Blog Archives
Game Portfolio 3 Final Turn In
Rhinoceros Anatomy Study
Well I am done with finals!!! GPF3 ended last month and this was my final turn in for the month. I learned soon much over the course of these past 3 months in finals. I believe it shows in my final piece here. I can see the progression and I know that I didn’t make the same mistakes on this one that I did on the first. I just love this learning process and can’t wait to do more of these.
Just a few of the references I used to help create my final sculpt. When you look at a rhino you just think they all look the same. They are so far from the same. as you really study each image of each different rhino, you start to see all the differences. The fun of this piece was I was sculpting based on about 10 to 12 different rhinos so I was able to incorporate different things I liked about each one into one final rhinoceros. Much different then doing a sculpt of a specific female or male model. I enjoyed the artistic liberty I was able to take.
As of right now, only 1 month and 1 week left of college, I can not believe how fast things have gone and how amazing it is to look back on this blog and see some of the work I did in the beginning and compare it to now. I sure have grown as an artist and I am truly a 3D artist now. I will continue to grow and I can not wait to be in the industry soon and be able to look back on this piece and feel like I am even better than I think I am now.
Game Portfolio 2 Final Turn In
Female Anatomy Study
This is my final turn in for GPF2 Female Anatomy study. I feel I have improved a lot as a character artist and improved over last months male study. I had a lot of fun working on her all month and improving her look. I took my female from 3 months ago and re-sculpted her to look more like the reference and added a lot of detail. Re-topology went a lot better this month and I did it all by hand.My Substance Painter skills improved a lot and I feel like I did very well trying to replicate skin.
Here is my full months worth of turn ins. From first weeks final detailed sculpt to the final turn in. This shows the progression of my work over the course of the month. I am looking forward to being able to work on some new models on my own time where I can spend as much time as I want on things to really perfect my craft.
Game Portfolio 1 Final Turn In
Male Anatomy Study
This was my final turn in for my very first full character for Game Portfolio 1 class. We were tasked at completing our 80% done characters from previous month to 100%. As you can see from the first post, to now this post, I have put a lot of work into this guy. I learned a lot in this class and it feels like this was a true test of everything I have learned over the past few years.
I used ZBrush 4R7 to sculpt at around 8 million Polys, then Maya 2016 for retopology down to around 50k Polys. For color, I used Substance Painter and then Marmoset for the final render. I am finding it very fun to use so many different programs to come up with one final result. I received a B+ for my final grade and of course I would have preferred an A, but I understand that this is “Finals” It has gotten very serious when it comes to grades and critiques.
This is my model that I used for 3d.sk for this months male anatomy. I feel like i know this guy, I have stared at him for so long. haha
Block Out Month 3 for Game Technologies
Block Out – Month 3
Here is my final blackout for this month. I choose to do a Rhino and I am very excited about the way he has turned out. I can not wait to give this guy some detail. It was taking everything I had to only work on his shape and not start putting all those wrinkles and creases in where I was seeing them. I had a lot of fun working on him and had a few challenges which helped me learn other aspects of ZBrush. I choose a different background this time to go with an african sunset theme which helps him pop out. I am happy this class is over but it really doesn’t feel like it is, because up next is FINALS and I will be working on all the things I worked on this month over the next 3 months. Wish me luck!
Block Out Month 2 for Game Technologies
Block Out – Month 2
So my last weeks project of the male didn’t get nearly as good as a grade as I thought it would. Lets hope this one will do much better. *wink *wink I put a lot of hours into this one, more so this time with the body proportions then the detail. This is still just a block out, so I will be revising her in month two of finals. But I am very proud of how she has turned out. I feel confident that this time around the teacher will see the work I put into her. Next up… A RHINO!!
Block Out Month1 for Game Technologies
Block Out – Month 1
Here is my first blackout for this month. As you might remember from my previous post, I choose a Male character to get to around 80% done, just for the Block Out. Once I enter finals next month I will work all month on completing this guy and refining him to perfection. I had fun working on this guy and had many different versions. There is still a LOT of work that needs to be done but I feel that I got a good amount done for the Block Out. I will look forward to working more on him next month, but now it is on to the Female for next week.
Reference Blog Post for Game Technologies Class
This month I will be posting a blog post for each week as part of my class assignments. Good thing I already had a blog up and running huh? Full Sail is starting to “force” students to make them start using a blog and some classes, this is a requirement. I like to think my blog is part of the reason they are doing this 😉. I am not sure why most students are so against this too. They moan and groan when the teachers mention blog posts. I personally think it is great to have this blog for my personal use and so others can see what I am doing in school. I also feel it will be a great asset for securing a job in the industry after I am done.
This month will be sort of an introduction to finals. I will be tasked to model three different characters. A human male body to 80% done, a female body to 80% done, and the third I get to choose. I choose to do a Rhino as they are one of my favorite animals. The first blog post will be just of the reference I have gathered and then each week after will be one of the characters modeled. I am looking forward to working in ZBrush again and honing my skills.
Male Reference
All Images used from www.3d.sk
Female Reference
All Images used from www.3d.sk
White Rhino Reference
All images found on Bing
I will see you next week with the Male Human Body done to 80% and look forward to hearing some critiques on my work.
