like a record player round and round…

and although that’s not how the song goes, that’s what i’ve been up to: heads! photoshop heads, a zbrush head, head sketches… it’s been all about the faces during the weekend. And a lot of research -i’m currently plowing my way through Shadow of a Mouse by Donald Crafton- but I haven’t got as much to show about that…

My life is just not that interesting…..

Like I previously said, here are some of my experiments with dynamesh wax. The rule i’m going by this morning is: spend a maximum of two hours on each model, and then discard and do another one. After I’m done for the day, i’ll go back through and see which ones are worth developing further, and which will just remain as concepts.

Have to say though, this is much more fun than just sketching

Monday mornings are rarely productive. And by that, I mean it takes me ages to get things done. Today was no exception. Even though I had work to do, and a plan to follow, the beginning of the week and just general ‘meeeh’ meant hardly anything got finished, but many sketches and doodles were produced, and which have gone to the pile of stuff of ‘may or may not be developed’

Something good came out of the afternoon, which has opened so many new tangents on the project, which may or may not reduce the ammount of stuff i have to draw, and increase the stuff I model. This would be brilliant, as I am pretty fluent with photoshop, but would love to explore zbrush as a concepting tool. I have seen a few artists on deviantart use it as a concepting tool, and even for life drawing classes! So, following this, i see no reason why I could not use it in a similar way myself -specially considering i can now get a very decent human head on screen in well under ten minutes :)-

My discovery: wax dynamesh.

And how I love it.

During the tutorial we were supposed to model a pillar, but the moment Luis introduced dynamesh I just had to give it a try, and man the results just don’t compare to general zbrush clay. I find it much quicker, much more familiar and I enjoy the colour of it more, which in turn detracts me from trying to find the right colour and material and eventually crashing zbrush with my meddling.

Hopefully i’ll post soon with screenshots of my further experiments with dynamesh

I got bored quite quickly of just sketching -even though it was FUN sketching- and I wanted to attempt something more detailed. Like, character sheets for example.

So, I dug through the many sketches I have compiled so far ( I sketch a lot, but that doesn’t mean i’ll actually develop anything to a finite stage… I just leave them lurking around in a folder and come back to them later) and dug out a very rough one of Damien Dorian, one of the main characters for my project, and even though its not exactly his turn, I decided to have a go at painting him. Becuase, why not? As long as I get all the characters done, it doesn’t really matter in which order I do them.

So that I did.

And four hours later, I found myself with this:

granted, against a white background you cannot appreciate all the details, but its the fact that I managed to get a complete piece just the way I envisioned it in such an ammount of time.

He now needs details on the clothes and all his information, but asides from that it’s pretty much there.

The weekend was research, yet again, but as a relaxing exercise I decided to tackle Aras bleu, another character who was giving me quite a bit of trouble. And so far… he looks pretty good! and just like with Damien Dorian, he is looking like I envisioned him. 

Here is a screenshot of my current progress, and with it I say goodbye until I finish the drawing!

Having started on the 30th of September, today 7th marks the one week of uni! And, first week over, i’m surprised both at the ammount of work done and at how little it actually seems to be…

First days have been spent mainly writing the characters up and any essential information I deem valuable in the journal (lovely brown notebook I am really enjoying) and just concepting and getting the feel for the characters and style.

WHICH MEANS that even though I have produced drawings I am very proud of, not all are exactly useful. It has taken me a long time to get the look of only two of the characters right, and there’s still a few to go. But with these two out already in a week, I am confident I can get at least half way through by next week.

Asides from that, it’s been research what i’ve been up to. Reading some papers, making notes on them, and practicing zbrush.