Figure Drawing

Some more practice I could probably use. Just been trying to focus on the basics lately, draw as much as I can. I don't see much improvement but i think the reason for that is I might be thinking a little too much about it. Also been attending some life drawing classes at work - i don't know what it is about the environment, maybe the media, or maybe the fact I'm standing up but nothing i do in life drawing i'm ever satisfied with. Anyway, here's some of my latest doodles.

Character Props

Just some glamour shots of the props I created for my characters. In my actual demo reel, the props were alot more simple with only a texture map assigned to their shaders. Afterwards, I went back and added some bump maps to help them stand out on their own.

Concept Art

Done as a concept pieces for Junk Racers, a from-scratch game we made using Maya and the UT2004 editor. Took a good few hours to complete each piece, but I'm happy with how they turned out overall (except the city, which could use a hella more work). My only problem with the junkyard at this point is the lighting - incrediby dark that it mutes all the fine detail work I put into the garbage piles. Works wonders for making posters though. This was made with image sourcing from garbage piles, cranes, various machinery and hand painting to make everything uniform with each other, and the lighting.

The Bedroom

This project was pretty much a statement to myself that said "damn it, you can do environments too!" It was started before the Wild West scene and the original plan was to just fill the simple room with a ton of different props and arranging them so that the space looked lived in. I ended up filing the table with some props but it can definitely look a little bit more full. Also the lighting takes away alot of the detail i've put into the props, which is a major minus in points. Also decided to throw in the skater just to show the room's actually being used, lol. it's a little hard to see right now but the television is in the pause screen (one that I designed for the purposes of becoming an interface artist) for a fictional video game I created using screens of two different games.

Couple of Photoshop Drawings

Digital Photoshop art. Nothing fantastic, just some practice in b/w portraiture, facial anatomy and lighting.

Wild West Environment

One of my more complete environments - i actually have less than a handful to show off because i don't think i'm much of an environment guy. On the other hand, I love doing props. Weird, i know, but very true.

A fellow graduate from AI actually inspired me to do a western type scene so this is my attempt at it. there are alot of things that can be improved on (especially for it to look next-gen) but I think overall it looks okay. As with all my 3D work, good lighting is something that continues to elude me. I think I've nailed something that works here, but any tips I can get on making the lighting better - or anything in general to improve this scene - is welcomed.

This scene is currently unfinished and will most likely stay that way. It was just an exercise to keep in touch with my prop modeling skills. I've been working on characters more often that I got worried i was losing touch with basic prop modeling. Judging by the feedback I've gotten from websites I post on, I'm doing a good job keeping up with the art of props for sure. Props, environments, characters, so much to keep up with and only one of me, lol.

Lokar: The Heretic Knight

Ah yes, good ol' Lokar, my most MOST hated character. He was supposed to be a "barbarian" in the Nordic sense of the word, so I gathered up a bunch of pictures of barbarians, took a good study of them and drew up some basic body templates to start modeling off of. Here's where things start getting weird - the concept drawings I did of him earlier showed him as more of large warrior donning layered samurai type armor. Where I got that from i have no idea, but it bore a resemblence to Shao Khan from Mortal Kombat. So even after having studied the reference barbarian pictures thoroughly, for some reason I when I modeled him, he came out looking like this. I guess part of my subconscious liked him better looking like as initially designed.

Another reason he's my most hated character - his armor went through 3 different textures. The first, as seen on the props at his feet, didn't fly so well as they didn't make much sense as far as the damage was concerned. The second texture had more detail as the texture map was twice the size, but it still looked a little to neutral, gray, metallic and dull. The third, I combined the detail of the second with the colour scheme of the first, and it seemed to work in my favor the most. He was also supposed to have a chainmail cape that was nclothed, but due to time constraints, those had to be left out.

