Kiergo in the making

I am slowly working to get my webseries kicked off. I only have time when I'm not at work, so all I can maintain is a slow and steady pace.

T-R0T in Concrete

A quick 3 or 4 hour concept modeled in Maya, rendered, and touched up in Photoshop. I need to get back in the swing of doing these sorts of things.

Surface

I've been working at Keith River's Films, and so have not had much time to do any personal stuff, but for now I can post the reveal video of the Surface, which some of you may recognize and which I have had a small hand in.

Pause

There has been a pause in updates for a week and it is for these reasons:

- I graduated from Full Sail University and gave a speech
- I flew from Florida to Washington State to live with my family
- I was offered a job shadowing for Keith Rivers Films
- I visited my high school and talked to the animation and video classes

I hope to start updating again soon.

Calling it

For now, I think I'm going to call T-R0T at a good spot to stop. I'm trying to get multiple reels together for different disciplines, so I need to keep moving with new assets, and not trap myself on the ones that grow old.

A sort of wallpaper-esque shot of T-R0T utilizing the simplest of rigs. (rigged by myself)

Just a cool shot of T-R0T's face, showing the difference between the textured look and the wireframe.

Some more progress

I haven't updated on T-R0T in a while, so here's an update on how he's going:

I've also been working on the Arwing.

And a quick fan-sketch of Amon from Legend of Korra

More Arwing

I wanted to show some progress on that Arwing. It's more of a no-rules project, and I'm not really paying attention to polycount or quadding or anything. I do plan on texturing it, so we'll see how that goes.

Demo Reel

I've been focusing for the past few days on finishing my Compositing demo reel. Now it is complete! I have also done a bit of hard-surface modeling:

A Protoss Probe from Star Craft 2

The beginnings of an Arwing (based on the N64 version)

Also, I sculpted my friend, Ngel (pronounced Neal)

more retop

The Zbrush portion of retop is done, but I'm going to need to do a lot of touch-up in Maya. The model is just above 10,000 tris upon import into Maya, but it will end up being more than it currently is. Eager to get the textures done and see what this guy looks like!

I did do transfer maps on the head/neck to test my procedure. I think he's looking pretty nice (especially for a game-res character) and I wanted to show a sneak-peek at what textured parts look like before I dive into finalizing this guy.

This is a render out of Maya using the low-res head and utilizing a diffuse map, spec map, and normal map (at left)

Also, I sculpted Sam from Game of Thrones.

Retop (Part 1)

I just wanted to give a quick update on the retopology on T-R0T, even though it's not done. As of now, the retop mesh is only about 2500 points (I haven't looked in depth on how to look up a tri-count in Zbrush, but I'll check the tris when I import into Maya).

What we see here in grey is the adaptive skin resulting from my retopology in Zbrush. The whole torso and legs are one piece, but the shoulder strips are a separate mesh.

The orange tracing we see is my retop in progress. I will continue to draw the faces I want the final mesh to contain, and when I'm done it will result in a greyscale model like the one representing the rest of the body.

Also, I sculpted Ken Jeong as Senor Chang from Community. I AM A SPANISH GENIUS!

"In Spanish my name is El Tigre!"

Coloring (part 2)

The color passes are getting more defined, which is good. I think now I'm just stalling on the retopology, but I'll have to get it done sooner or later. I'm wondering how much I should saturate the dirt/grime on him, since his original color scheme is so greyscale.

Also, you may not have seen my caricature of John Cleese yet.

Coloring the bot

Getting toward the end of the sculpting journey on T-R0T and beginning on the coloring aspect. I'll be dirtying him up a bit when I get the paint job done.

T-R0T was always one of my favorite characters of mine, not only because of the way he looks or his gadgets, but the symbolism in his story. It is a story not meant to be told yet, but I think it is one of value and a unique one. I have always designed my robotic characters to be greyscale in color and I think the reason for that is because I drew them on paper in pencil, black and white being the only colors available to me. I hope to remedy that with future characters.

Progress Report

T-R0T is now about 8.3 million polys and Nearing sculpting completion. I'm going to have to start figuring out the topology I want to use.

Also, I sculpted Rob Swire today.

T-R0T Character Model

A couple days ago I began construction on a character based on a design I originally drew in 6th grade. I want to get a character modeling reel together, and this will hopefully be one of the assets used in it.

the original drawing of T-R0T (left) compared to the most recent drawing (right)

I am basing the character on a combination of my favorite features of all of the drawings I've made of this character. So far, my progress has all been within Zbrush. Using Zspheres as well as starting from polyspheres, I have made a significant amount of the hi-res body. So far the sculpt is at about 7.3 million polys, but once I retopologize I plan on him being between 10,000 and 20,000.

The Zbrush Hi-Res so far

Due to Zbrush's freeform style of sculpting, it's easy to make decisions as I sculpt, so I can really do any blend of the various concepts I started with, and even make up details on the spot. Zbrush's capabilities allow me to edit the mesh without caring about polycount and allow me to make major and minor changes to any part of the model until retop. When I retop, the model will end up being significantly less pieces than the roughly 30 subtools being used now to create the hi-res.

Introduction

This is an introduction to my daily endeavors and antics in the way of art. The following are some examples of what you will experience within this blog:

A game-res model interpretation of the Spooky Space Kook from Scooby-Doo

An up-close of the Space Kook

A World War II era german assassin, inspired by the Assassin's Creed series

A spontaneous concept for a character inspired by Feng Zhu's tutorials

Caricatures that I have done of friends and celebrities. The two pairs on the left were collaborative, wherein I sculpted the caricature on the right in each and my friend, Dylan, sculpted the one on the left

A photo-manipulation to recreate the Drell species from Mass Effect

Kiergo, an alien protagonist in a story that I hope to create in the form of a 3D animated series

A CG self-portrait marble bust

Some stills of my Composites for my first compositing demo reel. At first I felt it a bit arrogant to act in my own comps, but if I don't put myself in some comps, who will? I want to have fun acting too.

Things like these should be updated on here weekly, if not more frequently, along with stories, commentary, or other notes that I may feel I should include.