Sketchbook: Kary
polycounter lvl 18
Good idea BK.
I am working on a steampunkish character right now, here is the rough high poly:
Quite a ways to go yet, costume has just been dropped in, and I think the unbooted foot will be a prosthesis.
Here is what she'll be piloting:
Very rough of the high poly again. Concept art by my friend Matt Ellis, who's going to help out with the texturing and use the model in a matte he has planned.
This was what I was doodling around with before that:
Here is the high poly final, which is a bit bleh, but I did learn a lot in trying it (mainly that underwater is not a challenge my hair and lighting skills are up too
).
The last 2D sketch (other then my massively failing and yet to be posted DomWar stuff) is taken from a Giovanni Nakpil sculpt for a figure drawing workshop at CGTalk.:
I am working on a steampunkish character right now, here is the rough high poly:
Quite a ways to go yet, costume has just been dropped in, and I think the unbooted foot will be a prosthesis.
Here is what she'll be piloting:
Very rough of the high poly again. Concept art by my friend Matt Ellis, who's going to help out with the texturing and use the model in a matte he has planned.
This was what I was doodling around with before that:
Here is the high poly final, which is a bit bleh, but I did learn a lot in trying it (mainly that underwater is not a challenge my hair and lighting skills are up too
).The last 2D sketch (other then my massively failing and yet to be posted DomWar stuff) is taken from a Giovanni Nakpil sculpt for a figure drawing workshop at CGTalk.:
Replies
great work.
Quick spin around here: http://www.karyblack.com/wip/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/zepplinspin1.mov
We're redesigning the engines and central cabin now, but otherwise I've pretty much got the primary layer of modeling down and we're shifting to detail.
BlackheartThanks! The pencil sketching more or less came together for me when doing one piece awhile ago:
I really took my time with that one and it came together fairly well. I did a lot of thumb measuring, light sketching, erasing etc. Having to do a lot of dark hair forced me to patience.
I wish it'd translate to the tablet, really I've just been doing sketchy stuff with that:
It is slowly getting better, but I've got a lot of raw drawing to learn as well as getting comfortable with the medium. Easy to get caught up in trying to redo one line to get it perfect, kills the flow.
Going to archive my DomWar base here, I'll be posting other figure sculpts as I do them, so I might as well start with this one:
I'll post how he winds up with the armour later, to get the end and beginning together. (I just pushed the hips slightly further forward then they are in that grab).
this afternoon. Hell of a time with the face. It was at an interesting angle in the original picture, but interesting quickly turned painful. I looked at the WPE timelapse from opencanvas and it looks like i had the right placement in the layout sketch, but I lost it when I tried to fill it in.
Opencanvas is really fun to paint in. The timelapses are really interesting -- albeit in a trainwreck way for me
I lost some of the high poly for this, but got it to a somewhat interesting point. I learnt an amazing amount doing this and I feel a lot more comfortable about going into the next piece now. Having done it once I realize there is so much that could be done in the design phase that to make it simpler.
Not as fluent at mapping as I'd like, but:
Wires, 9000 triangles:
Next piece will be a lot easier to get a normal map out from and have the compromises in more intelligent places. Doing some environmental stuff should be fun -- getting things into UE3 is pretty easy and, while it looks like a ton of work, you can get a snazzy look... and there is a ton of documentation which is handy for me.
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Been doing a few hand studies from the ref for a CGTalk workshop:
Creating hands is challenging, I'll have to do a few hundred studies on those before I get my feet under me.
I find it hard to find a comfortable brush in PS. It's been getting better, but I think I'll wind up having to customize something. I'm kind of amused that Opencanvas (elderly and shareware as it is) has a better brush feel and painting UI for me.
If nothing else breaks on me I expect to have more stuff next week
keep posting!
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I was looking for a mental vacation, and Ive been trying to get more comfortable doodling in PS, so I thought itd be interesting to try something I do in my sketchbooks (take random shapes and make something from them). Then capture the key steps, timelapse them, and then compare it to the same process in a few months, repeat.
