend him? At one point I honestly wouldnt have been surprised if the cat had tilted its head, popped those eyes wide and gone all puss-in-boots on us. Psh!

On the flip side however, 10,000 BC features the very pretty Camilla Belle as a worryingly blue-eyed damsel in distress, which is mostly the reason for this post. I've been picking away at this Peggy character since the last post and not really getting anywhere fast, mostly because I got completely stuck on her face (who knew female faces were so tricky huh!?). Producing a face that was attractive took quite a bit of work, and annoyingly once I had that it looked completely wrong for the character, despite not knowing what kind of face would look right. Cut a long story short, I attempted to steal some of C.Belle's features as somehow she just sparked something off in my head. Of course, the face I've sculpted doesn't actually look anything like her, but that is so not the point.



The topology is causing a few wee problems but I'm not going to bother re-topo'ing the face until I'm ready to do the whole lot. Close-up:

Dungarees and rave hats

This is Peggy, the unofficial remake of Nancy (The names are a reference to 'Swallows and Amazons' which was a childhood favourite of mine). The concept is pretty rough at the moment and there are some essential techyflibbles that I need to work out yet but I couldn't control myself and positively lunged into Zbrush. Unfortunately I got a little carried away and forgot that most of her body will in fact be covered. Except for the arms and head of course. The bits I haven't touched yet. Fail.





I may still smoosh the proportions around a bit, we'll see. More to come!

Push those proportions!

Vaguely inspired by an alien sculpt I did back in my second year at Uni. First image is an attempt at fake subsurface scattering using a tutorial by Xenomorphic (thanks!). Obviously it needs a bit of work still, as does the model itself (the feet for instance, what IS going on there?) but I'm happy with it so far.



...and in this picture you can actually see the guy!



One day I'll get this imageshack thumbnail lark right first time.

Quickie face sculpt

This fellah is sporting the all new MAN POUT.



PS. What do we think of the wee goaty logo? Does it read as a goat?
PPS. After much faffing about hopefully we now have a compression free image.

Contemplating stone masonry

This is my excuse for not having done much in the way of 3D work recently. Dont worry, your eyes aren't deceiving you, it actually is a patio, constructed by my fair hands. It'll all look much better when the rest is planted and the earth is pushed right up to the edges.

Sadly in the patio construction process my sun-glasses were greviously injured and later passed away :'(

One sword keeps another in the sheath

PS. What is with the blogger image compression!? It burns my eyes :(

I promise to tackle the fur within the next 6 months

Phew! After several aborted paint-over attempts I have finally produced something that isn't quite intolerable. Obviously it is still veeery WsIP (work slowly in progress) but some parts are getting there. The black mass sitting on his shoulders will grow up to be a fine snowy fur cape of sorts when I feel strong enough to paint the damn thing. As he so astutely states, he is actually a good fellow and is in fact one of the royal guards to the Lord of the Karúl; a reclusive yet highly territorial race who dwell on snowy plateaus high up in the mountains. There is more fluff but I won't bore myself by typing it up here.



My inspirations here consisted mainly of the Space Wolves (of Warhammer 40k), most depictions of fantasy dwarfs and my Scottish ancestry of course. A helmet is currently in the works, and will be suitably elite and flashy and may even be feathery. The skull is a maybe; i liked the idea of the royal guards being allowed to wear evidence of their former kills, and this chap obviously killed a massive, sharp-toothed goat at some point in the past (maybe even a neon goat?). Next up is....swords! Long, sharp, shiny and with tiny little wolves sitting on the hilts.



Finally, some of the worse-than-the-above paint-overs. Yay!

Not made out of mud

Please witness the new topology on the base mesh. I'll have to re-topo again at some point I'm sure but this was just a fast one to even out the p'gons. Despite convincing myself that the face was temporary I'm starting to like the current direction its taking but I'll play around with the head a bit more before settling on a design. Oh, and maybe come up with an actual concept for this guy, I find it sometimes helps.

