Sketchbook: Jacinta
polycounter lvl 5
hi polycount! I've been a lurker for quite a few years, but haven't really found an opportunity to post on here until now! planning on posting and dating older work first and then will slowly build up to more recent stuff!! critique is welcome on the recent stuff and wips!! 
i'll try to regularly post WIP in here as well! thank you!
i'll try to regularly post WIP in here as well! thank you!
Replies
November 22, 2017
original concept by Lyndsay Simpson: https://twitter.com/pahnts/status/931741999769817089
the way i presented work back then was very curious. i kept these because i felt like they still did the job well. they are sketchfab renders and closeups.
November 13th, 2017
an original piece that i conceptualized myself!
i recently rerendered this piece so the presentation would make more sense and look more cohesive with my more recent work since this remains one of my favorite pieces even though it is rather old!
reflecting on this piece, I don't think i needed to make some of the foliages' texture density as large as it is. i definitely learned a lot and have grown from this piece and if i could redo it, i would adjust my uv shells so the more important pieces took up more space rather than how i did it here!
some of the colors in the progress are also really fun and i do want to reuse that color scheme in the future!
February 21, 2018
original concept by Leia Ham https://leiaham.com/castle-in-the-sky-new-layout
similar to the last piece, i also rerendered this piece recently so the presentation is better.
and also like the last one, i have no idea why i made the pieces of the actual building so small in comparison to some of the smaller foliage like the lilypads and flowers? genuinely have no idea what i was thinking there!! i actually remember looking at it and being like "why is this so blurry even tho its 2k?" Now i know!!
definitely a favorite! if i were to have done this piece now, i would have made the foliage more detailed instead of like the concept, ambiguous foliage shapes! I would have also put it into photoshop and punched up some colors. I feel like back then i played it safe pretty often and just kept the original concept's colors and didnt allow myself to experiment with my own decisions in terms of color? i've grown from that!
June 15, 2018
original concept by myself!
also recently rerendered!!
I wanted to challenge myself and create more dioramas with environments i was unfamiliar with so I tried doing a beach! for some reason back then i was really insistent on using strictly photoshop instead of substance painter so this era of my work had some "slightly obvious" seams if you knew what you were looking for! but it still looked pretty happy!
i had an obsession with making my scenes super lowpoly and tried creating shapes and proper silhouettes with as few polys as possible, when i could have added more! it just felt wrong at the time
September 17, 2018
original concept by chanteii_ https://twitter.com/chanteii_/status/1040731579394318337
was moving more towards of direction of cute and even more colorful than before in my art, trying to utilize the same assets multiple times in little ways. here i was still using strictly photoshop!
i remember having a difficult time with the frosting shape! I still really don't know how to achieve the whip cream shape in maya. most of the tutorials i was sent were for blender, but this was so long ago i might try something similar again for a study soon!
October 4, 2018
original concept by myself!
this piece definitely grew as i was working on it. my concept art had a lot of ambiguous elements but i had a lot of feelings for what i wanted to go for so i just kind of went at it as it was happening. i played around with a lot of gradients for this piece and wanted to play with a lot of emissive elements!
September 24, 2018
concept by Stephasocks: https://twitter.com/Stephasocks/status/1000889540167569408
this piece was a good thing of practice because i wanted to experiment with painting in lighting (from the windows) and also having paper-thin walls so you could look inside the model and it wasn't just a diorama.
i got critique that i shouldn't match the window light shape exactly to the concept art (see upstairs window) because logically it didn't make sense, but i was super stubborn and wanted to make it match 1:1 which kind of stunted my growth because i didn't want to go beyond the concept.
there are a lot of things here that i learned while working on this which helped so much with other models i was working on! like various outline effect tricks and just some simple texturing bits.
