Nikodemus DayJob Outfit

Well, I think I've pretty much finished the Day Job outfit! I'm sitting at approximately 12k tris at the moment.

The Prodigy Concept

Here's something I've been working on over the last week in my spare time.

The design is for a game project that I'm planning. A quick backstory on her character: Her name is Iris, sometimes called "The Prodigy." She's a young scientist experimenting with some new implant technologies that give the user telekinetic(ish) powers. She lives on a colony on the frontier of Human space, and is her own guinea-pig for the majority of her experiments... hence the blue arms.

As far as design style goes, I was trying to depart from the boxy, drab look of all too many sci-fis and develop something less expected; more organic and colorful.

Expect to see more concepts in the future....

Snapshot of my Life

Well this is the best my desktop has looked in a really long time, so I thought I'd show it off to everybody. :) If you look closely you can get some sneak-peaks at some secretish stuff that will be revealed in futre blog updates.

Niko - Rough Day Job Suit

Here I'm blocking in the clothes for the day job... it's frustrating me right now so I think I'm going to move onto accessories for a while.

Niko Medium Rez Sculpt

Final Design

Resume and Business Card

I've thinking about my business card design and resume for quite some time now, but I've finally made the time to sit down and get 'em done. Hard copies should be available very soon.

Here's the newest on my resume and business card:

(Click to enlarge)

(Front of the card is on top, and the back is on the bottom)

Final Nikodemus Base

Okay, so I've given him some hair, teeth, a tongue, and fixed his hands.

Niko Base Mesh Update

I took him into zbrush and moved his limbs around so it felt a little more natural, and did some really basic sculpting. (I didn't up the sub-Ds at all) I also spent quite a bit of time in the head/face and managed to eliminate the nasty mess of loops in the nose area.

Nikodemus Base Mesh

Well, I'm not done with the base mesh yet, but here's my start. I'm still refining the facial features, since they're pretty blocky right now.

Construction

Frag Fest, Spring 2010

FragFest, (A 24 hour competition in the Digital Animation & Game Design program) had the theme "Goblinoid," and categories for level design and 3D modeling.  I was on a team with Wesley Mayle and Luke Garnsey to create a level and I also submitted the 3D assets that I created as an individual 3D modeling entry.

This year went a lot better than last semester.  I was just "in the headspace" more, or something.  Everything seemed to go pretty smoothly (more or less.)  I had a blast working with Wesley and Luke, and it was really sweet to get to see my work running real time in the Unity engine. (We were allowed to use either Unity or Unreal III.)

Our level design team (click here to see our team's progress blog) didn't get placed in the top 3, however, I came in 1st place in the 3D modeling category with the assets I created for our map.

So, here's what I spent most of my time working on:

Basic Character

This is a basic character mesh I created using Softimage and simple box modeling.

Here is my final product:

Here is the concept that I was working from (Provided by my professor):

Nikodemus - Development

Nikodemus is an ancient goblinoid who was once a considered a great warrior among his people. However, he left those days behind him long ago and now works at his local library. Grizzled, irascible, and rather hairy, Nikodemus is the terror of all who do not return their books before the due-date. Preferring solitude, this crotchety old goblinoid spends most of his free time pouring through dusty tomes into all hours of the night.

Personal Assessment

My name is Tyler "Zane" Devon and my email is: zanedevon@gmail.com.

I am an artist seeking to merge storytelling and eye-catching design to create high quality, compelling graphics.

I specialize in:
• 3D modeling
• Character Design
• Texture painting

I am proficient with the following software:
• Softimage (Previously XSI)
• Roadkill
• Crazy Bump
• XNormal
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• InDesign
• Bridge
• Flash
• Acrobat
• ZBrush
• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Visual Studio
• Windows Movie Maker
• iMovie
• Macintosh OS
• Windows OS

I have a basic understanding of the following software:
• After Effects
• Premier
• Final Cut
• Dreamweaver
• Fireworks
• 3DS Max
• Maya

Relevant classes that I have completed:
• Animation I   (3DS Max)
• Animation III   (Softimage)
• Intro to XSI   (Softimage)
• Digital Sculpting   (ZBrush)
• Programming I   (C++, C#, XNA)
• Multimedia I   (Flash)
• Digital Imaging   (Photoshop)
• 3D Visualization   (Analog)
• Drawing I   (Analog)

Other work and education experience includes:
• Alumni of Compass Film Academy (2006)
• Intern at Grey Matter Group (2007-2009)
• Employee at Grey Matter Group (2010-present)

Ten of my best pieces:

Endings and Frontiers

So, my plans for a big post with all the final pieces of my work form last semester kind of fell through.  At least, in a timely way.   It may be kind of late, but here's my final ZBrush project: (Admittedly I've been pretty busy celebrating Christmas with my relatives.)




