A Vaguely Halloween-y Post

This really is only very tenuous link to halloween. This weekend (among many many other things) I have been preparing to attempt to teach some character modelling tomorrow, and whilst it has taken a bit of work I decided that I would use my time to come up with some concept/ reference images of an idea I had for a character (which tomorrow I shall attempt, and hopefully not fail, to model). The character is a real mix of influences (and I think would make a pretty cool halloween costume hence the tenuous link), originally the plan was to create a futuristic minotaur/beastman character. However I got a sudden urge to see what my imagination would think a witchdoctor/shaman character would be like if they were in a post apocalyptic genre (theres been a lot of the end of the world going on at the moment I apologise). Anyway taking a lot of influences from shamas, native american clothing, Rafiki (from the lion king) alchemists, gunslingers (a pair of revolvers) voodoo, captain jack sparrow (I imagined the character as being a cross between him and the weird voodoo lady, with a shed load of extra crazy and a messenger bag full of explosive stuff, alcohol and weird potions that were also very explosive). I also envisage him carrying a big stick (in the style of the native american dream/ story sticks) with the traveller esq bag on the end. I can also picture him hitting people with it. Anyway enjoy, hopefully soon I'll be posting some awesome pictures of the finished model

A little concept

I decided recently that I really need to start creating good finished pieces of work from scratch to form a portfolio. So when I got up this morning, wacom in hand, I decided to start experimenting around with some ideas I had had. One of which I rather liked was based on the idea of Lovecraft's Cthulhu. And seeing as I am looking for interesting things to model in maya I thought this would be a good idea to persue. My idea didnt involve the Cthulhu itself, but more of a lesser Cthulhu or some kind of spawn of it. The idea being that is was a symbiotic, parasite like creature, that attaches itself to its victims and feeds of them whilst hunting others. I've only just done this quick concept, but I am fairly sure you can already see some of the other influences coming through, the face hugger stage from the Alien Franchise, the brilliant Davey Jones character from Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Mans Chest, and even a bit of a mind flayer. I am quite pleased with this quick concept drawing so I am going to keep going with it and hopefully soon you will start to see it being made in maya. I'm also pretty excited because if I can make this model it will lend itself very to importing into zbrush (for the extra fiddly details needed to achieve a nice wet surfuce and to model suckers etc) and then make a displacement map to texture back on in Maya