Bill Baxley the Bounty Hunter – Advanced Game Character – AGC 1508 – ZBrush Sculpt
Bill Baxley the Bounty Hunter
Hey everyone, Sorry it has been a while since I made a post, that will tell you how busy and serious my classes have been these last few months. But, I wanted to make sure I get this one posted because I am very proud of this one. This past month I had Advanced Game Characters AGC and our assignment was to create a character from scratch. We had to come up with a design of a character that we wanted to make and it was amazing to see how the design process can change from day-to-day. I originally wanted to do a Robot but once I got into ZBrush, this guy kinda just emerged from my digital clay. I really feel like I might have found my calling here with this one. I have been at Full Sail now for a little over 2 years and I have enjoyed almost every single class, but I have not gotten as excited about a class as I did this one. I am thinking this might be my focus, Character Design and working in ZBrush.
After the class was over and I turned in my final I decided to make a 360º Video so everyone can see the detail from front to back. I also wanted to show a few different views, some with Wireframe to show the layout, to without the mask so you can see the detail I put into his mouth and nose that you don’t see in the Main image.
Click for High Res
Please watch in Full HD and turn on Sound
Please feel free to comment below and let me know what you think. Even though the class is over I would love to hear different critiques and Ideas of what YOU think might have made him better. This is a learning process and part of that process is getting feedback from people. I would love to know what it is like to see my character with fresh eyes. Because I have looked at him for a month now and watched him morph into what he became its hard for me to see him and appreciate him to the full extent.
Catching you back up to Speed – Some past few months of Projects and Grades.
Character Creation and Design
CDC was a pretty fun yet challenging class. It was our first real run at Zbrush. I feel pretty proud of my grades even though it wasn’t an A+ I learned a LOT about Brush and all 1 million of its buttons.
This was my final project. We had to create a detailed arm in Brush and then bring it over to Maya to re-topologize it and create a Low res arm and then place the maps of the high res arm on to the low res. Not to bad for my first run at a fully detailed arm.
Compositing Fundamentals
Compositing was an awesome class. We got to make movies! Well, kinda, just little 3 to 8 second movies. But we were doing exactly what the industry professionals do and we got to get our hands on Nuke.
My Bike was the star of my final project and I came up with the idea to put my bike in scenes that I think would be fun to ride in. It was a bit more than just plugging in my bike, we had to tweak so many options to try to make it look like it belonged in the scene. Once again another program with another million buttons to learn.
2D Animation
2D Animation was fun. Lots of drawing which really helped me get back to my roots of art. Drawing the same thing over and over many times can be a challenge even if it is a simple ball. You really have to make sure you get it as close to perfect as you can when you are doing animation because even the slightest difference in size or shape can throw a whole animation off.
Here are a few of my 2D Animations that I made into Gifs so you can view them. Please click on them so you can view in full size.
Production Modeling
Production Modeling is a class I really got into on certain projects. This class we really got to dive deep into Brush which is my favorite program so far. Even though we still have our fights, I usually win. I got to do lots of “Speed Sculpts” where we had 25 minutes to try to recreate something. It was amazing to see the different from the beginning of the class to the end in only 1 short month. I feel I really improved on my skills and plan to continue to play in Brush and become great at it.
Here is a bunch of my work in PRM but my Halo Energy Sword is what I am most proud of.
Here are a bunch of the things I made in this months class.
So there you have it. It has been a busy past few months, but I am glad that I can show you why I have been a little more quiet these past few months on here. I plan on making sure I keep everyone up to date more often and maybe even adding some other older work later. Currently I am in Animation Fundamentals, which is taking what we learned in 2D animation in traditional art and applying it to 3D animation on the computer in Maya. It is much more fun as I am not having to draw the same thing over and over and over and over… My next post will be about that. Hope you enjoyed seeing what I have been up to and PLEASE feel free to share any feedback in the comment section below. I love hearing from you guys and also would love and critiques on any of my work.
Week 3 Update of MCR – Time to Start the Final
Week 3 of MCR was a pretty fun one! We got to be the Guinea Pigs for ZBrush. I was more than happy to get to ZBrush, as I have been playing around with it on my own getting myself familiar with the software, that way when it came to this day, I would be ready. Thank God I did, because they sure do not go slow in this class. We learned how to Make a basic pillow shape in Maya, transfer it over to ZBrush, Sculpt in some very high details, then bring it back over to Maya. Once back in Maya, we learned how to create a BumpMap of the high detail geometry and place it onto the low res geometry. It is a trick of the trade for items that need to look great but need to be low res Poly count.
Also I am very happy to tell you that I have received 100% A+’s on all three weeks of assignments. Also by getting them turned in on the “Soft Deadline” I get some extra credit points towards my final project. I hope I won’t need it, but I am proud of myself for getting things done ahead of the actual due date.
I have already started working on my final and will be very excited to post next week when I am done and show you. For now, this is what you will see come next week, but fully modeled in Maya.
Yes… Every single piece in this scene, I will have modeled in full glorious detail. My goal is to get this up on the wall!
Wish me Luck!
My Full Sail Journey.com 