Personal work - more designs

Above is a creature design and the result of a new work flow that I have been experimenting with. I used a variety of textures around the piece as well as playing with layers for specific purposes (such as shadow, light and warm skin tones) to help add variety and slight realism, whilst speeding up my work at the same time. I tried to create a contrast between more refined areas and looser, more expressive brush strokes.

I enjoyed creating this piece, although I feel I need to work on my colour choices and once again I should implement more colour variations into the painting itself. 

This second piece was a quick ship design I came up with. It is mainly just a simple silhouette paint-over to try and speed up my work more so. I also played with more layer uses to allow for a more metallic appearance of the ship - which I still need to refine and work on. I like this image but I feel I could improve on a lot more aspects. I need to use more references as well!

Vintage Telephone

My finished vintage telephone model. I am pretty happy with the outcome of this high-poly model and the processes I have learned during the creation of this model will help much more in the future. I had a few problems with the cord on this model, most of which were solved through trial and error.

I realize that when I make 3D models I tend to get stuck in detail early on. I need to focus more on the initial "blocking" of the model, focusing on primitive shapes and less on detail. This will also help me lower the polycount of my models! In my own time I think I will go about texturing this model and rendering it within UE4 as I feel this is a good opportunity to trial some material experiments.

Personal work - Landscape sketches

Above are two quick limited pallet sketches. These sketches remain largely unfinished as I was discouraged during their creation. I felt conflicted with my approach to each of these and I feel like preparation or initial sketches would help beforehand.
Personally I don't like either of these and I would like to improve my environmental work.

This image was a more refined environment design. I utilized more contrast between light and dark as well as using photographs during the initial stages of the piece. I feel like this image came out much better than the previous two and it rectifies some problems I had with them. I still think I should try loosening up my style more and implementing more colour variations within my paintings.

Here are some quick thumbnail sketches. I trialled a new work flow for thumbnail creation within photoshop. These thumbnails took approximately 5 minutes each and I tried to experiment with colour for each of them.

Personal work - character concepts

Above are two quick character concepts based on a few silhouettes I created over the weekend. I opted for a monochromatic approach as I wanted to work on my usage of tone, looser sketching style and readability. I feel like I had some minor successes and more importantly I had a lot of fun creating these~

As for critique I feel like I need to work a LOT more on anatomy and I should use references a lot more to help create more believable images. I should also look into workflows that allow me to go from a monochromatic painting to a coloured painting.

Personal work - zBrush rendering

For this model I wanted to focus on the rendering aspect of zBrush. I devised a quick demon-like character within zBrush and used the internal rendering within the software. I used a blade runner inspired material to add interesting rim lighting to the render as well!

This next render was created using Marmoset Toolbag 2. The render itself looks rather bland as I did not texture my model which in hindsight was a missed opportunity! This does however give me reason into looking at UV mapping within zBrush instead of exporting into Maya.

MT2 is a very nice renderer however and I intend to use it for more of my future 3D work!

Personal work - Dr. Pepper bottle

Here is a quick model of a Dr. Pepper bottle that I made and textured. The main purpose of the creation of this model was to refresh my memory on UV mapping as well as testing the quality of renders in UE4. This also gave me a chance to see how high quality images (in this case a wrapper) transfer over into a game engine.

There are many improvements I would like to make for this model as well as many experiments that could derive from this such as experimenting with making more plastic looking textures, creating clear/opaque meshes as well as working within UE4 to refine my materials.

The baking process also appears to have created some errors in areas of my model - probably due to the problems I had with my cage within Maya.

From this model I will take what I have learned and apply that to my future models and experimentation.

Personal work - More zBrush models!

Leading on from my previous models, I opted to create additional ones to practice creating detail, building and rendering anatomy, producing different shapes and alternative processes within zbrush.

For this model, I wanted to create an organic creature with contrast between a much harder surface (such as shell or bone).

I feel like the model was okay in the end, some issues with the model (particularly the feet) prevented me from accurately rendering some anatomy which created some wacky looking feet.

I decided to leave the model unpainted and move on. I enjoy pumping out a variety of ideas using the software and the more models I make, the more familiar I will become with zBrush and the better the outcomes!



For this next model I used a mantis shrimp and a praying mantis (the ultimate mantis!) for inspiration. For this model in particular I played around with alphas to get some nice texture around areas of interest on the model. I left certain areas smoother to create less noise on the overall finish. I think the usage of alphas allowed me to create a much more realistic and varied model (without relying too much on the build-up tools). Critically though, looking back a large part of the model feels unfinished and less rendered than the other parts. I should use and apply references more for these areas to fix the issues.

Hmm. Maybe I will revisit this one day, but first I'd like to experiment with painting models a little more!

Below are some experiments from painting the model. The light blue render is the original one whereas the others are the same model but with different materials selected to view their effects on the model. I really enjoy the demonic mantis in red, probably my favourite of the bunch! painting can be quite a pain in zbrush. I should compare the differences and benefits of painting within the software compared to painting onto the UVs!