Friday, October 8, 2010

MOAR

More progress on Shred head. Probably won't make next Wednesdays midnight deadline, but I'm sure going to try. I just have tons more to do and many more technical issues I am inevitably expecting. But he will be finished. If you're wondering why only one shoulder pad is textured, it's because of a technical issue with the duplication of it(as aforementioned). But if you can visually block it out, great. All will be well in the end, and that's all I'm worried about. Enjoy!










Tuesday, October 5, 2010

More Shredder

Alright, started the REAL texturing process.. here is a first pass on the face and underlying body. Still can't seem to get the skin quite how I want it, but I'm trying to rush and figure it out before the deadline on the 14th... so anyway, here is what I have so far.

*The eyebrows and hair will be done in post in Photoshop, since it is difficult to get fine details like hair in Zbrush with my current system specs*




And a quick armor overlay to put it in perspective. In the end, the underlying structure won't be as prevalent obviously, so I'm trying not to worry too much about it...






Saturday, October 2, 2010

Colors, colors...

Alright, been brainstorming a bit... now I'm not very inclined to color theory unfortunately, so I have come to ask for your help brothers...

Here is a few sample shots of the color palette I am going for. My intentions all along were to have a maroon-ish armor base color, with gold trim and detail within the ornate pieces, such as the logos and bordering. I like the armor base color personally, but where I'm stuck is the cape and the underlying body color. For the cape, I initially wanted to go with the traditional purple(since that was sort of Shredders staple in the cartoons).. but after applying it, I can't help but think that it doesn't contrast the maroon very well at all. I tried several shades and opacity settings, but did not get anything worth much.

And the underlying color, although it is black(black is supposed to contrast everything, right? lol), doesn't seem like it fits either.

I am very unsure about this whole color scheme, though I am pretty much dead set on keeping the maroon base for the armor. So I ask, what are your suggestions for some colors that would contrast it well?

*Remember, this is flat, base colors on the model. No detail whatsoever yet, I am just trying to put a palette together to build from**

Here are some shots.






Thursday, September 30, 2010

100 followers, yayyyyyy

Kinda makes me feel like my art is worth a shit. lol

Thanks guise.





Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Yay, back on track

Alright, spent the last 3 days rebuilding what I had lost, and 6 backups later(learned my lesson), I have come to the finished sculpt! Here it is in all it's glory...






Unfortunately, my computer is a piece of crap, so all of these sub-tools(that's what we call them when using Zbrush kids), are not set at their highest subdivision(again, lingo). Which pretty much means that it is not at it's highest resolution.. because if it was(it's over 50 million polygons), simply put, my computer would explode.

Um, other things... like the swords. They are super low poly because they are just placeholders...

Moving on to laying down a color scheme next. Got 2 weeks to finish, so I'm going to have to hammer down. Hope you enjoyed. Thanks guise.

Friday, September 24, 2010

:(

As I reiterated in a comment on my most recent post, unfortunately, a power outage last night caused me to lose about a week and a half of work.. I had literally just finished the sculpt, saved it.. but with the file still open, literally a minute after I saved it, the power went out(like a flash outage or something, it came right back on)... and since the file was still open when the computer shut off, it got corrupted, and I can't open the file anymore. My last backup was saved on 9/13, so I am going to have to work back up from that(which is a lot), and recreate everything from memory.. but as they say, now you can make it better than it was before! And I'm already throwing around some ideas to do just that. So I appreciate the support, and I will pretty much be busting ass all weekend to get back up to speed, but sorry there won't be an update for a while. :(

Considering the deadline was extended by a week(awesome), that makes the official deadline for Shred head 10/10. So you will definitely see a final product here real soon!

Thanks guise








Monday, September 13, 2010

Alright, back on topic...

Now that I've actually got something to show, I'll get back in the swing of things...

Oroku Saki/Shredder Update!

Just finished up the shoulder pads and chest armor, plus the belt sash thingy on his waist. It took me a long time to settle on this design, but I'm mostly happy with it, although I still feel there is something missing.. probably the over-analytical nature of myself acting up.. but nonetheless, here it is thus far!


Enjoy, I will be busy for the next two days, but I will be posting an update early Thursday hopefully!

Sunday, September 12, 2010

COMPLETELY Off topic...

Alright, honestly, I have done a little work on Oruku Saki/Shredder, but nothing significant enough of a worthy update just yet.. still arguing with myself over armor designs, pulling my hair out, etc... SO, on a completely off topic post, I'm going to do something completely different just for this ONE post.

I'm going to review a CD. Yup. Deal with it. lol


Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns

Alright, I've been a LP fan for as long as I can remember.. they pretty much took their place at the top of my favorite bands list after first hearing "Hybrid Theory" as a teenager. Fast forward 10 years and here they are releasing their fourth studio album "A Thousand Suns". Now, unless you've completely been under a rock for the last 3 years, or just plain don't like LP, you would know that they've since changed their sound for their latter two releases, namely their last LP(Pun intended) "Minutes to Midnight". Here's the thing... yes, I'm an LP mark, I have been since first hearing them... I liked Minutes to Midnight. I liked it a lot. I was all of an advocate for supporting them wanting to change their sound up a bit.. explore broader horizons. All bias aside, I listened diligently to that album, and really got into it, despite it being a complete departure from everything they had done previously. I did miss the face that Mike didn't rap but on 1 song.. as I believe him to be one of the most talented musicians on the scene still... but I liked the rock/melodic vibe they had going.

