sketch compilation

Some sketches for a project I'm doing the art for.

sprite animation test

Image above is the sketched animated line test that I hope to complete for the sprite below. I'm aiming for something like a high-definition 2d beat-em-up idle animation sprite. I'm working non-antialaised so that it has a low colour palette. The initial animated sketch was done in the free application Pencil, and the sprite was done in Photoshop.
I based this sprite off a photo I found using google of a figurine. I think it's a character from one of the Ikkitousen series/games.

comic colouring practice 20081006

Lineart from the Topcow website (found HERE). Trying a method I haven't tried before to colour this, using one colour layer; using alphas to store the area masks. Still a long way to go to finish this off.

speedpaint 20081004

Another 15min speedpaint in photoshop.

speedpaint 20081003

15min speedpaint in photoshop.

Photo retouch practice

Following the Gnomon Photographic Retouching dvd as a guide I had an attempt at working on the second image on the dvd.
Learnt quite a bit about photoshop's photo retouching tools from this dvd.
Most of the changes I made were very subtle. Things like cleaning the skin, or reducing the wrinkles on the hands, etc.

Original image below.

Colouring b&w photo 02

Another photoshop colouring experiment of an old black and white photograph found using google.

doodle 260908

Quick speed sketching in Photoshop of some random characters. 10mins each.

creature_01

Blocked in the basics of this creature sculpt.

Colouring b&w photo 01

Decided to have a go at colouring a Black and White photo I found on the net.
A Barbarella photo. Original photo on the left, my colouring attempt on the right.

Suzumiya Haruhi - update

Update: Worked a little more on the model. I decided to use a cell style shader on this. Using a blend map with two standard materials set to 100% self illumination, one darker than the other. Using a fall-off material set to light/dark to control the blend. Means I can control transition easily. It also renders off a lot faster than 3dsMax's ink&paint shader. Atm I'm thinking of using either Mental Ray's contour shader system or try to find another good system for rendering the outlines. 3dsMax's ink&paint is too slow.

Suzumiya Haruhi low poly

Making a low poly Suzumiya Haruhi model in 3dsmax.
About 1400 tris atm, a bit higher than I was wanting, but should deform ok.
I'll probably model the hair simply rather than using a poly surface with transparency mapping; to try and get a cleaner edge to it and also so that it can be viewed from the side without it looking too flat.

Also I'm aiming for the model to be viewed unlit, as if it was running on something like the DS. So the shading will be painted onto the texture map.

If anyone knows of an easy way to get a simple 3d animation running on the DS I'd like to know. Would be quite fun to have a realtime animation of the dance running on the DS with the ability to pause and navigate around the scene with the stylus.
But I guess that it isn't easy.

doodle 290808

Started sketching an image, been a while since I tried any freehand 2-point perspective. I did the basics on paper and inked it then scanned it in and re-sketched over it in photoshop. I didn't get it quite right, but looks good enough. I haven't yet decided what to do with the arms, hence the lack of hands.

I think I'll work on this some more and use this is an illustration practice.

Revolver 2

Did another revolver model in 3dsmax, then this time used the zbrush retopology tools to make it into a single surfaced model.

Sphere sculpt 01

Sculpt in zbrush starting from a sphere with no plan. Took about 1 hour.

Speed Sculpt: Archangel - update

Worked a little more on the Archangel speed sculpt that I did for the Threedy speed sculpting challenge. Spent another hour cleaning up the sculpt and adding another piece of cloth in.

Sketch video 2

Another Photoshop sketch, took about 40minutes.
Video capture.

Sketch video

Click here for the video capture of the above sketch. To test the free video capture software CamStudio.

3dsmax - Le Mat Revolver

It's been a while since I did any SubD surface modelling in 3dsmax, so did this today. Took about 4 to 6 hours.

It doesn't have all the details and lacks an assymetrical main body, as I had no reference of the revolver's left hand side.

No textures yet, and probably won't have any as this was only a modelling practice piece.

Using this as reference

30 minute doodle

30 minutes in Photoshop.
Just started laying down strokes into Photoshop and improvised from there. It's quite fun to start a quick painting with no plan on what you are wanting from it.

My sense of anatomy from memory needs a lot more work. But each drawing gets me closer to where I want to be.

Speed Sculpting Challenge 06

Just finished my entry to the Threedy speed sculpting challenge 06.
The subject this time was Archangel.
Time limit of 4 hours using only the provided basemesh.

More videos can be found on my Youtube page

skin practice paint

A Photoshop paint practicing skin tones; photo referenced from an image found on an imageboard.

zbrush scripts

Just found a couple of scripts for Zbrush that I find incredibly useful.

ZsphereTweaks : Enables you to change the resolution of Zspheres after you have placed them and even when in adaptive skin preview.

and

SmoothGroupImport : Enables you to import obj files retaining their smoothing groups from 3dsmax. This is really handy for doing hard edge geometry as I've always found setting crease edges in zbrush a little time consuming to do.

Boa Vector WIP

Worked a little more on this image last night. it's taking a while to build this up in Adobe Illustrator using the gradient mesh tool primarily.