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.

Alien Quickie (No obscenity intended)

I wanted to try out something for the bull mesh quick sculpt but I wasn't able to get anything interesting out of it (at least anything to show).  I tried playing around with the human base mesh for about an hour and a half in zbrush (yep, exported the mesh obj from mud and brought it into z, just wanted to try something else).  I kinda got tired of looking at it (short attention span of mines) so I will go ahead and post it up.  If I get anything else interesting I'll go ahead and post it up too...

Velocidad de esculpir número tres¡

for this weeks speedie sculptification action, our subject will be...

Alien assassin!!!!!!!!!!

Using the human base mesh sculpt out an Alien assassin.

Obviously he or she is humanoid, can be in a suit, biomechanical, or even just a naked creature that is good at killling stuff. Where will your imagination take you?

Basic parameters- human basemesh in mudbox. 4 hour time limit to sculpt (since it is a full figure) 1 hour to paint if you want color.

remember, its not about details. Does the character read well? Think of it as a concept sculpt, and worry about details if you want to go in a retopo your character to really get in some nice details.

Due Monday Oct 4th, 2010.

Cool, have fun guys.

Fantástico Acción¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡

speedy #2

so here is my contribution to the second speed sculpt since I "missed" the first one. this took me 3 hours and is actually not finished. I had plans to put a small saddle and harness right behind the yoke but not enough time. so we have here some giant rhino type thing, roughly 15-20 ft tall.

Not Bull! A challenge to un-bullify a bull

I was figuring on making a dragon out of the bull, but then I thought of making something like a chimera. I felt the biggest pain was reshaping the bull, it might have been easier to start with a base mesh out of Maya, but then that's not really a challenge. Spent moments in the process dipping back to my Mudbox book trying settings on brushes and other things endeavoring to deepen my understanding of the technical aspects. I was going to paint the speed sculpt, but tried some lighting and material settings and ended up with the sculpt looking like a pewter figurine, at least that's what it reminds me of. Oh well-st, this is what I was able to do before burning out.

He is so handsome... from the bull mesh

Yeah , Im not even sure what this thing is. I started just pushing and pulling on the bull base mesh and at the same time was looking at a pug calender on my desk.

Yeah I like pugs! You wanna make something of it?

Anyway... I spend an hour on this guy before I got bored and tired. I may just call this one done. Im not happy about the feet but I probably put just a few minutes into them. I put zero thought into muscle structure, which is obvious, and spent most of the hour on the head and neck. I played around with the material preset and the lighting...for another minute and shot off a few screen renders. Probably spent a full hour and ten minutes on this handsome bugger.

All in all I thought the bull mesh was rather limiting, but worth the time cause I had to think a bit about the forms and how to deform them. Ill come up with a better subject for next weeks speedie sculpts.

Any suggestions?

Mighty Morphin Wolverine!

Pretty much all I've got for this challenge. Sculpt done in 2:45 HR; paint in1 HR. Originated at basic head. Influences were some Robotech Mospeada helmets, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Patlabor. Oh wellst, I tried.

Speed Sculpts week number the second

What can you do with the bull base mesh?

Take the bull base mesh from mudbox, and see what kind of quadruped you can come up with.

No limit, just gotta have four legs on him is all. Is he a beasty? Just a bull? Whatever you can imagine is fair game.

3 hour sculpt limit, 1 hour for color if you want.
Multiple sculpts are always welcome.

due Monday September 27th, 2010. Front, side and three-quarter view for final presentation.

Mental Organisim Designed Only to Kill

M.O.D.O.K. speed sculpt. used the whole three hours but I did a bunch of experimenting with some settings to curves and brushes, trying to mimic some of the hard surface brushes in Zbrush. Didn't come up with much I must say, and all the experimenting caused me to not get a complete sculpt. His entire back side is unfinished. Oh well speed sculpts help me learn.

He ended up looking alot like Hakaider, which wasn't the intent but I guess Hakaider was locked in the back of my mind somewhere. I added the arms and legs as an after thought just to show where they would go, it is not part of the 3 hours of sculpting time.

All in all I had fun doing it but I think on hard surface sculpts I may go back to Zbrush.

speed sculptification and modelizing #1

Inspired by Brian's speedie from the other night, the first speed sculpt will be Japanese armored super heroes and villains.

What would Superman, Captain America, Magneto, or the Green Goblin look like if they were a armored Japanese super hero? Pick any American comic book hero or villain and give them the Japanese style treatment. Look up such characters as, Kikaider, The Kamen Riders, Zaboga, Robot Detective K, or any of the Ultraman heroes for reference and/or inspiration. There are even more, and if anyone knows any cool ones go ahead and list them for others to look up.

Parameters:
1. A bust of your character. Head and neck a must, shoulders arms a bonus if you so choose to sculpt them.

2. 3 hour time limit on the sculpt. This includes any base mesh you choose to build, the base heads in zbrush or mudbox should be fine for sculpting. Any time you spend on the base mesh is part of the sculpt, so don't worry so much about a base this is just a speed sculpt. Besides you can retopo it later if you want to.

3. 1 extra hour for any painting if you want to add color.

4. Have fun.

5. As many as you want. Want to do a speedie every night? Go for it, the more the merrier.

Just one thing, please don't sculpt for 12 hours then say you did it in 3. Whatever you do in 3 hours is perfect, the more of these you do the faster you will get.

All sculpts due next Monday Sept 20th, with a front, side and 3/4 side view. Any other views you want to include are optional.

Allrighty then, cant wait to see what we get out of this.

further list of Japanese heroes I know of:
Diamond eye, Metalder, 5 Go Rangers, Inazuman, Giant Robo, Inframan, Rainbowman and... thats all I can think of

prophet WIP #3

so heres my prophet up till this point, very much unfinished, haven't even started sculpting on the legs, but I'm definitely gonna continue working on this guy. so far I'm really happy on the way the face is coming along, especially where the beard connects. I don't think I'm gonna do any color on this sculpt, just keep it as a model, mainly cuz I didn't do UVs nor do I have solid color scheme in mind.

Prophet....as it stands

The prophet sculpt as she stands at this point. I re-did the entire cloak and I need to model some hair for her head, and I need to finish her hands.

After that I can finish the sculpt of the book and add the chains. Hopefully get all that done this week in between speed sculpts.

1st Speed Sculpt

Coming off of listening to freaky fortean topics like UFOs, Flying Humanoids, etc., I figured I'd just go with that. The painting was influenced by the Flying Humanoid program, but when I finally got around to speed sculpting, I was just making the basic head into something like a mantis-man or grey-like Kikaida. Oh wells-t. This was pretty much 1 and a half hours of going toward the painting, and the sculpt coming into its own eventually. Next time I'll just start with a plain idea.