Massive Iris Update

After a little feedback from some guys on Polycount and talking to Rob I reworked most of the face again; specifically the eye sockets and mouth.

I'm still not set on a hairstyle yet, but I was playing around with ZSketch for the first time to experiment with some possible hair silhouettes.  Opinions or ideas?

And finally...  I've been working on her anatomy details and underclothes.  I'm pretty much done with the "naked" version.  (This is the mesh over which the player would be able to swap out clothes and armor.)  It's pretty exciting to move on past a bust (it seems like that's all I've been doing recently... I don't know why.) and start seeing the whole character come together.  I must say that I'm pretty stoked to  keep working on her.  Stay tuned for more updates!

Oh, and I almost forgot.... here are my timelapses:

Iris Face

I've been working on her head... I'm thinking I'm nearly done with the facial features. The ears (obviously) still need to be worked out. I'll probably finesse the jawline and neck a little bit in the morning when everything looks fresh.

Tomorrow I'm going to tackle  the rest of the body and try to get that nailed out... hopefully further than that even.  I'm trying not to get too bogged down in crazy details since this is for a game character and you can only see so much detail. However in the end, I still want to come out with a nice sculpt.

I'm still not exactly sure what I want to do for her hairstyle... any suggestions?

Iris Basic Form Timelapse

Iris Concepts

Hey all!  Unfortunately I don't have any final renders of Arthur yet (I haven't had time to finish the texturing.)  However, I do have some concepts for a new character that I'm working on, which I'm pretty excited about.  There are quite a few variations and they aren't polished by any means, only color and silhouette.  But they're enough for me to work from and have the potential to be developed into prettier drawings. Anyhow, these sketches will give you a better understanding of my character design pipeline.  I'm revisiting the illustration that I did a while back. For a final product I'm going for two variations (one in civilian clothes and one in "tech gear") that could later be expanded upon.  Here's a quick bio...

Her name is Iris Glade (also known as "The Prodigy"), a human colonist to the frontiers of space aboard the ship, "Nod."  She specializes in technology and research and has used her own arm as to experiment with biological implants.

I'm going use the variation in the middle (with the lab coat.)

I'll be using the one on the left.

Life Drawing Gestures

I've been taking a life drawing class this semester, and since it is getting to be midterms I figured I'd post some of my better gestures 'n stuff.  So, here 'yall go...

Arthur Update

Here's a quick update on what I've done in the last couple days on Arthur:

Arthur Hand Sculpt

Here's an update on my model of Arthur (Inception).  I have sooo much I need to get done on him this weekend... we'll see how it goes.  Check back for more updates.

Hand Reference

So, I need to sculpt a hand, and I wasn't happy with the reference photos I found on google, so I photographed my hand and made my own.  Feel free to use.

Battle Scars

So, I mentioned that I've been working at YETi all summer on a Unity game project called Battle Scars. The game is a sci-fi tower defense combined with a rail shooter... which should be really cool to see when coders get a full fledged demo working. Unfortunately for the game, our programmers have been uber busy with other projects and haven't been able to put much time into Battle Scars.

Anyhow, enough jabbering. Here are the units that I created over the summer:

Kodiak Platform
This huge vehicle was created at 1434 tris. The design is one of my original concepts. Textures originally created at 2048, but would be crushed to probably 512 for the final game. We'd like to animate the turret since it will be so big, but depending on how many extra draw calls we end up with, we may not be able to. :(

Kodiak Heavy Truck
Created with 886 tris and 2048 textures. The design is one of my original concepts. These bad boys will have a couple different types of weapons available to be mounted on back, but all will have grenade launchers (the cylindrical things on the side.)

F.L.A.K. Command Truck
Created with 923 tris and 2048 textures. The concept was inspired by an old WW2 truck, though ours is considerably larger than the original would have been.
The base model was created by Wesley Mayle (another intern at YETi). I tweaked the model, added the details/accessories, and painted the textures.

F.L.A.K. Knat
Created in 806 tris an with 2048 textures. As far as gameplay goes, the Knat is pretty much cannon fodder for the player to destroy. There will be about a billion of them and they'll be about 3 pixels each...

Rebooting

Summer is a wrap and school is starting up again!  It's hard to believe that it's tat time of year again. I must say, I'm pretty excited for my classes this semester, I think it will be a good one.  Things have been changing a lot for me.  I've given up working at Grey Matter Group, so that I can put all my energy into school and working at YETi.  It will be great to have the extra time to put toward my projects.

Also, since the project I've been working on with YETi has gone on hold for now since everyone is going back to school, I'm now able to post pics of what I've been working on!  Check back soon for that update...

For now, however, here's a quick practice bust I did last week in ZBrush 4 to get myself "warmed up."

FSU Visual Effects Documentary

Well I've been super busy over the last couple months... so no, I'm not dead.  I've been working as an intern at a company called YETi CGI to create a game built on the Unity engine.  It has been a blast and I've learned a ton.  Unfortunately I can't post renders of my work until the demo releases at the end of the summer,  so things will probably remain sparse until then.
However, I am currently working on some character designs, so if all goes well I'll have something to post for that soon.

Alright, down to the real subject.  I wanted to post the documentary I helped create at Ferris last semester, since I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.  Here 'yall go!

Niko Rig Test

Here's a quick capture of how my rig was working as of a couple days ago.  Envelopes need a bit of tweaking in the chest/shoulers.  Also the fingers aren't parented correctly or something, and I need to fix that.

Nikodemus Warrior

Well, modeling the warrior outfit ended up taking longer than I thought it would.  Oh well... I'm pretty happy with how he's looking so far.

I did end up leaving off the armor plate that I had sketched in the crotch area because it would end up clipping horribly through the faulds whenever he took a step.  I also removed the kneepads and elbow pads because I like the way fabric bulging out at the joints better.

However, I added straps for the Pauldrons and the Faulds since I figured they'd need to attach somehow.  I also enlarged his hands a bit per Cory's suggestion.

At the moment he's a couple hundred tris short of 15,000.

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)