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.