Well, the majority of fans echoed something completely different. The old adage "If it isn't broke, don't fix it". I can understand this. The "old" LP were groundbreaking, high energy... an incredible group. People liked that. So it was natural that they hated when the change came. It's fine, it makes sense.. but still I stood behind LP, and urged people to give Minutes to Midnight a fair chance.. most of the songs on it were very well written, Chesters voice was the best it had ever been, and Mike.. well, he was singing too.

Alright, with that aside.. here we are at "A Thousand Suns". The title sounds epic. The band claim this is their most ambitious effort to date. It has to be great, right?!

 I guess not.

I was severely disappointed with this album.. for so many reasons. To start, after finishing listening to it(I listened through the whole thing in one sitting), it immediately felt like a dumbed down version of Minutes to Midnight. Same type of sounds, but dumber. Like Mike and Joe went on a synth frenzy, and dug up every fake beep and boop and buzz they could find. The songs hardly had any structure to them at all. Oh, by the way, the album is 47 minutes the whole way through.. decent, I guess.. but cut off about 10 minutes of that, because that 10 minutes was spent on synthy transitions between songs and the like. I don't really know what was going on here. I think it was far too poppy, and not very well put together at all.

Coincidentally, the only 3 songs I like on the album are the only 3 singles they released thus far. I'll give my vote for best song to the second single released, entitled "Wretches and Kings". I loved this song. It WAS old LP, with a fresh twist. Gritty, heavy beat, great lyrics, everything an LP song should be. After hearing this, I had high hopes for the rest of the album, which went unsatisfied unfortunately. I'll give honorable mention to the other 2 singles, entitled "The Catalyst" and "Waiting for the End", respectively. The former, I had initially not liked at all. I didn't care for the techno feel like most. But it grew on me, and made me feel like when I was singing it, that I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs and be passionate.. because Mike's singing/rapping in it are so full of conviction... the latter however, I heard recently. At first, didn't care for the key of the song at all. It was a little all over the place. But again, it grew on me. It has a very similar beat to another one of Rick Rubin(who produced the record)s proteges songs, namely Jay Z's "99 Problems". Just listen to it, you'll hear it.

Nonetheless, LP, I am disappointed. I hope you redeem yourselves, fire Rick Rubin and your record company(which I believe still is Warner Bros.), and get back on track. Revolutionizing your music is great, but you have striven too far from your territorial sound. Give the fans what they want.. they are the reason you're still here anyway.

Alright then. Have a good Sunday peoples, I will have Shredder updates ASAP! Promise. Laterzz.



Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Oroku Saki/Shredder Update

ALRIGHTY THEN...

Had a bit of artists block yesterday and the day before.. been arguing with myself over armor designs and what not.. so here I am, back with an update.. albeit a small one.

Been working on the helmet a bit. I only have it at around 3mil polys right now, so when I get closer to the finish, I'll subD that b**** and work in all those details around the ropes that are missing right now, and tighten up the design a little.. but here is what I have so far..


Oroku Saki/Shredder

This is my in progress entry for the Comicon contest over at GameArtisans.Org. Here is the base mesh I will be using, and also a couple renders of the underlying sculpt at it's current state. I'm puttin' all my heart and soul into this one, so I hope everyone likes it! Thanks for the follows everyone, you know I'm here for ya!

Monday, September 6, 2010

In response...

...to livingwithcolitis post asking if I used Maya for my Deadpool model - here is an easy way for me to answer.. one of my tattoos lol

Deadpool

And here is Captain Badassery in all his glory - my model of Deadpool.

Again, this is an old piece, so the quality is "meh".. but I was still happy enough to use this as my banner, so here it is! I'm gonna try to update the overall quality of the blog for the rest of the day and work on my Comicon entry, so this is it for now! I'll be back later with my Comicon entry updates!

Lustful Anne *NSFW*

This was my entry for this years Dominance War 4.5 - "Dreams and Nightmares" contest. This contest preempted DWV because it was pushed back to 2011. I didn't finish this in time for the deadline because I moved to Florida, so I lost a lot of time, but just recently finished it. This was inspired heavily by Clive Barkers "Tortured Souls" line of work. Hope you like. Thanks!

Azathoth

This was my entry for Dominance War IV last year. DWIV is also an annual contest that runs between around 10 different art forums. This was done before Axel, so it is not as good, but I am not posting in any kind of order, so here it is!

Old work

So to get started, I suppose I'll post some of my older works. I'll start with the beauty renders of all of them, then over the next few posts, put up the wires and sculpts. I'll start with one of my better pieces, Axel from the Twisted Metal series of games. I wanted to do an updated version of him using current game specs, considering the last available full console release was Twisted Metal Black.. and that was a while ago. So here is my take on him. **Please ignore the RichRichArt.Com tag, these were originally for my website.**