And the hardest aspect of creating this character? Skin texturing. In fact I think it was during this stage in my workflow that I actually fell sick with the fever for an entire week. It's hard to find the right kind of skin texture combined with handpainting to get that real skin look. Now that I actually have knowledge about the SSS shader, I realize all that could have been avoided if only I knew about the shader then. However, it was definitely a great learning experience. At least now I know I can sort of handpaint skin textures, lol.

Because i worked so long and hard on this character (oh the UV's took for fucking ever because of his props), and the fact that he is my weakest character just because I didn't have him planned out properly from the start, is why i hate him the most. Everyone agrees he is my weakest character except for the HR ladies at school who advised me to put him first on my reel to show I'm capable of making a default character. I guess that's why they're HR specialists, not artists, cause all the artist I've spoken to agree that he's my weakest. One of them at EA even says I might want to consider removing him from my demo reel entirely, lol. whatever, he'll stay on for now until I create someone better to replace him with.

Hell, even the name Lokar are pulled from my ass after remembering one of the villains from Power Rangers i used to watch as a kid.

Belza: The Step-Sister

Haha, this character was actually inspired by a humor book, believe it or not. I got the inspiration during one of my shifts when I was working at Chapters. I was putting some books away and came across this one book called "Evil Nuns". It consisted of photography of nuns coincidentally captured at moments that made them look especially evil. That was when I knew I had to do some kind of posessed nun as the second character to my demo reel.

I had a talk with Jason, the guy who was going to pass me for my portfolio class and he suggested writing up a biography for eachof my characters so they would seem that much more real to me. Somewhere along the line, the evil nun turned into a zombie nun and I was more than fine with that, having been a long time Resident Evil fan.

Like the skater, the nun has also been through two iterations - the first one being an unsuccesful model based on everyone's favourite reference model, Anita. There was something about the proportions that weren't reading right, same deal with the meshflow, so I also decided to start this one again from scratch, this time however, starting off with my own drawings as what I wanted her to look like, not what Anita deemed she should look like. Plus, Anita was a good looking model, useless from the scary, ugly zombie creature I wanted to create.

One surprising thing while making this character though - the base textures were done in 1 night. I spent a few hours after the fact tweaking her, but they were pretty much done in that one sitting. A noteworthy moment, after slapping the textures together for the face, I wanted to see what they ended up looking like on the model. So I zoomed up onto the face in Maya, applied the texture and BOOM this huge zombie face appears right in front of me, actually made me jump, lol. Not saying the texture was that great or anything, it was just a little scary, haha.

Kenny: The Skater Kid

The first character of my graduation reel from the Art Institute of Vancouver. Initial inspiration was from graffitti/pop-art/vector style art and the EA video game Skate. The character started out as a roller blader, based on a piece of vector art I saw that really struck a chord with me. It was of a cel-shaded rollerblader sitting with his head down leaning against an invisible wall with his arms on his knees. There was something about the mood, the illustration style that made me want to create something similar.

The first model wasn't anything I was proud of. The character was still a rollerblader at that point and something about him felt very static, along with the realistic proportions. A friend from school pointed out that the only cartoony aspect of the piece was the round looking boot of the blade, and the rest of the character failed to capture anything interesting personality. I showed the model to another friend, who commented on the modeling and the overall character. The jist of the feedback I got was "It's alright, nothing impressive."

I don't know what came over me, but I decided that with an extra semester left, I was going to remodel the character from scratch, this time using 100% my own material. So the head templates were drawn up in one night and the body another night, and finally I was ready to start modeling him. I had the concept down solid in my head by the time I started modeling this new version of the skater kid, what we see here. And everything flowed so quickly - I knew exactly what I wanted, I could see him in my head, and I just started modeling away and didn't stop.

The most time consuming aspect about working on this character was probably the texturing. At first, I wanted to go with a completely toon shaded look complete with black outlines. Then I changed my mind and wanted to keep the outlines with the realistic textures. Only problem is when I created the toon outline, the polycount went through the roof. So at the end of it all, I settled with realistic textures on a somewhat cartoony proportioned body.