And here is a time-lapse of me working on it:




Also, breaking up with my girlfriend on New Year's day kind of really sucked too.  It's hard to believe that it's only been three days already.  I've been such a roller-coaster of emotions... I'm just starting to go numb.  But my heart still jumps into my throat every time the phone rings, or I that I got an email.  Then it falls rather quickly down into the vicinity of my toes.  If I was ever to write a song about it, this would be one of the lines: "I can't kill time fast enough to get away from you."
However, even though it sucks, I've been handling it a lot better than I thought I would.  Excepting for lots of sighs and relatively short spats of depression, I've actually been able to live a rather normal life.  Actually, it's felt good because for some reason the grief makes self-control really easy.  Most of my usual struggles have all but disappeared.
I'm trying really hard to just get over it and move on as fast as possible.  I don't want to be depressed and lonely; it doesn't do me or my family any favors.  I've been spending rather massive amounts of time in prayer, trying to get as close to God as I can, and in turn, heal as quickly as possible (to say nothing of keeping up my spirits.)  To be completely honest, I almost wish the pain wouldn't go away so that I could stay this close to God all the time.  However, it's still really hard to just trust him to rule my life.  I was so sure that she was the girl for me that I never seriously considered what would happen if we broke up.
It's almost funny, looking back.  There are so, so, so many red flags.  Heck, the "song that I inspired her to write was entitled "Nothing New."  I don't know what I was thinking to ask her out, honestly.  I guess simply that I'd follow God wherever he led me.  He did lead me to her, I have no doubt of that.  I don't regret the relationship, really.  It just hurt a ton and took so much of me.  I spent nearly 1/10 of my life trying to to win her heart.

Well, aren't I remissy today?

When I'm not feeling down, I'm pretty excited.  I can't wait for who or what God has in store for me out there.  I know he knows what he's doing, and I trust him.  I just have to learn to accept that I can't know the future, that this relationship wasn't a waste, and that God does in fact have a very, very, very specific plan for me.

I feel like I'm a frontier again.

As I said on Facebook the other day.  "This year can only get better."  I'm looking forward to it.

Learning VFX

Yeah, I know it's been a while since I last posted.  I haven't forgotten, I've just been crazy busy working on ZBrush homework.  Oddly enough, I don't even plan on posting that work just yet since I'd like to do some more work to it before I make it public.

Today I'm showing you my first visual effects project.  This project was... different.  It wasn't hard, once I understood what I was trying to do, but it was so unlike anything I've done before that I had trouble getting into it.
Enough rambling about naught.  The objective was to get a 3D object into some live video footage.  Thankfully I didn't have to shoot the footage or do the tracking on it.  Most of what I had to do involved  matching lighting and tweaking colors to make the digital footage match the live footage.  Here's what I got:



Overall, I found this project to be gratifying.  It's really great to see something I've done pull together like this and actually see it in an actual environment.

Here's a sneak-peek at my next ZBrush project.  I've been trying my hand at designing a character from the ground up (the right way).  Here are some quick silhouettes.

A Taste of ZBrush

Here is a pair of time-lapse videos of me working in ZBrush on my next project. I have so creatively named her "Centaur Girl." (Though, I may tone the name back a bit for the final turn in.)

It's kind of funny, actually, because since yesterday morning when I created these I've totally reworked everything you'll see. Maybe I'll get to uploading those later. For now, here's a taste of ZBrush.

Speck of an Animation

So, I finally got around to getting Speck animated. It's quick, rough, but it's an animation.

Though I found this project rather frustrating when it came to the rigging and animation, it has been enormously satisfying to actually see Speck come to life.

On another note... My life has been incredibly busy recently, and yet somehow I haven't been finishing a ton of projects or anything. Unfortunately. I feel like I have a time leech attached to me somewhere and I can't figure out where.

Hopefully I'll find myself becoming more productive very soon, so keep checking back.

Without further ado, here is an animated Speck!

Well, not quite... Here's my beauty shot.

And here (because I spent like 2 weeks rigging him) is a pic of Speck's wireframe and the custom rig I created for him.

O.K. Now we get to the animation. Enjoy!

Wolf Bust

Another week goes by, and another project is due.

... and several more are added to the queue. In fact, I've got so much going on this week I don't even have time to write about it just yet.

But if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I can give you a couple thousand words without a problem. Here is my latest ZBrush project:

(Click to enlarge)