No Guts No Glory - Zbrush Zombie image

This zombie I made has been sitting around for a few days like a decaying, rotted corpse - so it's about time I upload him for all to see!

In a previous posting I mentioned I wanted the zombie to wear a t-shirt with something written on it. 'No guts no glory' just seemed the perfect fit!

Paint job was mainly done in Zbrush using various BPR renders which I then exported to Gimp. Hair, blood splatter, eyes and smoke was hand painted in Gimp using basic brushes and some custom ones I made.

After I was satisfied with the pic I opened it in IrfanView for final touches such as chromatic abberation, zoom blur, sharpening and noise.

Getting a rabid zombie to sit still for a posed shot like this is not easy!
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A basic clay render screenshot from Zbrush of this charming fella.
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More Zbrush zombie stuff

You can never have too much zbrush zombie action!

Some screen grabs from Zbrush which I then combine and annotate so that I can figure out exactly what I need to correct/destroy!
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The Matcap used in the above image is available from this download link on my Deviantart page.

Zbrush Zombie - new face WIP

I took a break away from my zombie model because I was unhappy with the way he looked (check out my previous blog posts and gaze at horror at the ineptness of my work). 

He had the kind of face only a zombie mother could love..........I wanted to give him the kind of face any mother would love a zombie to have!

So I started a new zbrush project file and began sculpting a 'better' zombie face while looking at lots of excellent zombie  references - particularly the sculptures of pilcrowdesigns (a brilliantly talented artist who you need to check out) 

A screenshot from Zbrush of the newer zombie head with zero detailing.
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Even at this early stage he looks better.
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Sometimes tinkering with a dodgy piece of art can manage to turn it around to looking half decent. But in general it's better to save the tedious time and effort and just start again from scratch with something you actually like.

Zbrush Zombie WIP - Another Update!

I decided to chop the right arm off the zombie to make him a bit more zombi-ish. 

below is a pic of the model painted up. I haven't fully decided whether I'll go colour or B&W but it's nice to have the option of both.

Zbrush screengrab of polypainted model.
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 Having a bit of a problem UV unwrapping the torn shirt in Zbrush: must be something to do with it being a very thin mesh or something.

Closer shot of facial detail.
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I'm still not exactly happy with his face......it looks good in the image above from an upshot angle though so might stick with it. Who knows? 

Zbrush Zombie WIP update

Here's another update on my zbrush zombie. 

I couldn't work on him for a couple of days 'cos I got stung by a wasp on the finger I hold my wacom pen with :(

I'm happy with the pose I got using transpose master in Zbrush. I like the idea of this nose-less zombie leaning around as if he's just sniffed some fresh human blood in the air!

Back view of the torn clothing in Zbrush.
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Another Zbrush screengrab.
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This will be the first time I've used Blender (or any outside renderer) to render a Zbrush model. I intend to use some Zbrush matcaps in Blender - which can look pretty good. I'll also get the benefit of Blenders fast renderer (the basic one, not Cycles which I've never really taken to)and use the GLSL shader in the viewport to get the exact lighting setup I want.

The base mesh in Blender for lighting test set-up.
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I actually have the character poly-painted/textured but I kinda prefer the untextured look at the moment. I want to work on form and silhouette as well as some good high-contrast lighting, and a lot of the time a painted model can hide some serious design flaws....which I hope to avoid!

Zombie - Work in Progress

A couple of work-in-progress screenshot images of a zombie dude I'm making in Zbrush. Just trying to get the overall shape of the character right at the moment and not waste time on detailing or the 'fun' stuff until I'm satisfied he doesn't look like a complete load of crap!

The character is around 500k polys, his teeth are two separate meshes of approx 30k polys.

fig 1: trying to get correct 'zombie' proportions and a good face.
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fig 2: simple pose test to check what looks stupid/cool.
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