May 2015

Here's some stuff I did for Gary's character "John Macho". We've had this guy and some stories for him kicking about since we were at college. We're hoping to pitch it as an animation shortly.

I've been getting stuck into Storyboard pro and my new Cintiq! I went back over the Proto Storyboards and added in some extra drawings. 

I was at Blair Drummond Safari Park at the weekend. Here're some drawings and some from The Flying Duck Life Drawing Class in Glasgow. Really need to get back to Edinburgh zoo at some point as well. I still haven't seen the Pandas.

Loved this wee guy. He just sat there and let me draw him!

Jan 2015

I've still been doing freelance games work I can't post unfortunately/fortunately. It's been a nice mix of low poly modelling and something a bit different. It looks like it's going to continue for the next few months as well which is great. Hopefully I can post some of the work up soon.

I discovered Manga studio over the Christmas holidays - what an amazing program for doing comics.

I'd had a script from a friends (Chris McKenna) short story for a while that I'd wanted to draw as a comic. I edited it into a comic script over the hols and started working on it early in the new year. Here are the first pages done completely in Manga studio 5.

I will be working on this when I can over the next few months as I'd love to get it printed. It's a great wee all complete story in 20 odd pages.

I got started on a bit more Lapin work this week. It's been sitting on the shelf since October last year but with different things happening it seems a good time to crack on with it again.

In my free time I've still be messing about with 3D hair. These are some really hideous renders of my first go with xgen, ignore the beard with default settings... (I've finally admitted defeat and given up on Maya hair- it's truly awful) in Maya 2015. 

I'll find a bit of time soon to add some extra flair to it and see what I think. If I can get it looking decent for Saltire and all his hairy goodness Augustus should be a piece of cake with his wee tuft of hair on top.

I also got back to the life drawing now that I have a bit more of a routine again (til the next deadline crunch lol). Just a couple. The first ones I did were mega ropey. Theres were a bit better.

Freelance Work

I've been doing some freelance work for the last month or so thatll continue through into the new year, all of which I can't show any of! So moving on with Augustus and Saltire is going to be difficult. 

I got both characters all set up for rendering and did some comp tests. 

Augustus isn't really any farther forward. Here's where Saltire is now in Maya.

And I've posed him in Mudbox, though I still need to clean up some of the sculpting and painting on him.

Also got back to the life drawing class one week. Was a bit ropey. Felt quite out of practice since I'd not been in about a month.

Augustus

At the start of this year I listened to a 200 odd episode podcast going right through the History of Rome. I loved it and it made me think a lot about parallels with today's world and politics and militaries. Before this I hadn't ever really appreciated how much you can learn from history. It shed some new light on the old saying about being doomed to repeat the mistakes you don't understand for me.

Anyway there were a couple of stand outs for me in the history. Augustus is the one I admire most though. He played the politics game beat all his rivals, outsmarted rival general, Marc Anthony and manipulated the senate into giving him control then got them to vote to keep him as first citizen (basically emperor). He then spent the rest of his life owning all his enemies and keeping total control of the empire until he died of old age by keeping the people and the soldiers happy. 

It was because of Augustus the Roman Republic became a Roman Empire. (Not a good thing in my opinion but I can't help but be amazed by what he achieved.) When he died he passed on his powers to an heir, Tiberius, I think, and it wasn't long until anyone who was alive that remembered there being a republic died of old age, and so we got a succession of emperors to rule over the Roman empire until it's demise hundreds of years later.

I'd been wanting to do something a bit more detailed for a while so here's this guy. Augustus of the Roman Empire. 

He's obviously far from finished. I've got a tonne more painting and sculpting fixes to do. And I might stick skin shaders on him and do some nice renders. Not overly happy with the "hair" - tis just a sculpted mesh at the moment but I might get away with it since it's not to wild.

If you want to listen to the podcast it's available as free downloads/streams here:

http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/

It's quite an undertaking but thoroughly enjoyable!

I also have a batch of life drawings from last night here I skipped a week and nearly didn't go last night again but am glad I did. Got some good ones done and was good to get back to it after a break. Was fun drawing the fat lady. Lot's of folds and shadows and shapes.

*Edit*

Wee update. Boots and sleeves done and various tidying up on the sculpt and work on the metal parts. There's a chance I'll get him finished tomorrow.

Bravestar!

Had something else planned for the next sculpt but I couldn't start it for the excitement at doing Bravestar in 3D! Here he is! Also wanted to get some better rendering done with him and model his gun but I've got to get started with this next thing. Might come back to this, who knows!

Also got more life drawings in this week. All pencil, all suffering from tiny arm syndrome, despite that I was quite pleased with the way they come out.

I liked the way they were all layering up in photoshop so didn't bother cleaning the overlaying parts. Instead I tried to find tangents to link them all together.

Spider-Man

More life drawing. Longer poses again. It was mostly 15-20 mins with one 30 min pose in there.

Also did another Mudbox sketch. This time I sculpted Spider-Man. It's about 10 hours work - at least 2 of which were spent drawing the webs on his costume that still turned out a bit iffy!

I made the pose from the default human body mesh and used the posing tools then started sculpting away.

I lost 4gb of ram the other week so mudbox wasn't coping too well with big texture maps and lots of polygons and 2k textures didn't quite cut the mustard. Will be getting it replaced ASAP.

 

 

I'll do a couple more of these "quick" sculpts then move onto something a bit more detailed and planned out for the ol' showreel.