Arctic Creature

I have been looking at creatures which live in cold climates. They generally have a grey/brown and white colour scheme for camoflague, thick fur or skin and often have tusks or horns.

Here I have looked at animals from warm climates such as camels, rhinos and lions and thought about what they might look like in another climate. The first concept is based on a camel, its hump has white patches to camoflague it in its habitat so from a distance it looks like a mountain and it would store nutrients from the barren landscape there so it can survive a long time without food. I think it could of done with looking heavier with thicker fur.
The second concept is based on a rhino with some elements from reindeer and horses. Compared to the other two I'm not as happy with this one. Like with the camel I was thinking these could maybe be domesticated to a similar extent horses are.
The third is based on a lion and sabertooth tiger. I extended the mane to cover the lions entire body leaving the face and legs covered in shorter hair, I added some spots and stripes to mimic the pattern young lions have.

I am currently thinking of making the mountain camel and it would be useful to have a detailed human character modelled I could include a person either standing next to it holding some kind of reins or sitting on it. For now I will use the low poly model for learning Mudbox and after I will

Solo Work

I'm going to be doing character concepts which I will then make into a low poly model and make hand painted textures for it.

At the moment I am thinking of basing each concept on either a species or a particular environment however I could combine the two.

Environments:
Underwater
Snow
Desert
Rainforest
Swamp
Alien planet - gaseous or arid?

Species:
Insects
Crustacean
Fish
Mollusc
Birds
Reptiles
Amphibians
Mammals -Ungulates, rodents, cetaceans (whales, dolphins etc), carnviores, apes


I would like to get to this kind of level

Underwater Creature

Moodboard:

Started looking at shelled underwater creatures as I thought it'd be interesting to make a armored creature, ended up with a lot of sea slugs as they have some interesting shapes and colours. Will try and combine these two making an armored sea slug.

Sketches:

Sketches of a seaslug, lobster, lionfish and isopod. Drew these using blocks of colour picked from my moodboard

WIP:

 

First WIP, forgot to take earlier ones stretching out the sphere. Made the sphere a more slug like shape, added antenna, a frill and started to add the shell.

 Second WIP of making the sea slug in Sculptris. Here I got the slug shape down and added more of a shell to its back using the draw tool in inverse to get the dips and the draw tool to give the shell a more 3D effect.

Finished the model, changed the material to a more suitable one with a different lighting point and then used this as the base for my final paintover.

Final:

Would of liked to add more to this, maybe some patterns and anemones/barnacles/seaweed/etc living on its back to give a sense of scale and detail. Was thinking about giving it some legs and/or claws to make the design a bit more interesting and make it more crustacean-like but in some ways I think it might of looked too weird and its better how it is.

I painted over the scultpris model and used adjustment layers to make the shadows and highlights stronger

Nightcrawler Topology Modelling

Used this for reference, put in two planes of the same size and moved them into position so they lined up then put them on a reference layer. Then made a cube with a vertical divison and deleted one side then used duplicate special. After that used extrude and add divisions to get the shape etc.

Box Modelling and Topology

Troll

 

 

 

Minotaur

Started off creating a box with a vertical division, deleted the left side of the box and set it to vector3 then used duplicate special to create a mirrored duplicate of it. I then added two planes with the reference image and rotated and moved them to the right position. I then adjusted the vertexes and extruded the box once.

Used the reference to get the basic proportions and followed the first part of the tutorial extruding from the box and adjusting vertexes to get the shape.

Decided to hide the reference images and just follow the tutorial, adjusted arms, neck and legs, added hands and fingers and added to the feet. Extra edge loops on the leg and division across arm to face.

Having some issues with the third part of the tutorial

CAT Rigging

CAT rigged a human figure by using techniques learnt from the tutorial adjusting the base human CAT rig.

CAT rigged this beast model by creating an empty rig ('none') then creating a pelvis and adding and adjusting bones to fit the model making sure it has enough joints to move but not too many.

