What I think a tiger shark would look like if it continued to evolve. Mudbox. Done half heartedly while watching monday night football.

WIP of a the depraved demon character Ive been working on. Im still in the process of posing him and I will be adding more props, chains, some clothing etc once Im done. Getting close to final render.

Uncle Creepy Dynamesh sketch

Just before Halloween I started this Uncle Creepy sketch done with the new Zbrush dynamesh system. Most of this is done from one single sphere. Very cool way to sculpt. Most likely a WIP forever.

Soul Reaper Scythe

This is the Soul Reaper. The weapon of the depraved demon. I built the base mesh in Maya, did UV work in headus and sculpted in mudbox. Painting in mudbox and photoshop. Im currently putting it together in maya with normals, and displacement and all that fun stuff. I will post that as soon as I am finished.

Here is the lo-rez base mesh I built for the depraved creature. I made him a little higher polycount to start so I would not have to subdivide him so many times in Mudbox to get to the detail I wanted for him.

Got alot going on at the moment now that I have moved to Texas. I will try to post more WIP stuff everyweek to show what Im working on.

depraved color

Im close to finishing this guys sculpt. Need to add some chains, and a few props. Started his base coat. Its not fleshy enough just yet, I still have a ways to go. But this is another WIP that got strangled by the move. This guy is priority to finish once I get up and running in Texas.

Water buffalo

A WIP of something I started after I got laid off. Now with the move in full swing I have no time to work on him. He has a lot more armor and props built in Maya i just didnt bring them all into mudbox just yet.

aliens falling from skies on cowboys

Ive been watching Falling Skies on TNT and I also saw Cowboys and Aliens this weekend as well.

Ive had aliens on the brain so I took a hour break to sketch this guy out real quick like in Mudbox. I just wanted to get the alien menace out of my skull, so in an effort to purge the images in my head I made my own version of some kind of gray, with a weird neck for some reason.

Depraved WIP

Here is an update on the depraved demon. I finally built him as a zsphere model, and did some basic forming in Zbrush. Once I got a shape I liked I retopolgized him in Topogun. Took him into Mudbox and started sculpting. Accessories are built in Maya. Close to finishing the sculpt then onto painting him.

hard surface sci fi helmet

Here is an attempt to do hard surfaces in mudbox. All I had in mind was to do a odd shaped helmet and this is what I came out with. Zbrush is still the king compared to mudbox in this area, but it was fun to get in there and try to make hard surfaces without all the fancy tools of zbrush.

I think I'm going to take this into topogun and retopologize the individual armor pieces and make it all nice and cool in Maya. After that I will probably finish an entire suit of armor in the same fashion.

Muddy 2012 Old Guy

Well I finally got the new computer up and running. Got my software, backed-up files and all my fun stuff back in place. Work, for me at least, has slowed down and Im not so exhausted anymore when I get home, so I was able to start sculpting again.



Trying out the newest version of mudbox. Did a bunch of sculpts that will never see the light of day as I tried and tested the newest version. Not alot of new features that are amazing or anything, but the way it sculpts and how it handles files is greatly improved from what I can tell.



Here is the first sculpt I did in Mudbox in a long time. I spent a couple hours total on this guy. Quick sculpt and a quick paint. Still A WIP as I want to finish his painting and there are a few things to work on in the sculpt.

lack of posts

Sorry for the lack of posts. Ive been super busy at work and personal life has been busy as well. Being a Dad can consume a whole weekend in a blink of an eye.

beside sthat Ive been having major computer problems. Trying to solve them has eaten away at my art time. Now the debate is wether to salvage my computer and try to upgrade what I can or do I need to get a whole new one, which I cannot afford.

Anyway as soon as I have new stuff I will update the blog

K-

Cube head details update

So I got into cube head and started to add some details. Skin pores and some wrinkles, and I fleshed out some areas around the eyes and mouth. I still want to add some more details and then paint him. Last night I spent about an hour painting him and though it looked pretty cool I really didnt feel the color scheme fit him so Im going ot repaint him with a different scheme.

