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Tuesday, September 2, 2014

A few characters from the simpsons.

I did these to celebrate the #everysimpsonsever marathon that went on on FXX. I had a blast doing these, and they were indeed challenging. This helped me improve even more in learning the importance of evaluating references, all too important in translating a 2D image into a 3D sculpt. As always, my weapon of choice was Zbrush.

Snake Jailbird:


Moe Szyslak:


Kent Brockman:


Principal Skinner:


Apu:


Edna:

Groundskeeper Willie:


Joe Quimby:


Mr. Burns:


Sea Captain:


Tuesday, August 19, 2014

"Stitch"

Continuing down the road of stylized modeling, which led me to Stitch from Disney's Lilo & Stitch. This character was definitely a challenge, especially his head. Getting it to look right from all views was near impossible, part of the things that might work well in 2D but not necessarily in 3D. In the end, I'm pleased with the way it turned out.

The process began with a high resolution digital sculpture in Zbrush, then I did retopology in Topogun. Maps were baked in xNormal and texturing in ZBrush using polypaint.













Monday, August 4, 2014

Gruuber

A personal project of mine. I did a quick sketch of this fish a LONG time ago, his name initially was going to be "croak". Gruuber is a somewhat mean, slightly foulmouthed fish who thinks the world revolves around him. Well at least the immediate vicinity of his fish bowl. I went for a shot that depicted Gruuber feeling slightly challenged by possibly threatened by the sight of something, possibly another fish.

I began the sculpting in Zbrush, then did the retopo in Topogun. Xnormal for map bakes and Photoshop and Zbrush for texturing.










Likes:
The overall render.

Areas of improvement:
A better system of scattering the rocks. (Manual shift drag in 3ds max)
Spent more time cleaning the scales. (They were a pain in the rear end)
More facial expressions


Regrets:
Not having the fish be all one mesh by merging the fins in zbrush. It's a nightmare to skin as it is now.

Monday, June 30, 2014

"Cheekun"

The moment I saw the illustrations on Brent Hollowell's blog I knew I had to model this. I didn't feel skilled at the time to sculpt this. The concept artist didn't describe it much, but it's clearly a mutated chicken when looking at it. As usuall my weapon of choice, Zbrush to begin the sculpting. Sice this was an illustration a quick Zremesher was adequate for retopology. For the texturing I did something I've never done before, use real photos for the entire texturing in photoshop. Such textures ranged from metal, rust, and elephant skin. I also used keyshot to create render various passes, a first for me.





Sunday, June 29, 2014

Stewie Griffin

Ahhh Stewie Griffin, my favorite character on Fox's hit show Family Guy. I sculpted my favorite character on bob's burgers Louise Belcher, and for family guy it's definitely Stewie Griffin. This is probably the most difficult subject I have ever sculpted.

One of the unique challenges from going from 2D to 3D is knowing what will work and what wont. I felt I would begin to lose the likeness if I tried to match Stewie from the side view as seen in the show. Funny how these cartoony character are more challenging that realistic characters(at least for me) I started with a high poly sculpt in Zbrush, did retopology in Topogun and then unwrapped in 3ds max.

Maps were baked in xNormal and Stewie was textured in photoshop, the easiest part of this project.

High poly marmoset render:

low poly render:

Timelapse sculpt:






Orthos:
lala:
low poly/UVs:
Stewie appears in a lot of costumes, so it was a no brainer to split the UVs this way. I might model a different Stewie in the future, like Stewie Cruise, Desiree, or Zach Sawyer.


texture maps:

references(I used a lot more than shown here):