current WIP

A current WIP of my Innsmouth Look concept. Rendered in Maya using a low rez base mesh and normal maps exported out from mudbox. Used the sss-fast skin shader from mental ray, added a 3 point light system for rendering. Still have some tweaking to do but its coming along. Thanks to Richard for showing me a few things concerning normal maps and Maya.

Warrior Insect or Warrior Bird

start date: 10/11
end date: 11/8

Model and sculpt an insect or bird that is ready to defend it's clan in battle. Your insect/bird should have some kind of armor and weaponry that looks like it is made from it's natural surroundings. So, no crazy futuristic Liefeld guns. Everyone should do a different insect/bird from everyone else. I'm going to be doing a praying mantis.

Good luck and I love you.

Concepts for the fairy-warrior-babe character

Should have put this along with the previous post, but I was lazy and I didn't scan my concepts until now (my bad).  The previous post's concept is the first image you see; the second spidery one is an example of a derivative I plan to make from this previous (hence the my plan for modular construction).  As for colors, the first one is more orchid mantis / hornet-like, the spider is more black widow like.

Superhero challenge - Arriving from the past, through time itself!

I've still got another couple of hours to put into my Alien tonight, but I'm starting to catch up now that I have some grasp on the program again.

In the meantime, here's my delayed reformatted superhero from a few challenges back! I liked the concept too much to just abandon it, which is thrown in below. The glowing eyes were added in afterward, but aside from that, it's all sculpted, textured, and lit in Mudbox.

Wait..I did Superman...that's an alien. If I just say he kills people too.... It's genius! I did two challenges in one!!!!!!! BAM!

But seriously I'll post the alien later today. For now...

Supraman Ultra: Red/Blue Dynamo Power Fusion!!

Entrusted with protecting Earth by the immortal Kryptonian space wizard Zord-El, twin brothers Kal and Kent Clark use their gifted alien bio-technology to transform into the mighty Supramen. Kal as “Supraman Blue” has great speed and agility, while Kent as “Supraman Red” embodies strength and stamina. When the situation grows dire, they can fuse their powers together to form the unstoppable force for justice, Supraman Ultra!

My main influences on this one were Ultraman, Gatchaman, and a splash of Guyver; actually had the challenge involved the main body, I probably would have had strayed a bit more into Guyver armor territory, but I really skimmed over that portion in the concept, since it wasn’t needed for the head and neck.

Last speed sculpt or finish a project week

Well guys, its the last week of speedies. Mark will be giving us our next assignment next Monday. so here we go....

Got a project you want to push a little more? Wanna put those left over hours into a previous speed sculpt? Wanted to get back into one of the long projects and wrap it up? Got a side project you really want to get going? Go ahead do it man. I will probably finish a previous long project myself.

Dont want to do that?
For those that want a new challenge this weeks speed sculpt, do a speed sculpt bust of...

"The demons in my head"

NO fool, not MY head but your head. Everyones demons are different. My Demons are pretty horrific.

3 hour sculpt time, 1 hour paint if you want to color.

Finals are due next Monday the 11th.

Have fun

Kahi

alien assassin

Heres my take. I only worked for 2 hours due to having food poisoning most of the weekend and working my weekend job, and having a bunch of other bull I had to deal with. I may put another couple hours into it in the next few nights.

I'm not completely happy with the way its going, lots of glaring problems , but hell its a quick sketch right? I wanted him to have a type of stealth suit, very low aspect, lightly armored and form fitting. Allowing him to be able to blend into environments easier to get close to the mark.It would probably have some type of chameleon power in the suit and a powerful but small power pack on his back. Maybe even with plugs and such to plug in a high energy weapon for accurate one shot kills.

Anyway, If I do put more time into this, I will post it.

Thanks for looking
Kahi

Alien assassin over limit

This speed sculpt series was good fun, so fun that at the end I went over the 4 hours by 15 minutes. So sue me. Oh well. I didn't bother to paint it but settled for a different material with some ambient occlusion. Figure he's armoured, so metallic would be nice. I did try different settings with the brushes and tried to work more with keeping certain sculpting or detailing to particular levels and I get it now, the purpose, or logic to the work flow. When I heard 'Alien Assassin' I thought of the Giger Alien plus some tech suit. I would have loved to take this all the way and really refine it more. The circular detail in the middle of the chest piece started to look like a little grey alien and made me think perhaps this design is an exo-suit. I got a bit over zealous I guess and this looks less stealthy befitting of an assassin and more akin to soldier. Meh, I really don't care either way, this is what wanted to come out and I wasn't going to fight it. At this point I'd rather go organic for the next topic if possible, hard surfacing is a little of a drag in the 'box.

What have I been working on? Could use every pipeline specialist's opinions...

Well, aside from trying to throw in a few images into our monthly challenges, I've been working on a side project the whole time, mostly for leisure and research (which is mostly the reason why I haven't been consistent with the challenges).  Here are some WIP's for a full character I have been working on, from concept to rigged, a longer project that I've been using as a test for new things I learn at work, things I read, etc.

I've always had a thing for stylized / propaganda / pin-up / fantasy art, and this character is sort of a culmination of it (yes, she is a fairy-warrior-fantasy-babe you'd probably find in a comic book for teen boys... with the recent talk about Rob Liefeld, I'm almost hesitant to show this, but hey, stylized anatomy to a certain extent can be rather interesting within its own genre).  Anyway, here are some of the aspects of it:

1. Sculpted the low-res mesh in Zbrush, but used the displacement and normal maps as a reference / template for the color map.  The color image you see are in fact what you see in the viewport within Maya, no rendering or high-quality mode.  I wanted to develop a certain look that emulates that old pin-up feel.
2. Planning to use hi-res details from Zbrush for armor.  Probably will attempt a composite render to create a unique feel to the armor.  Looking at references for semi-translucent insect carapaces for the armor.
3. I have several other characters styled in this fashion so I kept in mind aspects of modularity.  Hair can be swapped, clothes / armor are modeled separately, etc
4. Tried a lot of rigging techniques / approaches that I didn't know about before.  I did a blended dual quaterion weighting for the whole body and made some blendshapes for the mouth and eyes - planning to focus a lot more on these subtle deformation-related techniques to get a compelling character at the animation phase.

All in all, this is a character I like to keep working on gradually to discover new approaches and try out different things; she's sort of a "trainer character" so to speak.  Regardless, I'd love to hear everyone's feedback about this, the overall outfit is still in its rudimentary phases but I could use some advice from surfacing and rigging guys as well.  Thanks for checking it out.