Full size:
Going through a heavy retro animation phase now, interesting to see some of it influencing what I draw from imagination. Cant help laughing at this stuff as I look at it I guess thats a good thing, if you can laugh at your stuff youre not taking it to seriously, which has got to be the right stance for this content :poly102:
Poses are still a bit borked, but the presentation is a little sharper. Yes I find the camera angle in the UE3 capture rather silly
Sketches:
Sketches from yesterday. Mediocore, but the faster ones (all but the upper right) are starting to communicate better. At the volume of a whimper, but better then my classic white noise
I should have linked to the larger version: http://www.karyblack.com/wip/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/vatesfullres.jpg it's just a Unreal Ed grab, and not huge, but a bit bigger. I'm just getting my feet under me with UE now, and putting together a proper (not white box!) environment. Surprised how interesting it is to use that program, hopefully it stays interesting when I try to do something complicated.
Thanks for the point on the sketches, I'll keep an eye out for that. Now that you've mentioned it I can see that problem. Sometimes I've avoided it (ie: quick sketch that stays light: http://www.karyblack.com/wip/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/jansp-08-01_002.jpg ), but I've developed a tendency to fuglify things lately. I wind up pretty disgusted by the end of most doodles, so I do tend to blur and darken to lower the fidelity of the stuff that bugged me I guess.
Appreciate the input.
Another quick dog drawing. It was interesting to see how flash photography increases the degree of difficulty (fur really begs for light direction). Also the affect that humidity has on paper was disconcerting to adjust to, different graphite weights felt very different from one session to the next. I'll call it 90% done. I flipped and mirrored it a bit with it in PS to see what needs doing, and I think there are a few things I can do to help out the pencil drawing. It's a bit beyond help, but such is life.
I think the texture of the Vates character is a bit bright and lacks color variation though, talking about the skin here.
Just look for 'VLTOR stock'.
LEViATHAN: Nice save -- I completely screwed up that form. I had only had a vague sense that something was wrong there, but never went back at it with high res ref. The angle you picked (and telling me how to look it up
Sure.
Also, http://www.pixagogo.com/2701224971
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A friend has started a sculpting class and has to do 20 heads and I thought that might be a fun / good idea for me to try. I’ve never actually done a series of heads like this before, and it was an extraordinarily nice break from the modelling I was doing with the m32.
Above is an hour and ten or fiften minutes, below is the same with ten minutes editing — after a 20 minute lunch break. Not pleased with either version, nor am I much bothered. Just learning so it’s within expectations.
Slight variation:
An anthropomorphic thing this time. Looked at a pic of a lab at the beginning for inspiration, then broke out my minimal anatomy skills to make a fun hybrid.
The 1h 12m is the time it took, if you're wondering at the note in the bottom right. Same base mesh as the above (Arsh’s). I'm trying different base meshes as I go, but his is quite snazzy -- not a lot I can think of to improve it so far (and it's a faster start than the 'almost a box' I usually use). These sculpts are going to make me break out the anatomy books and review a bunch of muscles tomorrow when I’m drawing. .
Nice way to take a break. Burned a couple hours, but probably better for it. I've made good progress on the m32 this weekend, I've had to go back and prune out a lot of polys as I go, but the low poly and unwrap is half done (barrel and butt to go).
... and I need to learn how to do eyelids.
Disappointing, but a good learning experience. I started off heavily cartoony, and was having a lot of fun with it. Then I was interrupted for 20-30 minutes and wound up making it another mindless generic bald guy when I came back to it.
Generic Mindless Bald Girl:
25 minutes for the silly eye patch thing. 'Goofy mechanicals on heads' is a repeating theme for me, I have two more in mind that I'd like to do. Hope to have them turn out better.
I'm going to do a P&P thread to finish up the gun. http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=54294 Seems like a solid way to get all the info into one spot, and then maybe I'll be able to easily do a write up of all the mistakes I'll learn from when it's wrapped.
Wrapped up the gun:
Further shots / animation here.
