Thursday, 28 November 2013

Fr Bonkers - WIP #1

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Zbrush work-in-progress image of a character provisionally called 'Fr Bonkers'.

Monday, 25 November 2013

Diet of Worms - WIP #3

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I left this one for a few days and came back to it refreshed. The 'worms' in the early versions were a little underwhelming and unimpressive. I decided to go full retard with them and make them much, much larger and almost snake-like(as you can see)!

This model may better suit a more subtle render in subdued  colouring rather than the style used for some of my other latest pieces.
As usual I'll add updates covering progress as I go along.

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Diet of Worms - WIP #2

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Following on from the previous post here is another update on this work-in-progress Zbrush sculpt.
I decided a fat head was'nt enough so I said "what the hell!" and went along and gave her a body to match as well.
This is turning out to be one of the most enjoyable  sculpts  in Zbrush I've yet done.

Btw, the title 'Diet of Worms' will become obviously apparent in the completed piece :)

Friday, 15 November 2013

A few Zbrush Turnarounds of recent Character Sculpts

The title says it all!
"STFU"
At one stage I considered rendering him from behind  because  I liked the pose so much...sensibly I decided to go with a frontal view instead.
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"Frankie Say Relax"
The feet were basically ignored  because  I was  definitely  not going to show them in the  finished  piece.
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"The Old Man of the Sea"
The mound of skulls was made from a single skull that was duplicated in Blender. I re-entered Zbrush and used the Dynamesh Master plugin to reduce their total geometry to aprox 100k polygons.
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I decided to post these turnaround shots because I think its nice to be able to see the characters in the round.
When I'm working on them I generally have an idea of what angle will be shown from in the  finished coloured illustration, but I like to work on every part of them so as to give me some options...plus also it's actually a whole lotta fun doing it!

These are direct Zbrush screenshots (not rendered) and the shader used is the basic blinn matcap using standard lighting.

Thursday, 14 November 2013

Diet of Worms - WIP#1

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Work in progress image of 'Crazy bitch', which I'm making in Zbrush.
Inspiration came from a well-known great mugshot image of a mad-looking woman with really bulgy eyes I saw on the internet.

The main face is practically done and now it's a matter of detailing and adding the other elements like tentacles sprouting from her mouth, etc.

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

The Old Man of the Sea - Zbrush

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Here's the completed 'Old Man of the Sea' character I made.
Sculpted in Zbrush, rendered using Zbrush's BPR, composited renders in Gimp; final piece made up of effects made in After Effects and hand painted work.

I really enjoyed making this fella. I loved the idea of a tough-as-nails, elderly squid-man who lures victims into allowing him to ride on their back until they die! The tattoos were a lot of fun. I read a bit about maritime tattoos and included a couple of references in the image such as swallows and dragons and things like that. I mostly used swirly polynesian tribal tats because  they just looked cool. I especially like the swirly tentacle design on his chest and the 'Redrum' writing on his belly :)


Previous postings can be found on this blog on the evolution of this old coot - just look for the tag 'old man of the sea'.

Friday, 1 November 2013

Old Octo Dude - WIP #2

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Just a very quick update image.
Sculpting and posing is pretty much complete apart from fixing issues of anatomical distortion (that collarbone is weird and MUST BE FIXED!) and adding more skin folds and little touches.

The next step is painting him up. I think he'd look pretty nifty with some scummy old school sailor tattoos on his chest and arms.
Need to find some decent reference images. So I suppose it's Google search time for me...