Head: Tribal Look-Dev

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This head was actually sculpted in class a few months ago for fun. Once crits were finished, I decided to connect my iPod to the classroom speakers and have everyone sculpt a head in a couple hours. We then collectively picked the 'winner' and he got something from the Gnomon store (congratz Josh Herman with your pig dude! Heh... who is now working at Legacy Effects btw). Anyhow, I participated too and this sculpt has been sitting on my drive for months... so this weekend I decided to have some fun with it and do some look-dev in Photoshop.

3D Creature Development

This video shows my progress developing a creature from design to animation in seven days. Created for a Gnomon master class that stopped at look-development, I continued to develop the creature for a new Gnomon Workshop training series that is coming soon. But for now, this video is an entertaining glimpse at the kind of work that I do.

New section: Development.

Well, I had an animation section that stayed empty for way too long, so I decided to swap it with something new this weekend! As I create new work, I can now use this section to provide very brief overviews of how they were put together. Jester, Smile, Draeke, Guardian and some Look-Dev are discussed, as well as a new video that crams a week of work into 10 minutes. I've got a new 3D Creature Development 'master class' coming out soon that has 25 hours, eight DVDs, a 176 page book as well as sixty-six HD 1080p clips for students to use in their projects. But until then, this video provides a glimpse of what I do in the class (and editing 25hours down to 10minutes sure took awhile! heh). Hopefully this year I can keep this section updated with new stuff, assuming Gnomon allows me the time to!  -Alex

The Making of 'Draeke'

In this very brief overview, I discuss how this image came together, starting as a spontaneous Zbrush sculpt that gradually evolved into a finished narrative illustration. Without getting technical, I show progress images that emphasize that while I usually start with a concept, sometimes it is fun to figure things out along the way.

Modeling/Sculpting the 'Guardian' Insectoid

While making my image 'Guardian', I only recorded this small portion as I was working on one of the insects. This is extremely time-lapsed down to just six minutes, so expect to get a little dizzy as you watch me model, layout UVs and sculpt in Zbrush. Hopefully the music helps you keep up!

Creature Head Texture Look-Development

These images were created during my 2008 Gnomon Master Class. They Illustrate how Photoshop can be used to quickly explore the possible looks for a model, both in texture and surface properties. There are an infinite variety of ways that a character could look and before beginning 3D texturing, it is best to explore those options to find the most suitable look for the project. These examples are created in about twenty minutes each using a layered Photoshop document that has rendered passes from Maya for diffuse, cavity, spec and reflection. Once I settle on a direction, I can then use this file as a road map for what I will need to do using BodyPaint, Photoshop and Maya.

3D Illustration: Smile

This image was created quickly, in an evening, and is based on a pencil sketch that I had sitting around. It is generally faster to work from a concept, as exploring ideas in 3D can easily take up a lot of time, even though it is fun. As I had no intention of animating the character, I created a very rough box-modeled base-mesh in Maya, meaning that it has an unorganized topology, that was exported to Zbrush for sculpting. The sculpt is then rendered in Maya/Mental Ray using a Subsurface Scattering Shader (SSS), which is rendered as a series of passes. The passes are then combined in Photoshop, which is used to create the final image with techniques identical to my look-development procedure..

Jester

Jester is based on a series of sketches I did back in 2001 when Gnomon was commissioned to design and produce the SIGGRAPH stage demo content for Alias|Wavefront Maya V3. The project was called 'Zufuhr' and took place in a fantasy incubation factory. Jester is meant to be a plaything for the children. I didn't get to develop this guy then, but a couple years ago I finally got around to it. The final image has no post-processing, except for the 2D smoke added behind him. I chose to develop him in 3D, after doing some 2D look-dev, for the purpose of creating a DVD on character modeling, texturing and shading. Therefore this guy just needs to be rigged and he's ready to animate, which hopefully I'll get around to one day! Click here for a high-res image of the above progress stills. The high-res version of the final image is in the 3D Artwork section.