Sketchbook: Melazee

Melazee

Hi all!

Not really ventured much into the 2D/sketchbook section of these forums before, I'm usually lurking in the 3D area despite actually having more 2D work to my name than 3D! So I figured I'd finally show off some of my 2D. These works are from the past year or so and include various digital and traditional paintings and sketches. I'm pretty 

Creaturebox-influenced when it comes to linearted work.

Next year, I'm hoping to get back to basics with learning anatomy and colour theory. I have improved over the past year or so, but I still would rather feel like the decisions I make whilst drawing and painting are intentional rather than accidental! Haha. I'd also like to design a few more of my own characters. I used to do that a lot, but now I tend to draw already existing characters (or I paint from photo ref).

Feedback welcome! 

Melazee

Been at at my parents for Christmas, so I took my new Surface Pro to keep up with my art. Trying to do more random doodles, which the Surface is great for! My mum fell asleep on the sofa, and the dog has been miserable the whole week so I doodled them both. Below that is a Ratchet doodle from Inktober. I have a few Inktober doodles lying around.

Melazee

EDIT- Removed, the model was terrible lol.

Melazee

Some more from me! I recently bought the book "642 Things To Draw", to get me drawing things I don't normally draw. I tried an environment with the "Japan" prompt!

Eric Chadwick

Great stuff! Keep pumpin it out!

Melazee

Thanks! I'll keep going for sure. Recently bought a Surface Pro 3 to keep up with digital art on the move. Some quick tests on it. It's a nice tablet, the pen pressure is a bit ropey which makes painting more difficult, but I'm getting the hang of it. These were tests in different programs. I think Manga Studio works the best for me on the Surface, for both painting and lineart. Photoshop isn't too fun on here for lineart (unless you invest in Lazy Nezumi I suppose?), and I don't enjoy painting in it as much as I do on a desktop.

Melazee

Started roughing out a platformer main character inspired by Ratchet/Jak. He's actually a really old character of mine, and I modelled him back when I was first learning character modelling. Trying again now to see how far I've come, should be interesting!

This is a rough paintover of a base model I've done. I'll be pushing the shapes more when I get back to this.

 Feedback welcome of course!

Melazee

Tonight's progress. Started to retopo the base so I have a good base mesh to pull around. Using 3D Coat but will take into Maya for tweaks, and Zbrush for details.

Melazee

Update on Ven! The base mesh is done (aside from needing to straighten out the tail). I've begun roughly blocking in clothing and such. I might change it a bit from the original concept I had since it's an older character of mine and I'm not so keen on his attire now. Might do some fresher sketches with better clothing. I've really been pushing his forms to give him a more appealing cartoony look compared to my original painting in the corner there. He's more of a fennec fox now than a dog/wolf I suppose!

Also not sure whether to do sculpted hair or alpha planes. Hmm...

Feedback welcome as always!



EDIT: Finished this guy, for those interested:

Melazee

New painting! Fanart for the new Ratchet game... of course :P Repainted the original EU cover in the style of the new game. Was fun!

acealmighty13

I'm liking the fanart.  I'm a big fan of the franchise myself.  I'm working on Aphelion at the moment.  Low poly is complete, working on the high poly when I have time.

Melazee

Thanks! I'm thinking of doing the US version of the cover at some point too when I get the time (that full body one with the flamethrower). I did the EU one since that was the one I grew up with. It's one of the games that got me wanting to work in games And I'd love to see your model when it's done!

Yuri

I really like your wolves. You need some cats though.

acealmighty13

Melazee said:

Thanks! I'm thinking of doing the US version of the cover at some point too when I get the time (that full body one with the flamethrower). I did the EU one since that was the one I grew up with. It's one of the games that got me wanting to work in games And I'd love to see your model when it's done!

Will do.  I'm trying to work on the art style of Ratchet and Clank and I have an environment idea I want to build which would include this ship.  And his wrench.  I've yet to decide if I want to design my own, look on Deviant Art and ask permission, or just go with the one that's been used throughout the franchise.  But first, the ship.  Ha ha!