Grubbing around in the dirt

I've been digging ditches. With a digger! It's almost sculpting..

I call him wipface

Just throwing down muscle mass, very rough at the moment. I'll retopo this sucker next as the topology in some areas is downright scandalous (namely the fingers and toes) which is my excuse for not having touched those areas. I plead innocent gov'.

Hitting up the gym, monster style

Must...sculpt

Shiny things

Braiding metal

Just playing really, but how great is it that I can be learning and enjoying it? Decided that knowing how to make a braided steel tube was essential for my continued existence, and after much trial and error here we are. Sadly my laptop can't handle turbo-smoothing more than a small section so please excuse the length of said tubing.



Oh, and this too. Yep, its a block with a groove and a hole; haven't you just always wanted one?!

Not dead!

After some time away visiting family in America and several computer related disasters (one very dead external hard drive with all the normal data loss included) I am finally getting back into the way of things. I've taken it upon myself to brush up my hard-body modeling skills (quiet at the back there!) and this is the result so far. A big thanks to the fantastic Grant Warwick for his great hard-surface tutorials!

Somebody stop me!

Logo

And there was much joy and celebrating

No, no, I haven't finished all my project work but I have finally finished these 2 blighters! Home straight now.

Dog Fashion

Finally, I can sleep!

Now is a bad time to have design issues

It was all going so well. Ironically I have been undone by the rope and it's silly knots and twists. It just looks rubbish! I'm still pondering the best way to sort the damn thing out. Here's the render anyhow.

Keep moving!

Name suggestions?

On display here we can see the height of 'dag fashun'; underbelly lighting. All the rage on the dog walks.

Marmoset renders

Faster, faster!

Just the shoes and a bit of specular tweaking to go now.

Battenburgler

Im not convinced by this t-shirt. Can't help feeling he might be mistaken for a jocky who fancied a career change.

Lacking hair

A hand in the dark

D'ya like dags?

Gripe

Pah. The last few days have seen me rapidly lose my will to continue 3D modelling and life in general. Who would have thought that one model could spawn so many problems, what great timing. It was all going fine until I reached the point in the process where a low poly mesh is constructed over the high poly sculpture and the normal maps are baked out. The character sculpture is made up of around 20 separate sub-tools (objects) many of which are pretty small but still need to be kept separate (the earring, shoe straps, cap strap etc.). These are the ones which have been causing the problems. For some reason trying to retopologize these has been a complete nightmare. Exhibits A and B:




The ring I still haven't managed to fix and may just have to scrap it. It's so utterly demoralising to spend a day, or many in this case, fighting with the same problem and getting absolutely nowhere. Getting well sick of this.

Those final little bits!

Possibly not necessary

This was actually pretty fun to work on. I started with a picture of a gold sovereign and used it as an alpha to get the outlines which I then filled in and worked up by hand. Not quite sure whether this detail is really essential but it's too late now! Incidentally, kudos to 'Sathe' of Zbrushcentral for the gold matcap.

Back in yellow

It has been far too long since the last update on here, for which I feel moderately guilty but thankfully I at least have a little to show for the time. Having said that it doesn't look like Dazza (or Dave) here has actually moved on much, mainly because I keep catching myself niggling away at silly details (the skin folds on the inside of the hand for instance) which are never going to see the light of day.

On a more positive note the trousers have had their folds completely reworked to look more like how we expect the fabric to appear and the t-shirt has been given the super sharp crease treatment. Readers will also be pleased to note that I finally got around to giving the shoes and cap some loving, both of which I'm pretty pleased with although the shoes were a pixol-pain in the arse.

The most exciting additions to the model have to be the shiny bling bits (well, I'm excited about them anyway). I spent many a night lying awake pondering upon the problem of how to best construct the link bracelet but when I jumped in and had a go today it was effortless and worked a treat. Enough of my self-evaluation drivel, just look at the pictures.

Anyone else getting bored of seeing this bod?

Pastel blue flavour