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!