Bloodhound cont.

As per usually bloggings fell behind a bit over the holidays. Theres been a little bit of a gap but I'm back working on my current portfolio piece and its coming along rather well. In the last post I was just getting to the stage when I was happy with the block forms of the character, making sure everything was in proportion etc. Now I am at a stage where for most of the character I am just tidying up the surface detail. In this turntable video there is quite a bit that needs to be toned down. all the tubing is just placeholder geometry at this stage and thats all being built in maya. The hands have had very little time spent on them something I need to remedy to get them looking as good as the rest of the model. I also need to build the characters footwear, I'm not entirely sure what direction to take this in, all I know is I dont want him barefoot. Once the footwear starts the take shape it'll be easier for me to finish of the trousers and they are looking a bit strange down at the bottom. Overall I'm pretty pleased with the trousers. these can be hard to model at the best of times especially when they arent being restricted by knee pads etc and you have the material flowing straight down the leg. I've rebuilt them completely at least once and when I am happy with them I'll start ripping them a bit to add some much needed detail. Im also working on the characters prostetic arm in maya along with the detailing for the tubes but I've hit a little bit of a wall of trying to work out exactly what I want it to look like on a detail level. I want to do it right so I'm trying not to rush over it, hence why I've spent a bit more time on the zbrush work right now. I have also started to polypaint the areas of the torso I am happy with. By the end of the hols I want the zbrush character and textures finished and if I'm lucky the low poly realtime character. Although this really wont take too long to do. Part of the reason for my gap with the zbrush work has been due to spending a lot of time with tutorials learning how to use the unreal engine. So I think once the characters finished and posed I will build a small set using the unreal engine to render him in to make it portfolio worthy.

Untitled from Toby Rutter on Vimeo.

Bloodhound WIP

Right with character designs in hand yesteday I started sculpting the full body of my current portfolio piece. At this stage I have blocked in a lot of the forms, extracted the half of a prison jump suit and have begun blocking in folds and forms. So far its going pretty well, I just want to spend plenty of time at this stage making sure I'm happy with the proportions etc before I start working in the higher levels of detail. I'm about to start constructing the place holder geo for the tubing that will be a present theme all over the characters upper body, and then start building that in maya which should be a relatively quick process. At which point the character will start to come together a bit more. But all in all looking pretty good at this early stage. I've been experimenting with the rake brush to break up the surface shapes of the muscles (as it doesnt add or remove much by way of depth thus preserving the forms) and when its smoothed out it started to add a really nice uneven/natural look to the skin. Which will then be enhanced by tertiary details/alphas to kind the skin that really finished look.

character design

A little while ago I started coming with an idea for portfolio piece, which I had decided to turn into a full blow next gen real time character, once I had decided what the rest of him was going to look like. Things have been pushed back a little bit by the start of my final module for this academic year, interviews and just finishing up bits and bobs for this and that. I have also been starting to come up with a character design for my potential entry into Polycounts brawl competition. I hope I will be able to finish that character for the deadline of the 6th May but if I can't it will still make a good portfolio piece. Anyway back to this character, so yesterday I decided I would get a good idea about what the character would look like and the design has come along a lot in my opinion.

Here is a bit of character backstory (this helps you a lot when creating a character, adding it helps you differentiate your character from the next roid raged killing machine). The character was guest at one of Her Majesty's correctional institutions. He and several other inmates where offered places on a scheme run by one of the resident doctors. They were told that if they signed an agreement and took part in the program that they would be released far before their sentances were due to end, and would not have to go through parole. However several key things were left out of what they were agreeing to. Once they agree they were put under anaesthetic and subjected to some pretty intensive surgery, which served to augment/replace their circulatory system allowing them to operate outside the bounds of a normal human. They also had fearsome masks surgically attached to their faces removing any sense of identity and also to protect their brains from damage. As this one one of the only vital organs left in the body that could effect the subject. The masks had a series of sensors built in to augment the subjects vision. The subjects are code named "blood hounds" and used to hunt down and eliminate targets. They have been lobotomized so have know understanding or feeling and only react to control words given to their handlers. As they suffer damage in the field more of their bodies are replaced with "industrial" prosthetics which serve as viscious weapons. "Veteran" bloodhounds are typically more metal and tubing than flesh.

Drawing

As things start to wind down for easter I am starting to work on my list of things (longer than my arm) that I would like to practise and improve. A list including doing lots of zbrush work, texturing and anything really that improves either of the above. I have over the last year been spending time whenever I can doing some studies into human anatomy. A very important skill if you want a career in any kind of character or creature creation. This evening i sat down for 20 minutes or so and decided to do a quick sketch of a human head, as this is the hardest area of the human figure to draw, and this was the result. I am quite pleased with it and it looks a lot less like the guy has lost all his marbles than my last couple of head drawings I've done. I didn't draw this from any reference I just made it up as I went along, although looking at it know watching Bubbles by Biffy Clyro before hand may have had some influence as it is looking a bit like Simon Neill.