Week 12: Keeping it snappy!

Hey Folks

This week of has gone rather quick, in fact it has been the shortest week of my final major project. Spending time at home over the Easter weekend has given me the much needed rest and recover time to get me psyched for the next phase of my final major project.

After getting off the train I headed straight to the library to apply for 3 game art positions. This included a character art job at Epic Games in Shanghai:

And a 3d artist and Character art opening at Streamline Studios in Malaysia:

https://www.streamline-studios.com/

I look forward to hearing back from them, especially Streamline studios, as their roster of games that they have developed is extremely impressive. Moreover I would love the opportunity to work in a foreign country.

Furthermore, I was able to apply for a character art position at Airship Images, which I wasn’t initially going to apply for however I was convinced by my good friend and character artist peer Dan Bullock. Uploading my work to Artstation felt great, especially as I hadn't shared my work in a while.

http://airship-images.com/

My Artstation site: https://www.artstation.com/artist/forde_fiesta

This week was all about finishing the Crocodile Priestess Sculpt to make ready for texturing. I took on Del’s feedback that he mentioned last week, of which I had been too attached to my work to consider it a possibility. He mentioned that I should remove the jaw of the character and just add wraps around the neck. This would allow remove the clutter around her neck area and allow the character to have greater peripheral vision and head movement; more practical in combat.

Even with the help of Angel Diaz’ Sobek Cultist Pelt in Rome II: Total War as reference, creating the pelt was no easy task and it took all day to get it complete. (his Portfolio: http://www.tiflos.com/)

Sobek Cultists:

Therefore I spent all of Thursday creating the wrap. I began by modelling the wrap in 3ds max and when happy with the shape imported it into Zbrush to add the details.

Last week I sent an email to Angel on how he went about texturing his Crocodile pelt and I was fortunate to get a reply from him:

"The first important point for the good texture is to have a good normal map with sharp details on this pelt. Then the other next steps we could say are 4, 1- take alot of references from google about the crocodile you want with the colors you want, and make a mix of all of this in a sheet in photoshop taken the colors you will use for that. 2 - start using this colors to make a base texture. 3 - use any software to extract a cavity map from the normal map to use the details of your normal map onto your diffuse map (example: crazy bump or xnormal photoshop plugins). 4 - once you have a base color diffuse with all the details from the cavity, you will need AO layers and make 2 intense hard work steps of details, I use to make a first pass of details, like scratches, little texture zones, etc.. and then a second pass of micro details, more micro pigmentation of the crocodile skin, bone surface, skin texture surfaces, etc.. of course gloss, level, normal, and other channels are very important too.Also use very transparent layers of texture to give a stone or wood feeling to the skin, any texture that will give the feeling of crocodile hehe"

This will certainly help when I begin texturing next week.

With the wraps complete, all that was left to do was to clean up the rest of the character. I started by adding the handle bar to the tortoise shell.

This wasn’t too difficult, however it proved a challenging task when deciding upon the design of the handle bar, I wasn’t sure how to emulate the same design of the Aztec Shields.

With the handle bar complete I went to work on adding the wood detail for the staff. This wasn’t too hard a task either, I just needed to choose which type of wood would (sorry for the pun) be used, then replicate it.

When complete, I began working on the wrappings for the staff, it was a tedious task as I had to separate every wrap and move it into place before sculpting detail into it. Nonetheless, the final outcome was worth the effort.

With this complete, all that was left to do was to clean up the necklaces around the body and add the ropes using the insert rope brush.

And voila, I give you the Aztec Crocodile Priestess.

I am happy she is complete, it is such a relief to see a character designed in 3D. I feel that I have seriously improved with this character and the best element is that most if not all detail was done by hand. I’m very proud with the outcome and I look forward to my next character.

Next week I will be re-topolgizing and unwrapping her, with the stretch goal of blocking out her textures. Bring it on!

So there you have it folks, my very short week, It has been quite productive though I must say the outcomes of this week have proved that I have been working hard, and also keeping a great balance to my life. If this keeps up the future looks very promising.

Thanks for reading

In a while Crocodile