Figure modelling

Have too many polys and some of the geometry is really messed up. Trying to sort it out but my camera settings have been messed up making it difficult. Refernce photos aren't great, front view is slightly tilted making it difficult to judge symmetry and the side view is too wide.

Here is as far as I got with the model. I had too many topology issues with the first model so the best option seemed to be tostart again with clean topology.

15 minute low poly model

Sci fi Cannon

Moodboard:

 

Notes from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL7nV7WwJKg

1m20: Adds colour texturing to model. Material looks like a phong/blin

1m35: Adds downward directional light around base and underside of the model

1m53: Renders model and takes over to Photoshop

2m: Adds details such as decals

2m07: Adds panel texture in new layer

2m08: Skews texture to fit lines of the model

2m10: Uses line lasso tool to select part of the texture which needs further skewing to fit around the object then erases unneeded parts of the texture

2m27: Adds brushed metal texture and uses the line lasso tool to cut around to fit the rough scale of the cylinder then skews it to look cylindrical (while using the skew tool the inside lines are look rounded)

2m39: Redesigns barrel area by painting over it.

2m47: Adds more textures using overlay layers

2m52: Adds details

3m23: Uses dodge tool with a large soft edge brush to add highlights

3m35: Adds detail, highlights and shading to the panels from the texture

3m41: Adds multiply layer at 80% opacity and uses the eraser on a low opacity on the shadows making them lighter

Maya WIPs:

 Created two cylinders and five boxes then positioned them into the rough shape of the cannon from PlanetSide2.

Added edges, scaled and moved edges to add more shape to the cannon. Brought in an extra cylinder and boxes.

Added extra details and adjusted some parts

Used the boolean tool on difference to cut parts out.

Added basic colour textures. Ended up copying the cannon from Planetside2 more than I intended to. I was going to base it loosely off the model but ended copying it. Made some things different so it wasn't identical.

Lighting:

Set up 3 point lighting using an ambient light for back lighting, a point light for front lighting and a directional light underneath it.

Render:

Light seems a little odd, could of probably done with a backlight.

 

Photoshop WIPs:

Added textures to most parts of the cannon using the skew tool

Covered all areas with textures. Used warp to texture the cylindrical parts

Added extra shading to some areas and highlights and shadows. Added some detail

Used dodge and burn to add more highlights and shadow.

Final:

Added a gray background, a line in the distance to show a horizon and put some orange smokey stuff around it as though its in a dust storm. On reflection I don't think doing this has created the best effect and I could of made the cannon look much better if I spent more time on the background and shadow to give a better sense of surroundings.

Alien Plants

Moodboards:

First moodboard is of carnivorous plants and the second are fungi, chose these plant groups as I think they look the most alien and are pretty weird.

Sketches:

Studies of some plants from my moodboards

Ideas: First one is like a reverse normal plant the roots being green and more like a normal plant while the actual plant is like roots sprawling, it would live on a planet with no gravity. The second is based on red cage fungus and somewhat a weeping willow, doesn't look very plant like. Third is based off a cobra lily but with a group of them combining into a single plant which makes it look hydra-like.

WIP:

Started off using mudbox but it seemed impossible to make anything so I attempted making it in scupltris and then exporting it.

Rough scupltris model, couldn't get it to import due to problems with the mesh. Going to attempt one of the other designs in Mudbox

Started with a tree trunk and edited it. Tried to make it tree like but ended up making a blobby brainish coral thing.

Sending to Maya and exporting to FBX then opening in Maya didn't work so I had to make do with the default directional lighting in Mudbox.

Looks nothing like a plant and is really awful, hate it. Hopefully it looks alienish at least.

 Made a new model in Sculptris and exported to Maya and then rearranged into a scene, lit and rendered

So, so, so much better than my previous one. Painted over the render, added a gradient for the sky background then used a Photoshop brush to get the background nebula, added some dust to give the impression of a desert-like planet with the plants being cacti based. Used levels to get the right amounts of light, midtones and shadow; hue-saturation, colour balance and a blur filter so one plant was in focus.