The Emerald Kangaroo?

Just a little practice sketch today of a rather verdant marsupial by the name of Duncan.

Trying out a few new coloring ideas and methods. I'm happy with the result and the general look.

Sketches and Shenanigans

In between projects and finals and cleaning up the loose ends at DigiPen, I found some time to draw a couple characters that sort of fell out of my pencils.

Zbrush Beginnings and the Future...

 Whew! The final challenge of my Zbrush class was to finalize and pose our projects and see what we can do to bring them to life a little. I was constantly frustrated by Transpose Master's error-prone behavior, but I managed to wrestle it into something decent. I don't think I'm going to be a professional modeler, but after going through this CG305 class at DigiPen, I know exactly what it's like to be a 3D modeler, and what sort of pitfalls and traps to look out for.

I had a little more fun getting this model posed and working right, especially with the horns and the flags. Transpose Master seemed to work well enough now that I've sort of got the hang of it, and I'm proud to say that I've made some interesting models. Thank you for the lessons, Prof. Burgess. I've never fought harder to learn anything new in my life, and now I will graduate with a better understanding of how Zbrush and its plugins work!

Process Flowcharts

Some of the process work that goes into Game Design is quite foreign to a lot of artists. Most of the folks at school who see abstract ideas such as flowcharts might have problems understanding it at first, but they are a crucial tool for solid game development in the early stages. I've taken a game concept from one of my classmates and have expanded it into a flowchart here.

Zenn: Nomadic Buddhist Monastery

 

Managed to design and sketch this entire reference sheet out in a single day's time, about five hours of work speckled throughout my schoolday. This will be my second Zbrush model, and I'm looking forwards to low poly modeling him over the weekend... with teacher approval of course.

Quay, final model and Zbrush

Finally finished work on Quay in 3Ds Max and detailed him a bit in Zbrush. I'm rapidly learning what Zbrush is capable of doing and how it integrates with both 3Ds Max and Maya's modeling and animation systems. I'm probably going to be using this program throughout my professional career, so I'm glad to be at least picking it up now.

Quay, 3D modeling progress

Whew. Spent all day today working on making a low polygon model of Quay's head. For not being too much of a modeler, I'm pretty happy with how well the day's work turned out. Hopefully I'll have the rest of his body done tomorrow.

Quay Revisions!

Did some revision of the original with feedback from teachers. I made the head a little smaller to more accurately reflect his age, and tightened up the overall head design with the angles and positions of the various helmet bits. Time to start modeling!

Future Visions

Oh, and I completely forgot to post this here. As the third in a series, I had a lot of fun trying to replicate the look and feel of gold for the 'Future' version of this landscape. It seems that this world has come to a sustainable golden age, and has revived and restored this sacred site to its previous splendor. Even when crafted of gold, there is no greed, poverty, or hunger in the ideal world of the future.

Quay, Second Design.

Just finished work on my Zbrush class character design. I'm hoping to take this character and bring him to 3D in 3Ds Max, then learn how to make him sparkle in Zbrush. Gonna try doing some basic modeling tomorrow.

Quay is basically a 'rejected' character design from Skyward Sword. He's a 'racing' minigame NPC that I thought would have worked really well with his Beamos-themed 'Skywing' contraption... but since the game engine couldn't really make the whole loftwing flight section feel fast, the idea of a racing minigame was cut from the final game. I imagine Quay would have raced Link at some point or another, and due to his loss, he would tell Link he would never give up on his dream to deliver messages anywhere in the sky at the speed of light... indeed he would have grown up to be the very first 'Postman' of the Hyrule mythos, carrying down the line to all the great delivery masters that Link has met in his incarnations.

And here's the first draft of the character, based solely off of those sketches.

Quay is a young Skyloftian who has yet to come of age and be paired with a loftwing. This hasn't prevented him from finding his own way, though! With a little help from Gondo and his technical expertise, Quay has managed to salvage and reengineer some of the ancient Hylian technology to create his own Skywing to soar among the clouds! He now holds claim to the Fastest in the Sky... and it's up to Link to try and take that title from him in a racing minigame.

I got the idea from a Miyamoto interview, in which he was asked what sort of things were cut from Skyward Sword. One of the ideas was a racing minigame, where players would either race around a course or with other NPCs like Quay here. However, they were unable to give the loftwings a proper sense of speed without drastic changes, and thus cut the minigame from the final game. I have envisioned who that NPC might have been had that minigame been implemented, and will be taking this character through polishing to 3DS Max for modeling and Zbrush for fine tuning and learning the program.

Hah. I'm back. I had a wonderful vacation over the Winter Break on the east coast, visiting family in North Carolina and friends in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York City.  Now that I'm back and working again on my final semester of DigiPen, here's some sketches I did to try and get a feel for my CG305, Zbrush class.