Melazee

Texturing has weirdly been a weak point of mine, so I got a trial of Substance today and whacked a model I've been working on in there (a weapon from the first Ratchet game that they never included in the remake! It's actually the same weapon that's in my previous painting). It's not been properly set up yet, hence the missing screws, wrong colours/materials in places and whatnot but now I have a better idea of how I have to prepare my model in order to be textured in Substance. I love it!



I can't wait to get on to texturing the final model. I can definitely picture much easier now what I want in the end.

Melazee

Some more stuff! I've posted these elsewhere in other threads before, but I also like to keep 'em all together in my sketchbook

Finished Blaster... I had a blast doing it. Ha. Haha.... 



High poly of the Thorndyke model from before. Almost done with the game res, he's currently being rigged:



A concept sheet I did for an idea I have in the future. I'd like to do the whole Big Hero 6 Disney style on a manga character, so I picked a guy from Digimon (I like his jacket, don't judge). Here's his revamped design (the original in the bottom right). I'll probably go back into it when I block out the model and push those forms more but I'm happy with it for now. Feel free to give him feedback though! Better now in the concept stage than when the model is done, ha.

Melazee

Thorndyke is done! There's a lot I can see that I'd want to fix, but I could keep going on with this forever and never be happy so it's time to move on I think.







model

model

MisterSande

love the texturing on this little guy. Great concept as well haha.

Melazee

Ahh, thankou very much! I'm happy you said that because I didn't feel confident in my texturing at all! So I feel a bit more confident about using Substance now. Thanks again!  

Melazee

A little something I've been working on... a take on Gon Freecss from Hunter x Hunter! Just blocking in hair for now before I refine it in Maya/3D Coat.


And another model I've finished the high poly of, which I've been keeping up to date over in the showcase forums:

Melazee

Small update on Gon. Hair still block-in, but I like the overall shape of it now. Almost ready to retopo and refine it. Changed the face a bit, although I might need to bring the sides of his head in a little more since his head isn't this wide. 



EDIT-

More recent update, thread over here: http://polycount.com/discussion/175638/gon-freecss#latest

Melazee

Some Inktober doodles! I'd like to think I've improved at drawing since the beginning of this thread at least =P 


First up is Rick and Morty, except with Peter Capaldi as Rick because I think he'd totally make an awesome Rick, and it doesn't hurt that he looks like him...

Melazee

More Inktobers!

Melazee

Little sneak peek of a WIP of my "next gen" Daxter in Zbrush. He'll be taken into Substance once I'm done, and then I'll be taking him into Unreal and using Neofur on him.

Melazee

Some more screengrabs! The first two are taken from within Substance, the last one is the start of his teeth in Zbrush. Going for more flattened human-like teeth like Ratchet has since Daxter had very flat teeth in the PS2 game.

Once the teeth and tongue and eyes are done (the eyes are just painted in Photoshop on in the second image), I will be getting this guy into Unreal for some Neofur fun.

Melazee

Little update on Daxter! Teeth still in progress but I got Marmoset 3 last night and stuck the model in there to see how it looks! I'll probably start doing the final eye meshes tonight, get rid of these placeholders.

  

Melazee

Daxter render, and a small breakdown at the bottom Still needs work, those teeth are almost done and then he can go off for rigging. I still need to fix small issues such as changing his eyes to blue (I thought he had brown eyes this whole time, turns out nope!), get rid of the line under his nose (not too sure about this one yet), and add elbows to his topology for better rigging. 





Zbrush teeth! They're more human and less animal, mainly because in the PS2 games, his teeth are dead straight and they looked kind of odd like that on this model. I decided to go with teeth more like Ratchet has on the PS4, where they are very human-like.

Melazee

Got an iPad Pro as an early Christmas gift from my partner, so I jumped right in to test out the Apple Pencil with it! I much prefer drawing/painting on this than my Surface Pro 3, which I'm probably going to sell. I used Sketchbook for this, but after this image I decided to upgrade to Pro, so I'm looking forward to using more layers and brushes on my next painting

The iPad Pro and Apple Pencil are so nice to draw with, feels a lot more natural than the Surface (despite the smooth glassy screen). I love how you can shade with the side of the pencil, and the pen pressure doesn't just cut out when you press too lightly like it does on the Surface, allowing for a much nicer experience when painting.

