WIP: Concept art for Human Warrior

In recent weeks I've taken an interest back in drawing with Photoshop. It's been useful for generating ideas for character modelling practice which I have been keen to develop. To get a better idea of how to put my ideas across I've been studying sketch-style concept pieces, trying to work out just how to get a more convincing design and image, especially when it comes to the face.

The left-hand face below is when I started earlier today. Rather dissatisfied with how flat it looked. I looked online to get some inspiration, coming across a rather nice sketchy look. Using this painting as a basis I took a very different approach to create what would become the face on the right-hand side. It started with just the face, blocking out large patches of shadow and filling in the gaps with detail such as eyes, mouth and wrinkles. I thought it came out so well I tried the technique on the hair and headband, resulting in a very different hairstyle (and face) when you compare the two side by side.

It's been surprising to figure our the difference comes from one afternoon of analysis.

There is still plenty to work on with the image. His lower body has only been blocked out. His sword-hand and the attached hilt are somewhat completed and his cloak only has some basic blocking to it. After that comes colour.

Character Design Project

   The last month I've been deep in Maya and Zbrush with character crafting. My original inspiration was a character I had drawn up for Dungeons and Dragons with friends, but despite having a rather short life (dying twice in quick succession to a blast of light from a much more powerful magician), he made impression enough that I have fond memories of my experience with him.

   So, with such an impression I drafted him as the first for possibly a whole line of such characters, and a showcase for anyone who might like a similar result.for their own player characters. Posable, usable in animations and quite possibly a source for 3D printing if the setup is right.

   Magic users have had quite a compelling allure to them - masters of mystic arts, scholars and academics who shape reality. This talent, and a lack of armour for their class gives the opportunity to make them one of the more casually-dressed character types in games of D&D. Other classes certainly have a style, but one way I find magic users fun is how they can bring court style and artisan outfitting to an adventure.

   For this particular character, this connection to courts was key to his design as the background for him was of an aristocratic family in decline. This particular member of the ruling classes, who I called Varthen, took to travelling the countryside after becoming an adult. Funding his travels with money made performing tricks which come innately to him at various villages with the occasional performance in a town pub. As well perhaps as other services that come from magical ability coming naturally to him or having a formal education.

   These two factors: A noble background and a life on the road, created a character who was of privileged status but lived with few of the trappings. While I could have taken the angle of just a few trinkets to show his wealth, such as a signet ring or a necklace, I thought he'd go a little more flamboyant. Namely he would still be in touch with the fashions at court, and underneath a (relatively) simple coat would be a silver-threaded blue velvet doublet, linen shirts and silvered leather boots. Underneath a simple overcoat is a man of proud upbringing, who could weave his way through the royal circles if he so wished.

   He's not fully human, more a half-elf. While this does make him rather Eldar-esque, elves in the D&D settings are often far more fairy-like than Lord of the Rings. Half-elves have often been described as a miawy point between human and elven beauty, so a half-human-half-elf is more along the lines of a handsome or beautiful human with somewhat pointy ears. To an elf, they'd look ugly with rather puny ears.

   Most importantly it was really fun to design his outfit, particularly the designs of silver and padding on his luxurious buttoned doublet.

  The other fun thing was learning tricks to rig up large pieces of fabric in the absence of ncloth programs. Varthen has two arrangements to make this work: The lower half of his coat has a grid of controls that link to nine different chains of bones while his half-cape is controlled by a single chain of bones much like a tendril coming from his shoulder.

   There was a lot more work than I initially thought but that is part of the learning process. Some of the most fun things to work on were his hair, eyes (which are rigged with a blendshape to dilate), the pattern on his doublet and getting familiar with the rivet tool. Which I've found can be far more than a way to pin an object to a specific point on a mesh.

   With him done, I've had various ideas on my mind where to go next. Such as offering various components for sale like his coat with attached rig or a blank version of his head. But also considering less human characters like dwarves, tieflings or lizardkin.