October 31, 2018
concept by Nadia Kim: https://twitter.com/nkim_illustrate/status/1051924057224925184
just like i mentioned earlier, i still don't really know how to make the whip cream shape, but i think i got away with it pretty well with just the diffuse in the cat's tail!
for this piece, i remember I wanted to experiment with the placement of vfx and planes so it would look more 3d and layered rather than flat. I could have just painted the plants instead of made them actually 3d, but that didn't feel right to me. even if it was a little simpler and cuter, it was still something helpful for my learning!
i started this one roughly early March 2018. WIP
concept by Leia Ham: https://leiaham.com/vasilisa-the-beautiful-in-progress
my deranged, senioritis self decided in the last few months of my undergrad, i would try to finish an entire exterior and super cluttered interior in roughly 2 months, as you can see that did not happen.
to be quite honestly i am still satisfied with how the exterior turned out
i remember stress texturing it with mild gradients so i could kind of gauge how much work i would have to do. i'm kind of glad i didn't finish this, because i learned so much about how to texture foliage that i would have elaborated more on the shapes rather than ambiguously blocked them out in the color they are like i sort of did here!
my aim here was to try to achieve a cutaway feel but at the same time, i'm wondering if that kind of thing was worth it? because now its a bit difficult to see the interior details and nuances since the interior is SO SO detailed and cluttered.
i do want to readdress and revisit this piece eventually, but it is super intimidating and i worry about it! please give me feedback if you like on what i should do here haha it's really hard to decide!
February 21, 2019 WIP
concept by Dia Jamandron: https://twitter.com/redpeoke/status/1074948665570136070
this is the first piece in a long long time in which i forced myself to not restrict the number of polys i had within a scene. I used to (as you can see in my previous posts) restrain myself from using a large number of polys because i wanted to achieve the silhouette with as little polygons as possible. This piece was very liberating and i managed to get myself to stop doing that to an extent!
February 26, 2019 WIP
concept by Dia Jamandron: https://twitter.com/redpeoke/status/1074948665570136070
here i finished blocking in the larger and general shapes, and used Julie from zbrush to kind of give scale on everything so it makes sense in relation to a human.
i made all of this and now i want to scrap a lot of it because i want to use this scene to practice modularity, but it's very intimidating to start. I also really wanted to learn to paint in lighting better but i wasn't quite sure how to do so. an example of this is if i were to paint in lighting for the circular tables by the stage, they would match exactly but wouldn't match the lighting of the entire scene? it wouldn't make sense.
this scene is on hold for right now because there are a few intimidating things about it that i don't quite know how to go about, but it is also for sure something i want to put love into and finish!
January 23, 2020
concept by Maeve Broadbin: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8lVYNO
my most recent finished piece that i am super proud of! i never properly done the mirror technique where you just cut an object that has already been UV'd in half and mirror it over so you don't have to texture both sides and that definitely saved a lot of time and UV space!
i went back and forth with my uv's and moved them around a LOT because i wanted to get the most detail that i could and i am really happy that i did that because the amount of detail i achieved would not have been possible had i not fixed them from my initial layout. It also helped put into perspective with what i needed to do for future props and pieces in environments! a huge learning curve but i grew so much!
i'd say this piece is also the weird shift in my stylized niche cutesy work to more detailed and expanded upon work that i am more proud of. I took it upon myself to adjust colors for every bit so they would do the concept justice since Maeve did such a good job initially!
i originally wanted to take this into zbrush and sculpt detail into the blade and the metal bit to help with the texturing process, but it has been so long (2 years) since i used zbrush for something and it was really intimidating to get back into it, so i just got all the detail in with the diffuse.
the VFX was a bit of a learning curve for me, it's not something i'm knowledgable on so i had to kind of do a bit of guesswork. It's not something i'm super happy with, especially since a few days after finishing and posting i found some amazing photoshop brushes to help with the VFX. that's okay! i'll do better next time
concept from Star Academy: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OyYeZv
base mesh: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/A9aobz
in the concept the angel statue looks like shes in contrapposto holding onto fabric, but i wanted to change it so shes just putting her hands over her chest. since she's covered by fabric in the concept, i just interpreted her dress to flatter her shoulders and arms. currently working on a lot of the fabric flow and the wings that are blocked out in zbrush, i will probably finish in maya!
wanted to work on this scene
because it had a lot of pieces that would help me with my modular workflow like the columns, their bases, bookcases, etc. I also really wanted to practice painting stained glass windows! in the concept, they are very ambiguous, so i'll get to figure that out.
i wanted to start with the statue first because it's kind of a focal point in the scene and she looks like the most difficult thing (to me) to accomplish since I haven't used zbrush in a long while! but since starting on her sculpt, i relearned a lot of hotkeys i used in the past and am catching up to my old workflow which is really gratifying because when i choose to use zbrush for my next project, i will not be as stuck as i was before!
WIP!!