Art Tests Ep. 1

I have been looking for a job for a while now and most required an art test- which I will probably never put up on my portfolio site... but it will give you an idea of the standards they require. Two of these were for junior positions.

Mind Candy

I started working on this, and then suddenly the positon was taken away- not filled, just... disappeared. :(

King

I was very proud of this one, it got me into the interview, and even now I claim to have been accepted to a second. But no matter how many times I called they wouldn't give me a straight answer... not even a rejection, haha.

MiniClip

This is actually on my portfolio for a lack of similar type of vector art. Unfortunately I didn't fit the bill. But I guess my 2D work is lacking in comparison.

Sculpt Study of David's Head WIP02

I know the lighting sucks... :(

Sculpt study of David WIP01

Joined a cool face study with some polycounters on G+, directed by +Joseph March :)
We're doing these bit by bit every session, progress can be found on this polycount thread.

Here's my first progress shot of David's head. More to come soon!

Victorian Bedroom- Further Progress

Took my bedroom scene from UDK and placed in Maya 2012, rendering with viewport 2.0. Lighting is SO. MUCH. BETTERRR.

A New Roof (WIP)

I've been trying something new with zbrush, making tilable textures and trying to reuse uv space. Overlapping UVs yes. Since I was actually taught not to do that >_>...

Quick Victorian Window concept

Victorian Bed Diffuse/Spec WIP

There really wasn't much to do in terms of the Diffuse Texture or Spec. A lot of the work was done from the normals and AO, even the SPEC brought it to life. All that's left is the aging process. Thought I'd post it looking brand new... also maybe a different bed cover, that looks quite boring!

Bed Normal/Ambient Occlusion maps baked

EDIT: I improved the shape, polycount and everything, also was too dull to realise marmoset wasn't using the AO. Hurp Derp. You can see the difference by comparing them:

---OLD--

Finally, I thought I'd never get this done. I spent a good few hours trying to bake the maps. Xnormal proved to be much faster, but for a few bits like the drapery, it didn't seem to recognize which side it was meant to bake. So then I had to open up Maya and painstakingly wait for the viewer to actually catch up. Anyhow, the diffuse is coming soon, I'm thrilled to have this complete.

Bed WIP

Been working on this for a little while, it doesn't help that I had trouble with baking parts of the map. I decided I'd do each part separately to prevent Maya from crashing! So on the left is what I'm doing in Zbrush at the moment, and on the right is a marmoset render showing off the finished bedposts.

It's a pain, because I made the mistake of using dynamesh and then turning it off which prevented me from going back in sub-divisions. It was also way too high poly even after I halved the polycount. So... lesson learned. ><

Room: lighting improvement

Had enough time to mess with the lighting a bit more, added a lighting importance mass, ambient occlusion to the level and some items like candles. I removed the chandelier because it really got in the way and didn't look pretty. Just not sure if the changes made much difference.

Dissonance: Room improvement

So I've been improving some items for the room, I'm still in the middle of it, here's a few screenshots. I've shrank it down because it was very big before.

Cabinet Model WIP

Today I was feeling a bit down, so my progress has been slow with this. I scrapped my old cabinet model because it was so bad and started again. Got some references too. It looks better (much better than my old one).

I'm pretty stuck on how I should alter the geometry on the feet of the legs... they take up 360 odd tris alone.

Bookcase, an improved model

I made this not so long ago, after a bit of feedback I went back and halved the poly count from 1321 Tris/716 Faces to 633 Tris/322 Faces. Thought I'd keep it posted here for comparison.

Old version: 1321 Tris/ 716 Faces

New version is also clearer because I was really silly with the UVs last time.

New Version: 633 Tris/ 322 Faces

Final Version:
Edited the Specular map and normals.

Sci-Fi Soldier Model WIP03

It's been a busy few days, as I had my graduation two days ago :)
Here's the base mesh ready for zbrush. I also took such a long time on the hands! Damn appendages and their awkward edge flow.

The hands took me a day! But I think I understand how to do it quicker next time.

Finished, and added some edge loops to create a more even square mesh in certain areas.

Sci-Fi Soldier Model WIP02

I got some feedback saying he needs a bit of bulking up. I tried to shift a few polys, but I think most of the bulking up will have to be in Zbrush. :)

Sci-Fi Soldier Model WIP01

I've done a bit of modelling, it's going rather slowly. I expect I have really poor technique when it comes to modelling. Hopefully I can learn from this.

Starting with pieces separately, and joining later.

Improved topology and progressing further

Sci-Fi Soldier Model Ref

Here's the soldier ref. I'll be posting the block-out tomorrow...

WIP - Lux from League of Legends

8K Kiriban work-in-progress. Finished picture found Here.

Right-click, open in new tab to see the full size.

Designing my First Personal Website

I've been mocking up a design for my very own website:

It's not finished or finalised, but any feedback would be appreciated, I'm wondering how I will be able to achieve this myself. It's easy enough to grasp html, but having to work with other languages combined is going to be the biggest challenge... not to mention adding functionality.

Cardiff International Comic & Animation Expo

You can see my Pixie costume's progress:
 Part 1,  Part 2

It's been a while since my last post. I've been busily doing my major project, and now I'm preparing my first ever cosplay costume for CICAE (Cardiff Comic & Animation Expo) on 25/26th Feb. Rather excited and anxious at the same time. I'm cosplaying Pixie from X-men.

 

One of Shane's sketches: Alpha Legion Concept

I had planned to go way back in December, but coincidentally some lecturers at my university department decided it would be a great idea to go there to showcase some Animation and Art work. From Games Design  they chose me, and an artist called Shane (he is frickin' awesome, he has true passion for what he does, and is pretty popular for it too!), whose work is dark and morbid and cool. (see image to right)

I'm a little embarrassed, I would imagine there will be tons of great comic artist that will overshadow my work by miles. Not to mention Shane's cool art- did I mention he's cool? ( /-\ ) 

The embarrassment isn't even because of the difference in skill level, it is the quantity and relativity of the work I can muster up to display that will probably make me wander from my 'table' more often than not. I've been desperately looking for any cartoon/comic/anime type thing I've done for the past two years, and to my demise there is barely any. This doesn't mean I haven't been drawing, I have been- but for my work and assignments which needed more experimentation and research than practice. As a result I have a kooky mix of retarded fan art and artist impressionism and random bits of scribbles (my games design work) all over the place. Fan art, unfortunately is a large 'no, no' in portfolio displays. So that's half my stuff in the bin. It really does make me wonder, where have I put all my creative energies into all this time? Rubbish, or maybe I'm just concentrating too much on other things un-arty?

My only defence is that I have been working my ovaries off this year and last- on university work, grasping at opportunities, and volunteering for small side projects with one of the BSC Games Developement students (programmer, basically). Much of it was to do with more technical and sometimes less visually interesting things. I'll admit sometimes I need a break, and sometimes art is far from what I consider to be a break when it's the medium for work also. These past two weeks I've been working with motion-capture, trying to get the animations on my characters and into my game. I've modeled assets for my game project, and have recently been crafting my cosplay outfit (as you'll see in the top image), I've even been designing my business card: 

Front of business card Version 1

Front of business card Version 2

Back of card

 Personally I like the second design, it looks far less like final fantasy, and more like a cool and awesome logo that belongs to a much cooler and awesome person than myself... maybe like Shane *cries*. So if anyone reading this is going to the February CICAE in Cardiff, please if you see me- have mercy and be kind on my pathetic showcase portfolio T_T.