Melazee

Been thinking up a story over Christmas break. A grandpa gets turned into a cat, and he and his grandson have to find a way to turn him back. Here's a fun doodle! It's sort of a cross between Ghibli style and Pokemon style. Not sure if I'll take it anywhere, but it was good fun  

Melazee

Digimon sculpt! Not done as much work as I'd have liked to over the Christmas break, so I decided to have a sit down with Zbush today and see how much I could get done in a few hours. Concept is by Tan Zhi Hui on Artstation!



Artstation link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/E46E8

Original concept link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Z3mQR

Melazee

Another weekend sculpt, based on a piece of artwork by Loish!





Artstation link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/llgyY

Original concept link: http://loish.deviantart.com/art/lumen-543575695

Neolight

nice one!

Melazee

Cheers!

Here's a bit of Rick and Morty fan art, inspired by my Inktober piece of Peter Capaldi as Rick.

Melazee

Here's another sculpt of a character from a comic named Descending Outlands










Link to Artstation version: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Y6V4K

Link to comic: http://www.descendingoutlands.com/

Melazee

EDIT: Removing this post because it was absolutely abysmal

Melazee

Dog arm skeleton study for today, using an Atlas of Animal Anatomy as a guide

Melazee

It's been a long time since I've posted here (a year!), and I have been practising a lot! It's good to look back through this thread and see my style change and evolve. 

Here is a concept I painted up for a short animation, plus some other paintings:







This one below is a speed paint from reference:

Melazee

Some more paintings!





From photo reference:


Speedpaint video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V2RAJnPpic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V2RAJnPpic

Melazee

Decided to finish off a Doctor Who sculpt I started ages ago! Wanted to see if I improved much from the last time I modelled him, a few posts up. I will be making a game res version of this.

Artstation link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LL2zv

Melazee

Some environment concepts/thumbnails for a game level!



This one below is in progress, I have a sheet of trees I want to concept up ready to model at some point.

Melazee

Main character concept for the level!

Melazee

Here's some more concepts for the game!

Melazee

Made a start on Terra's model (changed his name from Terro). Also, some other concepts for the game:

Melazee

Todays's update on Terra's model. He now has clothes, hooray! 



As well as some fancy new hair:




I'll probably make the hair look less mirrored once it's retopo'd and textured.

Melazee

Update on the game! We've come quite a way already. Now keep in mind that I am most certainly NOT an environment artist, nor a UI artist haha. The idea is to do the best I can with these things, and eventually get more people on board with the project who specialise in those tasks, but right now, I think I can do a decent enough job for the prototype. Here are some shots so far in engine (with VERY wip meshes :P).

Video of the mech test level so far (scripting done by Matt Jackson)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvI9SKSwM6Q&feature=youtu.be

Grass and Lighting Experiments




UI Concepts (on old screenshots)


Terra Texturing WIP

Melazee

Some more work for the game, it's come on a little bit since I last posted here. Here is an enemy model, Toothpup!

Melazee

Back to working on my Jak and Daxter model for a bit. Here's some progress!

Melazee

Finished my Jak model!

Melazee

I've been playing Final Fantasy XII and really liked the gun Balthier carries in the promo images, so decided to do a little painted redesign! I don't have a large amount of experience with weapons, so this was a challenge. The idea of the images on the left was that the weapon would open up, but I've changed that idea in the ones on the right.




The original PS2 model is below:



There's a couple of extra bits I'd like to add the the concept, but the concept is enough for me to go off when I want to model the weapon now, and that's all I needed really.

Melazee

In a Lion King mood, so I am working on a Kovu model, from Lion King 2. Here's some WIP shots and expression tests! 

Melazee

Ahoy there! Finished up an older project of mine. The style is inspired by Maria Panfilova, and the character belongs to a friend.
Artstation link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/k41Q1y