I think although I want to do 100 sculpts, I will still have nights that I drop back to push a speed sculpt a little further and even take several of them to finish. This weekend I plan to redo the Depraved as I have a few sketchesI have done that I'm liking his look more. I want to do a full finished sculpt of him, posed, with weapon and painted.

Sculpts #010 cube head and Bug Eyes sculpt #011

A couple of sculpts from the last few nights. The first one I did last night. I wasnt feeling so well so I spent about an hour on him before I crashed. I may get into him some more and detail him out. Ihave tons of quick sculpts but nothing detailed or painted.

The second I did Monday night. I lost a ton detail when I had to drop back and make UVs for him. I wanted to color him, but i had failed to do the UVs on the base mesh. I dropped back in headus and laid out the UVs. When I brought that mesh into Mudbox to transfer the detail it gave a bunch of strange deformations and a loss of detail that I had to fix. Nothing to crazy on the deformation side but in the process of cleaning him up I lost even more detail. I was quite bummed but its nothing I cant get back if I just sit down again on him for 20 minutes.

Well, lesson learned. Always do UVs on a low level base mesh or just do them before you start sculpting.

depraved demon update

Well heres an update to the depraved character Im working on as well. I cut the legs off, and I need to do some concept work to figure out what I want to do with the legs. I did do a rebuild of him but I really hated the look of the legs. So for now he is cut right in half until I figure it out.
This is going to be a slow project that I work on over the next several weeks.Im also designing an all new weapon that will still have the captured soul elements to it.

The Goon Sculpt #009

Spent about an hour on this. Ive always been a big fan of Eric Powell's The Goon. So I did a quick fan sculpt.

I just wanted to ge the shapes right, but I dont feel all too successful, but Im not terribly upset because I only put an hour into this guy. I wanted to see if I could make the hat and head all out of one piece of geo.

Well, I can, but I probably shouldnt. I think Im going to do this again sometime later and make it two pieces.

I think the profile shapes are right but the translation from 2D to 3D on the side and front didnt come out as well. One of these days soon Im gonna redo this, just ike all the 1000 other things I have that are half finished.

Thin Alien sculpt #008

A quick sculpt I made last night. Started as a quick Mudbox demo for a friend, pulled out some shapes and forms in about 10 minutes. I had no intention of keeping it, but later I liked the way it was going so I put another hour or so into it.

Garthim head #007

Some of the guys at work wanted to do some fan art sculpts of the dark crystal. There were alot of great designs for the film, and probably the best "muppet" movie ever made.
Before I could get in on it several of the characters were already called by other artists, so I settled for the Garthim. Massive hermit crab creatures created as warriors to destroy the Gelflings.
] I remember how big and imposing they were when I first saw the film. I always thought they were so freaking cool. So I decided to do a bust of the Garthim, mostly because I dont want to sculpt all the legs those things have. One cool thing is they have one arm that ends in a crab-like claw and another that ends in two fingered talons.
Well I started with the head. The smallest part of its body. The design on the Henson muppet was pretty simplistic so I added to it a bit to improve the design a bit. I guess in the end this will be more like my take on the garthim rather than true fan art.

100 sculpts

No I have not given up on the 100 sculpts. I have not forgoten either.
I had some major symetry issues in the hands of the depraved charater and Ive been working on a way to solve it. I think what I will have to do is retopologize the character and almost completely restart the sculpt. I have spent nights going back and forth between, Mudbox, Zbrush, Maya and Topogun and nothing seems to work right when I transfer details to the adjusted mesh. So it isnt any wasted time because Ive have learned a hell of alot that last few nights. Unfortunately the solution may be to fix the symetry on a low level version of the model and begin the sculpting process anew. Hopefully I can get through that tonight.

Scythe #006 WIP

experimented last night with my newly created vector displacement maps.
I did a test on the scythe which taught me alot. I need to push the forms of the faces a little bit more before I make them into vector maps. The scythe model is a stand in did in maya. I modeled it quickly and ugly, and I would like to remodel it with better edge flow. But this is the Idea im going for. I also realized I need to make more of a variety of faces.