Further reading

Artstation entry: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/N5bkON

Developments with 3D Modelling: Making Clothes, Characters and Accessories

When I started using Zbrush I had no idea what I would be doing with it after my first year. I had gone in with a handful of ideas and creature designs, and yet one of the most interesting uses I've had for it lately is clothes and accessories. But the versatility has been amazing so far.

The character I have been designing over the past couple of weeks has been mostly of a personal design. A rather newbie sorcerer character I designed for use in Dungeons and Dragons, but made such an impression on me and my friends that I thought why not actually create him in all his adventurer status.

He had a short existence. Having a few adventures, befriending some lizards before dying twice to the same spell shot twice, but that's how you create memorable stories. You do stuff you don't forget. And as a result it's been hard to get him off my mind even after I've given him an existence in 3D software.

The current model has come a long way. I've been planning to rig him for posing as well as looking into a cost-effective renderer for far more polished images, since my current version of Maya is without Mental Ray. With the practice I've recently had with the other elf, it might only take a couple of days. The most complicated area to work out has been how to rig up the robe, as the version of Maya I currently use is also lacking the use of the Ncloth feature. Which means loose items will need their own rig. Such as The large sleeves (not too difficult) and the coat ('challenge' might be an understatement). But what is lost if I do not at least try?

To get him to move, that would be very cool.

In other news, I have had great success in a much fancier version of the character's signet ring. It might be too detailed for a practical model but that's not to say there is no chance it could be used for anything.

I've been musing about going public with these designs. Selling pieces of them, or at the very least their templates, as 3D assets. Artstation has over the last few months offered this as a feature in the form of a virtual marketplace. This I think I can do alongside a possible career in custom 3D character models, where I could set up a website to sell these templates, or specific items, as a separate shop.

The ring is nice, I have had some favourable responses to it. I don't see much harm in offering it ors its template for anyone interested.

Alpha maps, hard surface modelling, understanding hardness, It is all building into what I love about the virtual. That feeling that with the right tricks, anything you can possibly imagine is in fact possible! Who knows, I might be able to submit the ring to a 3D printer or plastic moulder and get the accessory (and others) created in real life. Could there be avenue in costume jewellery design perhaps?

The ring does have an existence in Maya. I had to replicate the shader in Maya as it did its properties translate well when transferring between the two programs. But it still has its shine. Good gold is not an easy material to mimic.

Detail shots of the signet ring can be found on the Artstation submission: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v1EaqA

Character Modelling Experimentation

  When combined with Maya, the possibilities of Zbrush have been bonkers. I've been working fervently for a few weeks now on a character model that is taking shape to the point it is just about ready for rigging. I have lately been far more comfortable painting, texturing and drawing in 3D than I have in 2D, and I think it was mostly an issue of how to make light fall on a body.

  I have struck conversations with people online, in public and among friends about taking these skills as a custom design service. Modelled and rigged characters (player avatars initially, but also potentially monsters and bosses) offered alongside a storefront selling templates and props. Going in this direction I feel has been an enlightening experience in designing not just people, but also textures, objects and clothing. As well as various translatable tricks.

  One of the most interesting experiments was in a custom alpha for a 3D brush. I am unsure if I could have done it freehand, but using Photoshop was pretty interesting for creating a 'stamp' set upon a model. If nothing else, these past two weeks have been an interesting foray into advanced 3D modelling tricks.

WIP: Rabbit Warrior

  Over the weekend I felt like my model design skills needed a tune-up. So to alleviate this I took on a challenge for a friend and built one of his character ideas as a 3D model. There is still work to do, particularly texturing, accessories and inside the mouth, but so far the model has come out reasonably well and has allowed me to brush up on some anatomy skills.

  It was also fun to keep my creature design skills sharp as, as the character has a number of animal-like traits. There is also room for texturing tricks like alpha channels, material mixes and blending that should keep me occupied.

I am particularly interested in rigging the character up. I am familiar enough with digitigrade legs but the ears and maybe even the hair are going to be a fascinating rigging and animation challenge.

