[FINISHED!] A Toucan, Mouse and Old Man on a Boat...

beis

Hi everyone! Just recently started a new project. I wanted to try to make this James C. Christiansen painting in 3D:


I'm hoping to practice a bit of everything with this one: sculpting multiple different characters, getting more familiar with ZBrush, stylized PBR, translating a still image to 3D, etc....

Here's a screengrab of where I am at so far, finished with general blocking in Maya and ready to start bringing each of these in to ZBrush:


I'm excited to see where this project goes!

beis

Been a little while - still making some progress on this while under quarantine.

I've started to sculpt the bird stand, boat, toucan and mouse in ZBrush, got their general shapes blocked out:



(Still got to do the mouse feet at some point)

We're expecting a little one very soon, so the progress on this will likely be much slower for the time being, but I will update this as I can!

Any feedback so far?

beis

Been slowly making progress on the old man; with a new baby my evenings have evaporated, but things are coming along. 

Hopefully it’s time to clean these up, sculpt details and retopo...

beis

My very very slow march on this project continues… But I thought I would share a bit of an update with the toucan. Still a long way to go, but it’s nice to see something, and it’s been fun experimenting with different things…

model

Be back in two months with something else, haha

beis

Back for more! This time we have the boat and the mouse up and running:

model

Still plenty I would like to add to, but it's good enough for  now, I think.

Any thoughts?

beis

And this is finished!


Just in time to finish this year, haha!

Here's the Artstation Link with more images, and the Sketchfab turnaround:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AqaXxy

I learned a lot from this project; it obviously took a large chunk of year working on and off to finish. Still plenty that would be fun to fix, but like 2020, I think I'm ready to leave this behind in favor of something new.

Any feedback is always appreciated! Thanks for stopping by

Ashervisalis

Neat project!! I've got a bunch of crit for ya;

- I think you could have spent a lot more time on posing. The fingers holding the mirror, the hunched way the rat is holding the oar. Notice how in the concept, the mouse looks quite like how a mouse would actually look, and has that careful, sneaky pose. In your model, it's sitting like a human and kind of just staring ahead lifelessly. Also notice the silhouette of the rat's back in the painting compared to your model? I think part of the mystique of the painting is the man is looking into a mirror, which is sort of angled... at us?! Is the man looking at us? Whereas your model, the mirror isn't really angled very much,

- Stuff like the fur and beard and feathers and the furry hat probably shouldn't have been left up to the texturing. Regarding the texturing, you could have gone a lot more dynamic with the colours. Check out, in the concept, how visible each bit of the rope is, whereas yours looks to just be flat brown. See how visible each strand of rat fur is.

- More geo could have been added to the boat. It kind of looks like you rushed the modeling of the boat. The jewels on the man could have been larger and brighter. A lot of the 'richness' of the man is lost because your modeled them all small and desaturated. The apple could have been a lot larger too.

- Regarding presentation, I think the magic of the painting is lost because of the grey background you used. It would have been so cool to see the environment modeled as well. Your lighting looks quite flat as well.

beis

Much appreciated, @Ashervisalis! You make really good points. I remember choosing to take some shortcuts during the process just to keep things moving; good to know which of those choices were successful or not, for the future... 

Thanks again for the detailed notes! Cheers