"Moray"

Well, the final project of the quarter(for one of my classes at least). The original design of this guy was much slimmer and was more of a sprinter who could run down his prey. The design was not very functional, so I decided to start over and ended up with this. I began sculpting the individual pieces of this guy, that seems to work out for me sometimes even more so that generating a mesh from Zspheres. Eventually I merge all the necessary pieces together before using dynamesh.

Retopology was fun to say the least. I believe this was my first asymmetrical model. I started out in topogun with the head, torso and up to around the elbows. I then applied symmetry and asymmetrically retopologized the human arm. The eel hand was a quick remesh in Zbrush. Finally, I merged both OBJs in 3dsmax before sending it back to Zbrush to reproject details and finish out the sculpt. To be honest I'm not sure why I went with another moray eel centric design, must have been the look one of the eels gave me at the aquarium, stuck with me.

Retopology(Topogun)

Polypaint process:

That look...

Parasite

Another creature design for a class this quarter, the third of four I have to do. I'll admit it was quite a challenge coming up with this guy. i was already getting a creative block after only 2 designs. Perhaps it was because I was limited to the animals took photos of at the aquarium. I decided this guy would be eaten slowly by parasites from the inside out, hence his infected half eaten arm.

Gator concept

The second creature I did for class in school. As with the other pieces i wasn't worried about topology, as these were meant to be concept illustrations. I wanted this guy to be more of a vertical swimming gator, moving vertically and being propelled through the water by the tail on it's back. After seeking feedback I made some proportional fixes that are not seen in the video. The professor thought things were too "samey samey" as she likes to put it. The hand belonging to the poor bastard was added just to give a sense of scale and nothing to do with my snide sense of humor *WINK*

Moray eel creature concept

My first illustration for my digital ink and paint independent study for this quarter at school. For this and all subsequent projects I did something I had never done before, which was to take my own reference photos rather than rely on images on the internet. I borrowed different elements of the creatures and tried to make it work as a whole. Most of the color of this guy was done in Zbrush, except the eyes, and the drool from it's mouth which I added in Photoshop.

Styracosaurus

This project was done for a studio class last semester. I really liked some of the illustrations I saw of the dinosaur with compelled me to sculpt this over the somewhat overdone triceratops. The approach I took wasn't necessarily the quickest way, and some might say I made things harder for myself. Zspheres might have been a better approach, especially for the feet. I'll admit I struggled with that. I just find things a lot more fun to push and pull a sphere until I create something out of it.