Major Project: Geometry Almost Done

    Today's been a fairly successful day. The bulk of the time was spent on correcting a few details on Four's head and applying the mouth, gums and tongue. She's a carnivore so she'll have sharp teeth. The grub eats plants but maybe she loses the grinding molars during her metamorphosis (after all, cats are carnivores but will still sometimes nibble on grass). And she needs claws. Only a few details left now such as her antennae and her teeth. She needs teeth as we're going to see her smile (or show her fangs) at least once..

  I feel she might still be on the thin side in the torso area but I think she only needs broadening only by a fraction.

  I need to figure out a way to blend her frills to her body while still animating it as an Ncloth. So for now, the frills will be separated parts from the body.

  Still not fully satisfied with the eyes, the eye area still feels a little cartoon-ish to me but it feels close to realistic.. I pushed back the brow as I felt it was detracting from her looks. One thing that I think will mitigate the eyes being too sideways-oriented is the current eyeballs are tilted outwards by around five degrees, but for the most part she could still be recognised looking straight.

  I found with Colo Colo that the eyes don't need to be dead straight forward to give the impression an animal character is looking in the viewer's direction. They can be a few degrees outward and still feel 'straight'.

Major Project: Updated Bios

With a more confirmed script I went back and updated the character bios I have written

Smithston-Wessex

Hundred and ten year old company
Formed from merger of two companies - Wessex Biowonders and Smithston Frontiers.

Wessex Biowonders is a subsidiary company specialising in biotechnology and genetic engineering. Its stake on the planet is the creation of various biotechnical products from local plant and wildlife that can be used to enhance terraforming efforts on the planet. While it is a company with a strong public image, even appearing enthusiastic about establishing mankind in deep space, Smithston-Wessex is a public company whose board of directors are dedicated to the bottom line and appeasing their shareholders. This puts them at odds with their science staff as the board's demands can be unreasonable at times.

Despite a popular public image, Smithston-Wessex's board are aware of several rising deep-space companies that could surpass them. Some of its board are deeply worried that if things start becoming problematic, the terraforming project could potentially remove Smithston-Wessex from the top spot of the deep space development industry.

The base itself was developed by Smithston Frontiers subsidiary Grayston Frontier Engineering, who specialise in constructing offworld habitats. Grayston also run the base's engineering department. During the story, Grayston take an interest in the material of Four's cocoon. Its lightweight but rigid composition make it a material of interest for construction, body armour and vehicle assembly. Grayston engineers would be fascinated in analysing the creature and how it produces this compound for hibernation.

David Easton

Name: David
Age: mid-fifties
Occupation: Lead biotechnician, Outpost Wessex-Choris
Marital status: Married, but relation estranged

A senior biotechnician working for Wessex Biowonders, David Stensson is the lead biotechnician for Smithston-Wessex's efforts to exploit the features of the planet for terraforming. David has worked with Wessex since being offered an apprenticeship after graduating from university. Initially a talented researcher who developed a number of organic petrochemical compounds.

In his later years however his career has fallen into stagnancy. Five years prior to the events of the story, David was working late when his child passed away in hospital. David had been kept at work throughout the period his child was in hospital and after they passed away he took up an opening for a senior position at Wessex's Ceti-821 outpost on the far-off planet. He felt that he was not suitable for caring for a child due to company pressure and decided to fully dedicate himself to company efforts.

Although he was a man passionate about the possibilities nature provides for new technologies when he graduated with his doctorate, David has become more jaded as the excitement of his earlier projects become a more distant memory and his reality is of projects he might never gain recognition for. He is wholly professional in his behaviour. He is cold, focused and indifferent to the problems of people around him, but approaches his efforts with a cold enthusiasm. Never smiling until his paternal instincts are awakened in his care and excitement for Four.