Intervain pointed out how masculine the neck on this was, so I made that quick fix:
I tried another female here (very hard):
Irritable old rabbit.
I would suggest some lifedrawing, especially gestures.
Thank you, and I agree on the life drawing. I am geographically impaired at the moment -- once I gain employ and move to a moderately urban centre I'll look into life drawing again. I would get much more out of it this time then the courses that I took at school. Those focused on drawing by line (contour, and similar) and I do a lot better on focusing on shapes (cube torso, cylinder arms, whathaveyou).
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Did this for a 3dtotal modeling challenge. Going to turn her into a bit of sculptural decoration on a entryway I'm building. Quite a lot of things I want to fix now that I'm past the deadline. Hair, a bit more arms (maybe), clean up the wings, and rethink the armour. Probably close to good enough for a wall ornament now, but it'll bug me if I don't at least look at it.
Another head sketch -- I'm going to finish this one up shortly. Bit of weirdness around the lips and temple... and lots to fix.
My first object with Silo really pushed the software.
Silo seems great. Everything I've used so far is very well thought out and clean. There are a few things it needs (angle snapping and a less flow breaking way to flatten), but it has been fun to work with so far. Even the default keybinds made sense and being able to put (a lot) of commands on the mouse is brilliant.
The box will be used for the cargo of the 'zeppellin' project. It will likely be small enough to be completely trivial, but if the repetitions in the textures are a problem they're easy to adjust.
First time scribbling with the new tablet. Pretty fun. Same crappy results, but now at twice the speed!
Doodle.
Started this Saturday. Might finish. Lots to fix. Fun so far.
Not as much time as I would have liked so a small update Costume is a little closer and I wanted to try one of those demonic hand things. It looks like crap though so I'll scrap it tomorrow I guess. The strap around the shoulder is up for debate, and I should smooth some of the stuff on the apron, but I'll not be sure on those till tomorrow.
My main todo is to get some decoration on the staff (wraps where you hold it, a few gems, other cliche things). Take a shot at getting the costume onto the character (re: wrinkles, the raw shapes are enough now for me, it's cluttered enough for what I had in mind).
I am aware that the super demonic staff and the white dressed character don't make immediate sense -- was just the first look I played with, will be bringing them together towards the end here.
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A friend asked why my ZB renders were starting to look a bit better. After seeing Simon Blanc's stuff I finally realized you could get some control and a decent look out of ZB render so I started to composite things. Since I'm a visual learner (and it seems like a lot of buttons the first time you do it) I did this little tutorial for him: http://www.karyblack.com/wip/?p=908 Just in case anyone here is interested, toss a note here, or mail, or something if it's confusing. I'm not a polished writer etc. It's a very quick / hack method, not an uber controlled composite.
Just wrapped my first stab at the low. A lot to correct, but it went a lot faster then the last character I tried.
Fun Silo bug: Incremental save on a file with a 100 name (IE: reginor100.sib) and it will hang. Less fun are the crash on normal saves, but by and large it's a great program
It's the first draft so expect poly reductions and some cleanup, but if I've done anything fundamentally wrong please tell me -- not done enough of this to know where I might be going wrong.
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Been doing a few other things and switched back to my normal computer, yay -- so much better, hope it keeps working.
Getting closer to the finish now. I will take one more pass at the floating symbol thingy, and I want to put him in a very small environment. I do want to get onto the Unearthly Challenge as soon as I can.
Thank you wizo, that was very helpful. Embarrassingly enough I did have AO on there, but apparently not strongly enough
Hopefully everything comes together a bit better in a little. Lots of stuff to work on, appreciate them being pointed out
Started a new job, so this is the first time in a month or so that I've done a figure piece. Probably around 5 hours -- had some trouble finding some very basic landmarks, but at least it was fun. Kind of a relief to still find that I can lose myself for a few hours in sculpting despite doing similar stuff all day. I'm going to try to do some stuff with a bit more character than generic barbie girl real soon now
Sketch for a CGtalk workshop.