Faces of reaped souls #005

Well, Friday night I was so exhausted from a long week I crashed fairly early and never even turned my home computers on. Sometimes a body just needs the rest.

Saturday after some beach time with the family I spent the day getting Mudwalker, a plugin for mudbox that allows it to send and recieve models quickly to other programs like Zbrush, headus topogun, maya etc. I had some symetry issues with the depraved sculpts hands. Ive decided that I would like to take that sculpt to full final, with pose, color, the works. So I was using mudwalker to help me use the smartresym option in zbrush. After many hours of testing I think I have a solution to my problem. unfortunately by the time I figure it out I really didnt have time to sculpt.

So on to the faces here. The depraved is going to have a weapon. A massive scythe which I did some quick concept work on and I will post it tommorrow.(I forgot to scan it from my sketch book). This scythe will have the souls of the reaped embedded in the blade, so instead of sculpting them I decided to make a few faces on planes that I can turn into vectors and just stamp them on in the end and touch up the detail.

Anyway I think I need to adjust either the 1st or 2nd one to make it look like a different individual rather than just a different expression. Whats fun about these it that they are quick and easy, and after doing a few ve really started to get a better understanding of sculpting a face out of plane and getting the shapes pulled out correctly.

Sculpt 004 Depraved

So here is the fourth sculpt this week in mudbox. Had a few difficulties trying to figure out the best way to distort proportions on the base mesh. Had some problems with the fingers the most. The joint tool was giving me hell but this is probably the best solution.

I spent about an hour and a half on this depraved creature and I like the direction its going so I will most likely take him to finish and possibly pose him over the weekend.

I probably could have gotten farther but I really need to learn to turn off the idiot box. Its too easy to getting sucked into that damn thing. Especially after a long day of work and I just want my mind to shut down, the TV is perfect to make me temporarily stoopid. But I guess with the Packers (my 2nd team behind the Chargers) being in the super bowl, I will be firmly planted in front of that thing on sunday. Sigh.... Im weak.

Sculpt 003 Alien bust

I had to work on some actual work stuff at home last night. By the time I was finished it was already 10:15. I decided to start a sculpt and see how far I could get. At 11:38 I called it a night and kicked out a few quick renders.

So here is sculpt #003 from last night. Probably around 1 hour and 15 minutes to get this guy done.

I tried to work as effeciently and smart as possible. I just started pulling the Mudbox base head into new shapes and this is what emerged from it. Some Alien dude (or female who knows these days what sex these damn aliens are) with a really funky mouth and head shape. Its alot of fun to start sculpting without a starting Idea and just finding out what kind of crap is floating around in the cess-pool I call my brain.

sculpt 002 of 100 "The Neck"

Ive decided after doing old One Eye, that he was the first of 100 sculpts Im going to try do in 100 days.

So here is number two, done two nights ago. I had a very difficult time with him. I made a quick base mesh in Zbrush out of zspheres and brought it into Mudbox to sculpt.

Mudbox hates zsphere base meshes. I had such a hard time controlling my brushes and getting the mesh to do what I wanted it to. Lesson learned. If I build anymore base meshes in Zbrush I will rtopologize it first. My best guess is that Mudbox just didnt like the way the zspheres lay out the topology, being all funky and strange edge loops. So retopology or just building the base in Maya to begin with are the most likely solutions.

Overall this was a little over two hours and Im very disappointed in the progress due to lack of control. Well learn and move on.

Old One Eye

Wanted to do something a bit more styized than I normally do. I was looking at some Joe Mad art and started to sculpt this guy. 2 hours of work in mudbox. Probably could have pushed the hair areas a little more but i got tired and decided to call it a night.

Another Demon

Done in photoshop during some down time at work.

Most likely a WIP forever.

Screamer

Ive been so busy with work Ive ben neglecting this blog. But i have a ton of stuff to put on it over the next few weeks. In the mean time heres a recent Mudbox sculpt I did.

A 4-5 hour sculpt I did over the weekend. Spent another hour and a half paiting him.