Amelia Easton

Name: Amelia
Age: late forties
Occupation: Professor, Tharsis University
Marital status: Married, but relation estranged

The wife of David, Amelia is a professor of exoplanetary studies at the Tharsis University on Mars. She met David at a conference on the use of micro-scale technologies for exploring and colonising outer space.

Amelia raised a child with David when she was in her thirties. When the child fell ill, she attended it in hospital, comforting it while David was working on a project for Wessex. She has felt mild resentment for David abandoning his responsibilities as a husband and father by moving to the outpost. By the time of the story she has contemplated a divorce, falling for a colleague at the university but still tries to keep in contact with David.

Unlike her husband, Amelia has a more positive outlook on life. She still enjoys her career but feels uneasy talking to her increasingly distant husband. By the time of the story, she is considering a divorce, something she feels uncomfortable doing as it is as she is well aware of the pain it could cause, but hides these feelings aside as David's distance from her eases the pain.

Four

A native to the planet outpost Ceti-821 is established on, Four is raised within the base's biological studies department overseen by David. As a creature growing up in an alien environment, Four resents her confinement, becoming bitter at the staff until David starts being kinder to her.

As a creature growing up in an alien environment, Four is highly observant of her surroundings, and becomes known for staring at new things and people to understand them. While still a beast, Four is intelligent, good at solving puzzles as the researchers discover, but always longing for the chance to explore the outside.

Although David comes to refer to the creature as 'her', the alien physiology potentially blurs as to whether she really is female or if the affectation of 'her' is something David used subconsciously to recall his lost child.

Wessex Representative

Name: [Pending]
Age: Late twenties
Occupation: Liaison-Officer for Wessex-Chlorin colony

A rising star in Smithston Wessex's executive boardrooms. This representative assumed the responsibility of chief liaison opfficer for Wessex's Chlorin colony, which includes overseeing the activities of Ceti post 821. A smooth and charismatic conversationalist, he found himself in regular contact with Dr. Easton due to the latter's reputation as a loyal and dedicated scientist.

His life isn't all parties and coffee chats however. As a senior liaison, he has a direct connection to the Board of Directors. And it is his job to relay policies and and requests from the board to stations and branches in the region. When David's affections for Four start jeopardizing the work done on Ceti 821, this representative is the first to hear what the board has to say about it. As charismatic as he is, attempts at resisting the board because of the erratic behaviour of one man is a danger to his promising career.

Major Project: Initial Character Concepts

Smithston-Wessex

Hundred and ten year old company
Formed from merger of two companies - Wessex Organic Technologies and Smithston Frontiers.

Wessex Biowonders is a subsidiary company of Wessex Organic Technologies specialising in biotechnology and genetic engineering. Its stake on the planet is the creation of various biotechnical products from local plant and wildlife that can be used to enhance terraforming efforts on the planet. While it is a company with a strong public image, even appearing enthusiastic about establishing mankind in deep space, Smithston-Wessex is a public company whose board of directors are dedicated to the bottom line and appeasing their shareholders. This puts them at odds with their science staff as the board's demands can be unreasonable at times.

Despite a popular public image, Smithston-Wessex's board are aware of several rising deep-space companies that could surpass them. Some of its board are deeply worried that if things start becoming problematic, the terraforming project could potentially remove Smithston-Wessex from the top spot of the deep space development industry.

The base itself was developed by Smithston Frontiers subsidiary Grayston Frontier Engineering, who specialise in constructing offworld habitats. Grayston also run the base's engineering department. During the story, Grayston take an interest in the material of Four's cocoon. Its lightweight but rigid composition make it a material of interest for construction, body armour and vehicle assembly. Grayston engineers would be fascinated in analysing the creature and how it produces this compound for hibernation.

Handler

Name: David
Age: mid-fifties
Occupation: Lead biotechnician, Outpost Wessex-Choris
Marital status: Married, but relation estranged

A senior biotechnician working for Wessex Biowonders, David Stensson is the lead biotechnician for Smithston-Wessex's efforts to exploit the features of the planet for terraforming. David has worked with Wessex since being offered an apprenticeship after graduating from university. Initially a talented researcher who developed a number of organic petrochemical compounds.

