Sketchbook: Vizmund

Vizmund

Hey polycounters, I decided to make a sketchbook thread to throw up some of my past and recent work, maybe get some feedback, network, whatever.

I have a BFA in traditional animation, but have been in a bit of a rut since graduation, so I haven't done much of that in a good while, unfortunately. For the past year and a half, or so, I have been exploring and self-teaching the world of 3D, and have a love for the low-poly aesthetic. I've been building something of a low-poly portfolio both for animated shorts and game assets, but it's pretty undeveloped currently as I'm not terribly confident in my skills.

The transition from traditional animation to 3D animation has been difficult, and 3ds Max hasn't been very kind to me (I find Maya's modeling tools to be... lacking), but I love modelling in it.

Lately, I have been trying to put together a fairly simple game by myself using Unity, but I have no programming background, so it is also a big learning process for me. I've been a regular of 4chan's /vg/ board's Amateur Game Development General (/agdg/) for a good couple of years, so you can be sure to find me there.

At any rate, I'm hoping this will help motivate me to keep up on this thread and continue practicing.

I also post most of my work and progress on a tumblr I made for my game: manabuttdev.tumblr

Vizmund

Here are some assets for the game, Mana Burn:







The flats for one of the mage schools, they're pretty awful.


A quick mock-up to get an idea of stage scale.

Vizmund

A quick test of one of the spell ideas.


Progress shots of building the stage platforms. First time doing any sort of environmental modelling/texturing.

Vizmund

A few more stage WIPs







Icons for choosing your mage school:


A WIP of the first iteration cast animation, and the final product. I don't care for it much, so it will be replaced eventually.

Vizmund

I'm bad at teaching myself C# and get lazy, so I made this over the weekend for my portfolio. It's too many polys for a game asset, and not enough polys for animation. I guess it's like a style practice or something. I enjoyed making it, and am satisfied with how it turned out.









The topology is really bad and not at all optimal for anything.


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and the quick and sloppy sketch that inspired the model:
http://i.imgur.com/OGyTtdQ.jpg

Over the next week or so I'm going to try to dig up some older low-poly 3D projects I've done, as I will need to anyway to put together a demo reel of them. Most of them have videos on my vimeo channel if anyone feels like digging through them.

Vizmund

Made a portrait of a friend using the dreadlock woman’s model as a base. Added a lot of topology to the head, should make it easier to iterate other likenesses. The hair took me about 4.5 hours in one sitting. I like how it turned out, probably too much detail in the hair, but no matter. Overall, from base model to rigged and posed (this image is not posed) it took about 12 hours, all done today.







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Two Listen

I really dig the one you did in post #5. Simple but...effective, got some nice personality to it.

Crit on the Mana Burn cast animation - I know you said you'll redo it, but that boob jiggle is pretty excessive.

Vizmund

Two Listen wrote: »

I really dig the one you did in post #5. Simple but...effective, got some nice personality to it.

Crit on the Mana Burn cast animation - I know you said you'll redo it, but that boob jiggle is pretty excessive.

Thanks, man! It apparently got chosen for a sketchfab staff pick yesterday, which is pretty neat.

The cast animation definitely has too much boob jiggle. I assume you mean the first one posted, which was a WIP. The one underneath it with all four colors casting has a toned down jiggle. But 3ds max likes to interpolate key frames and even after getting rid of all of the interpolation, they're still sliding all over the place. My next mission is to learn maya, and adapt to the modeling tools, which probably won't be easy or fun.

I spent most of today slamming my face into my keyboard trying to hackney together some simple html and update my personal portfolio site. There isn't much up there yet, but here it is: hsnelson.com

And here's a comparison of the updated, denser mesh vs. the original. The topology is still pretty garbage, but it works, for the most part with what I'm doing.

Vizmund

Posting some old turntables of some stuff I did this past summer. Might try to find some of these files and render out some stills, maybe even touch them up a bit, we'll see.

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Vizmund

Started working on another portrait, this time of my friend Stephanie.



Also, she's a bit of an otaku, so her's is the first model I've been more creative with the eyes.

Vizmund

Trying to feel out some of my other game ideas and create some rough assets or a mockup or whatever.

This one is for a low-poly jousting sim:

Vizmund

Finished the armor for the jousting game. 3,042 tris, a little higher than I had planned, but it should deform fairly well for what I'll do with it.



And I made a sort of coloring book for myself, so that I can rapidly prototype color patterns.

Vizmund

Quite a bit of progress this past week, rigged the knight, modeled and rigged a horse, and am now working on an armet for player 2 or for choice, idk. I also have partnered up with a programmer, so hopefully we can get this made!











And as a bonus, have a few gifs of 3ds max's ridiculous default horse CAT animation: