More Monster Republic!

At this point, all the concept sketches for my client are done.

All I have to do now is turning them into pieces of finished artwork... I'm almost there, just a little longer... here's a preview but you can see some more at outlawcreations.co.uk under 'Illustrations':

Monster Republic concepts

Since I finally got my computer back, I can start to polish off the concept sketches for Monster Republic. The refining of those sketches is a necessary step to transform rough ideas into finished illustrations.

The image above shows the result of playing around with different possibilities to render an artificial head/skull and how it would fit beneath the (synthetic?) skin. The first image, the sideway rendition, is a concept of a bionic skull which also incorporates features that would not be normally part of a skull, such as the muscles and the tendons of the neck (hydraulics and cables), artificial gums (polycarbonate perspex), optical sensors and the hearing apparatus (in the form of micro cameras and mic receivers). The rendition from the front instead is simple variation on the previous image where I decided to change things a little bit, although I still incorporated an eye for pure graphic purposes (it looked empty without). A particular I had to keep in mind was to maintain the skull expression-less, which per se wasn't a big challenge, but somehow I had to fight the temptation of making it look 'evil'... I guess the influence of 'The Terminator' is a difficult one to ignore when drawing up artificial skulls, but I still managed to get the desired result.

Fiction Vs Reality

For my client project, I'm working on some concept art and a short animation inspired by the Monster Republic novel.

The project requires a certain understanding of anatomy (its ok, is not my first rodeo when it comes down to drawing bodies) but also bionics which per se, it's nothing I've never done before, although after reading the novel I realised that to fit this concept, this time around the bionic elements should be less 'over the top/bigger than you sci-fi' inspired and a little closer to what is going on in the field of medical bio-engineering and artificial prosthetics.

Basically, my goal is to make things look good but functional at the same time. For inspiration, I decided to look both ways, reality and fiction... I've put together a little collage of some of the images I'm using as reference... Talking of having two Damocle's swords hanging above my head instead of just one...

I think it's pretty interesting to see how the fiction involves a certain amount of 'cool' factor while the brutal reality reminds us all that, sadly, there's nothing cool about needing an artificial limb. This is something I got to keep in mind while working on the Monster Republic concepts. Maintain a balance between aesthetics and grim reality.

Texturing a Mudbox Mesh Tutorial pt.2

This time around, things were done a little differently. Although the principles of the previous example were still applyed to this character, I've also experimented with actual textures. Considering that the skater model, unlike the luchador, is made up by various meshes (helmet, top, shorts), most of which have a fabric look to them, I simply used actual photos. Same for small elements on the actual skater like pads, gloves and shoes. In my case, I could take actual pictures myself, but goes without saying that you can 'borrow' off the net as much as you need. You'll end up stretching and cutting enough of it to make it yours in the end. (Fig.1&2).

Adding tattoos was another way to cover the areas where the mesh shoulders meets the neck and the chest. Mind you, to make tattoos look good around this areas takes a bit of time exactly like smudging the colours as shown on the luchador tutorial, so it's not a way to cut corners... you've been warned. (Fig. 3,4&5).

Texturing a Mudbox Mesh Tutorial

This past week I've been diving right into the client project. Is going to be a video aimed to sollicit NTU Alumni that graduated in multimedia (Virtual Environments, to be specific) to donate to the Alumni Fund, so that future talents will have a chance to apply for bursaries, graduate and get a job in the industry. The video will include some animations, and the first character I've been working on to be included in the project is a Luchador (mexican wrestler). During the modelling and texturing process, I came up with the idea of saving screenshots of the work in progress, to show what I did and how. It's basically a tutorial on how to create textures in Photoshop that show some 'depth' (shadows and highlights) even before the model is imported in 3Ds Max and placed under a light of some sort. It will hopefully be helpful to people that are looking for an alternative to flat textures and, of course, the principle can be applied to a model created in any other 3D application (Max, Z-Brush, etc.). Enjoy.

I simply picked the standard Mudbox Human mesh, buffed it up a little bit in Mudbox (the basic human male mesh is slim and athletic but not 'beefy' enough to look like an in ring competitor) and proceeded to paint different areas of the body in different colours to represent the various (all skintight) items of clothing. I also used darker colours to trace guidelines of where the shadows will be. This stage doesn't have to be long and laborious. The painting in Mudbox should be just accurate enough to give an idea of 'what's what?' when working in Photoshop. The result is shown below.

While working on the texture in Photoshop, I suggest you to import the model in 3DsMax and apply the texture you painted in Mudbox. This is because every time you make a change on the texture in Photoshop, and as long as you save the texture with the same name, the model in Max will show you the changes in real time. (Fig. 1)

At this point, go nuts... if you can skin a cat in various ways, the same principle can be applied to paint a wrestler. If you are comfortable with the airbrush tool, use that. If you rather use a soft custom brush, go ahead. Personally, for realistic purposes I use one tone per colour, then I use the 'dodge' and 'burn' tools to create the highlights and the shadows. Keeping an eye on the 'range' and 'exposure' controls also allow you to get exactly the desired effect.

Whatever painting method you go for, if the texture is simmetric like in this case, I strongly suggest you to work on only half of it, then later duplicate it and flip it over (working hard is commendable but working smart is better...). Also, pay extra attention to the areas where the texture join in with other areas... this is usually where the 'smudge' tool come in very handy. Keep saving your progress and check the model in 3DsMax until you are fully satisfied. (Fig. 2&3).

The examples shown on Fig. 2&3 kept me busy for a good while. Don't cut corners! It can be frustrating at times, but do yourself a favour, keep 'smudging' away until the various joining areas look uniform and smooth. A simple base colour plus the shadow (achieved, in my case, with the burn tool) is all you need to get basics right. Once satisfied with that, you can start applying the highlights (again, in my case, achieved with the dodge tool, Fig. 4).

The above part is the most laborious but once you get it right, you'll feel pretty good about it. Keep doing the same for the remaining areas (arm, hand, pelvis, legs, etc.) and keep an eye on the hue. You don't want to end up with areas with a darker tone of shadows (or brighter highlights for that matter) than others, unless there's a good reason for it! (Fig. 5).

Once you are totally satisfied with the look of your model and feel that both shadows and hilights couldn't get any better, it's time for the 'one offs'. In this case, I'm talking about asimmetrical details like the wrestler's name on the belt and the mexican flag on his boots. Check those details accurately. I almost made the mistake to have an inverted flag on the right boot that read 'ocixeM'... (Fig. 6).

Now it's the moment of truth... duplicate the Photoshop layer you've been working on, flip it orizontally and match it in the middle with your previous layer. Save it and take a look at your model in 3DsMax... Do you like it? Was it worth it? I hope so. In my case, I got exactly what I was looking for. A model with depth on the texture, even without any light shining on it. (Fig. 7).

Final Project DP3 Rational

This time the animation required as the final project had to be a re-interpretation of an existing script. We were given three possible scripts chosen by the module leader to pick from, or we could’ve chosen our own. I went for the latter option.

I decided to re-interpret a story taken from a Marvel comic from the late 70s. It’s about the death of Gwen Stacey, Peter Parker’s (Spiderman) first girlfriend, by the hand of the Green Goblin. If you’ve seen the first Spiderman movie (first of the new millennium, NOT the 70s trilogy of movies, a true abomination…) you probably remember the scene where Mary Jane is thrown into the emptiness by her captor, the Green Goblin, only to be saved by Spiderman’s web-slinging skills. All good, people cheered. But in the comic book things went a little differently: It was Gwen, not MJ to be captured by the Goblin, and most importantly, she doesn’t survive the fall. Spiderman did manage to catch her in time, but sadly the whiplash snaps her neck.

So, this was going to be the core scene of my animation, but what about the re-interpretation part? I simply thought: If the original story is about a man with spider like powers, why not twisting the subject the other way around? Why not making it about a spider with human sensibility? So off I went…

The whole story is set in a kid’s bedroom. A brother and sister bedroom, which gave me the opportunity to fill it with whatever props and toys I would’ve found useful for the animation. To ease the characters into the story, I started from the typical boy-meet-girl situation. Considering the average size of a bedroom that supposed to accommodate two young kids (and their stuff), that’s a large environment from a spider’s perspective.

Both spiders are in fact virtually free to roam around the room and entertain themselves with whatever they find lying around. They can use a plant pot as a park, they can use toys from a farm set to pretend they are at a petting zoo: they can ride a wind up scooter on a bunch of comic books scattered around the floor like on a speed track, using other toys as obstacles. An I-Pod provides the background music to all these shenanigans.

In particular, a Hot-Wheels type bridge set and a bunch of Lego models and bricks turned out to be very useful for two key moments of the animation. I also scattered a few Spiderman and Marvel clues around: Comic books, action figures, blankets and pillow covers for the boy’s bed… I almost forgot: The Green Goblin! What could I use to represent the Green Goblin on an insect scale? It obviously has to fly… but not a fly, too small. Not a bee, too yellow. Not a butterfly, too pretty (or so they say)… a dragonfly? They certainly have a certain mystique about them.

Before starting to model an animate I had to consider the storyboard and how to fit the various scenes together (and in what order). Unlike the project on our previous term, this time I kept the storyboard pretty open to last minute changes (I learned from my mistakes).

Overall, the most important thing I learned while working on this animation is this: Never, ever again I’m going to use the ‘hair and fur’ effect of 3Ds Max unless I’m working on an industry standard machine. It takes too long to render frames that would’ve taken much less time. You could almost grow a real beard while you wait…

P.S. You can check the video out on my site, just click on the above link and go to the 'Animation' section.

LEGO modelling

Evening ladies and gents.
These are some pics of a LEGO set that will be included in my DP3 animation... I had so much fun with it that if I could go back in time (not much, just four months...) I'd set the whole animation in LEGOLAND! (aside from choosing the appropriate lottery number combo...)