In his later years however his career has fallen into stagnancy. A few years prior to the story, David was working late when his child passed away in hospital. David had been kept at work throughout the period his child was in hospital and after they passed away he took up an opening for a senior position at Wessex's Choria outpost on the far-off planet. He felt that he was not suitable for caring for a child due to company pressure and decided to fully dedicate himself to company efforts.

Although he was a man passionate about the possibilities nature provides for new technologies when he graduated with his doctorate, David has become more jaded as the excitement of his earlier projects become a more distant memory and his reality is of projects he might never gai nrecognition for. He is wholly professional in his behaviour. He is cold, focused and indifferent to the problems of people around him, but approaches his efforts with a cold enthusiasm. Never smiling until his paternal instincts are awakened in his care and excitement for Four.

Wife

Name: Amelia
Age: late forties
Occupation: Senior researcher, Orton Nanotech
Marital status: Married, but relation estranged

The wife of David, Amelia is a senior materials researcher for Orton Nanotech, a partner of Smithston-Wessex. She met David at a conference on the use of micro-scale technologies for exploring and colonising outer space.

Amelia raised a child with David when she was in her thirties. When the child fell ill, she attended it in hospital, comforting it while David was working on a project for Wessex. She has felt mild resentment for David abandoning his responsibilities as a husband and father by moving to the outpost. By the time of the story she has planned a divorce, falling for a colleague at Orton.

Unlike her husband, Amelia has a more positive outlook on life. She still enjoys her career but feels uneasy talking to her increasingly distant husband. By the time of the story, she is following though with a divorce, something she feels uncomfortable doing as it is as she is well aware of the pain it could cause, but hides these feelings aside as David's distance from her eases the pain.

Four

A native to the planet outpost Wessex-Choris is established on, Four is raised within the base overseen by David. As a creature growing up in an alien environment, Four resents his confinement, becoming bitter at the staff until David starts being kinder to him.

As a creature growing up in an alien environment, Four is highly observant of his surroundings, and becomes known for staring at new things and people to understand them. While still a beast, Four is intelligent, good at solving puzzles as the researchers discover, but always longing for the chance to explore the outside.

Sketchbook: Plotting a Course for Year Three

  With the hot late-July Summers hitting the country I had the chance to explore and head out into the sun. During a trip into London I got back into sketching, The drawings on the left-hand side of the above image were life-drawing attempts on a miniature of a fountain commissioned sometime in the 18th century. The drawings on the right of the top picture were partially inspired by the kind of outfits that became popular at that point in time, a time when English dress (termed Côte Anglaise) was very popular on the continent.

  Later on I thought about refreshing my character design skills, building an understanding of humanoid forms that are not strictly human-like in proportion. The structural sketches, done today, were based on how I felt after last Friday's art-stream session. I tried a hand at map-making, as over the past two years I have found I like an analytical approach to designing something be it a character or a world. And city maps can demonstrate a location's character (I had the good fortune to talk about this in detail on the stream), something I may try developing further in my third-year project.

  However as the half-finished nature of both suggests, I lost steam during the broadcast. Whether or not I will work on them again will be something to decide, but the lack of momentum I felt has made me inclined towards finishing the Minotaur painting half-made on the stream before this one.

(Yes, sketch 14 is an attempt at Totoro. I am quite fascinated with Studio Ghibli's works)

Stream Saturday 02/07/2016: Horror Creature Design

  It's time I started considering what I'm going to do for my third year of university. With that in mind I decided to dive back a little into creature design. Originally I wanted this thing to have an angler-fish-like head, something reminiscent of Colo Colo. But as the stream progressed the monster became a little more bat-like in form.

  A secondary reason for this piece is to practice on some dynamic lighting as well as refresh my memory on bounced light. There are three point lights in this scene, each illuminating the creature from a different direction. Although on reflection maybe the light shining off the creature's rear-end is a little too spread out. Or it might not be, his hip looks quite close to the light.

As usual, I created an accompanying time-lapse of its construction. The thing I kept thinking while working was that the more I work on the layers, the better it will turn out.

Reworking the Dragon Man: Face and Feet

  Looking to get back into creature modeling so I'm making some tweaks to my Mudbox model to try a more convincing design. One of the largest changes I'd say is with the head. As this creature is a flier I had taken to the idea of adding a few avian qualities to the head to make it more streamlined and aerodynamic. 

I might add nails to the hands, but their design will be slightly different to the talons on the foot due to slight differences in geometric complexity. But this is something that will be sorted out during that construction. The current design of the foot came with a fair deal of research into the feet of birds and therapod dinosaurs, while also considering how the hands are arranged by comparison, as quite often hands and feet are anatomically similar. Proportions can be different but in a number of cases the number of digits or bones is quite similar between the hand and feet.

Reworking the Dragon Man

  Didn't mean for the blog to become this quiet but I'm back on another project at Butch Auntie,, (thank my eagerness over opportunities for that) which means most of the day for the next couple of weeks will be is spent in Maya. Before I got stuck in I looked into reworking my dragon-man model to see if I could streamline it or generally use what I head learned making Colo Colo to improve on the design.

  I didn't spend much time as I quickly found myself engrossed in work but the progress I have made on this model so far is primarily improving the snout, eye sockets, brows, leg and tail, while also adding a bit ot the geometry and cleaning  a few things up. Unlike the previous model I also look to create a UV map for this, it might reduce the pressure on my PC when it comes to applying textures as it means I can use a standard normal map instead of a complex PTEX normal map.

Stream Saturday 07/04/2016

With the academic year mostly over, I have a little more time for streaming. With an internship at the studio Butch Auntie, activity is also going to drop considerably due to a policy of client confidentiality. This stream in particular was fun not because of the subject, but experimentation with perspective, and halfway though I asked the stream's chat channel for suggestions on the tail, with the decision to make it more of a constrictor's tail.

Sculpting Worshop: Head Progress

  I had not posted it while in progress aside from orthographs of the head, but Garrus has come along fairly well during the sculpting workshop. The only drawback I think is I made the head slightly too large, as it ended up using a lot of clay to get a finished result.

  I have considerations for finishing him over the summer, I have more clay on the way and aside from detailing and a bit of smoothing, what remains are his eyepiece and the three horns that rise from the top of his head. I plan ot stick ot slow cooking him, only 115 degrees in the oven, trying not to think too hard on the worst-case-scenario of him exploding but a low heat might help offset that risk. If he does, at least I still have a record here.

He's come out fairly close to the source design, the lower face might be slightly longer than its supposed to be as he has a very deep head. But I have sculpting tools to rectify that as it likely jsut means raising the mouth-line..

Colo Colo: Rigging the face

  With a partially done texture in place, priority today was on installing the final controls which were for the eyes and eyebrows. This was achieved by keying the transformations to blendshapes set separate from the main model, the transformations on these blend shapes would be reflected on the main model. The main downside to this measure is there are three instances of Colo Colo in the scene, but these can be hidden both in the workspace and in the outliner.

  The eyelidss were a bit of trial and error to get the angle right, as they're not human eyes. One of the alleviations I found during testing was angling the eyes so they twisted slightly as they closed. Not what normally happens but it allowed me to somewhat preserve the positions of the corner joints. I also made the discovery that I might have added too few polygons and so there is quite a bit of stretching on the upper eyelid in particular, but this can be rectified by a tweak to the UV.

  The sub-surface scattering is so far coming out reasonably well, even on the current skin. This can especially be seen i nthe light-obscured areas of the body such as the right-hand thigh. The priority now is goin to be textures, so I can make Colo Colo look really nice

  When rendered out, I think the texture comes out fairly well. There's some artifacts but these can be fixed by some minor modification of the texture map inside Mubox.