Creature Week

Here's something I did last week. I wanted to create a creature portrait per day for five days using Zbrush and Photoshop.

I went to this Creature Design Workshop at FZD  last year and man it was awesome! The speakers were Neville Page and Ben Mauro. Neville Page! I was geeking out the entire time. He is one of my biggest inspirations. Go check out his website here:
http://bit.ly/YjWbkC

and Ben Mauro's :
http://bit.ly/YjWqfB

The technique I used is what Ben showed us and the workflow is very simple. It goes like this. You  sculpt something out in Zbrush based on one of your sketches. Once you feel like you're done (it doesn't necessarily have to be a very polished sculpt) then you render out a couple of passes using different materials (the default Matcaps and Standard ones)  and comp them in Photoshop and viola!


Here's my end result. Be sure to check out the Hi-Res images here: http://bit.ly/XmuZ5F

So it's four steps:

01. Do some sketches. It's the most fun part. Again, it doesn't have to be super detailed but usually if you do most of your figuring out at this stage it get's a lot easier later on. Which I should have done. Anyway, here're some thumbnail sketches and a color thumb. Speaking of which, one of the main reasons why I wanted to do this was so that I can be more familiar with colors. How I decided my color was by referring to an artwork or image that I really liked and use it as a guide for selecting my colors. There's still much to improve.

Thumbnails really help since you don't have to worry about the details.
Plus you can flip them around in all sorts of ways and come up with shapes you like.

02. Get your sculpting on. This is also a very fun part :)

03. Render out the materials you want. Most of the labels refer to how I used them in Photoshop and not the actual name of the material.

04. And finally you just press the magic button in Photoshop and you're done! :)

It's mostly playing around with different blending modes , painting and erasing stuff, adding textures and happy accidents. Let's not forget the most important of them all... Lens-flares! :P

Here's a simple progression

A photo of myself for reference.
I have a small mirror in front of me which I make faces at.
 I don't think it likes that very much :)

All in all a very good learning experience. Here's to less excuses and creating more monsters in the year ahead. If you have any critiques, suggestions comment below or send me an email. Bye!

The Brog and the Monark

Hi people :)

Another busy week comes to an end. As I’ve mentioned before, one of our final project is to do a short film. The video shoot is eating up all my time, even on the weekends. I’ve decided to put on hold updating my blog till I finish the semester so I can focus more on my finals. I’m still going to continue practicing, but not as much.

I’m really looking forward to the holidays. There’s a project in 3d that I’ve been meaning to work on for a while now.  Can’t wait :)

As for this week, I spent half of it practicing anatomy and the other half drawing animals using photo references. I remember reading interviews from successful artists about developing your own style. They emphasize on the importance of drawing from life rather than copying other artist. Its also important to keep in mind is that it’s going to take time. Draw every day, with passion and the constant need to learn new things. Drawing from life also improves your design sense in a way.

I noticed it somewhat when I was drawing animals. I did studies of two separate animals first and then tried to come up with one of my own creatures by combining the two. Not that I was able to design a super cool super awesome creature.  not yet at least :D but rather than trying to come up with a random design using my imagination, it helped a lot in terms of design knowing how something actually looks like. Even the weirdest aliens from far away galaxies are based off of something in real life. Maybe I should plan a trip to the zoo. Something else I can look forward to do during the holidays.

Hope everyone has a great week and happy drawing :D

here's a still from last weeks shoot

   it makes me sad that i didn't get this shot. it was clear skies, then it started to rain.

   I've always wanted to do a star trail. sigh! managed to get enough for 1 second 

   though. i'll have to try again next week. click HERE to view a gif i made with it