I've created a time and progress sheet for building this character. His name is Insanity. His illustration I created back on June 2nd, 2000. I've decided to build him as a model because I am now (finally) onto chapter 6 of Eric Keller's "Introducing Zbrush", which is Advanced Sculpting Techniques. His chapter includes the building a medusa head... I figured it would be a good chance to work on Insanity, learning everything in the chapter with my own character-- and ending with his own crazy 'do.
Yes he still has a very long way to go. In Maya he is 227,342 polygons.
There are obvious anatomy problems. And he definitely looks too "cute" to his initial illustration.
Since it's been a while since I've worked in zbrush, I've decided to spend the evening playing around in the program refreshing myself with the notes that I'd taken while going through the book: A basic breakdown of the drop downs, brushes, and hotkeys.
I also hit my advanced modeling notes for Maya from back when I was in college under the instruction of Danny Williams. His notes are priceless artifacts of the trememdous vat of talent he has.
Since I am focused on improving, I decided it was best to document my progress. I will post the progress sheet when I complete Insanity.
My major focus for this is anatomy: I spent a lot of time studying musculature and the skeletal system. A great book that has been glued to me since the start of this is "Cyclopedia Anatomicae". It's truly a lifesaver if you want to learn about A+P in detail. When I went out to lunch to study, I had someone ask if I was studying to be a doctor! Haha! Flattery that made me blush. I would love to take an anatomy class at some point in the future... but overall learning the bones and muscles will prove useful to my charcters modeling especially and also as I need to take instruction from collagues when making adjustments.
And that's a lot too learn. Rightly difficult.
But I like to learn, as I like a challenge.
When hand modeling, I came across an interesting site with some fun facts:
http://www.eatonhand.com/hw/facts.htm
-Each hand contains (plus or minus)
-29 major and minor bones (many people have a few more)
-29 major joints
-At least 123 named ligaments.
-34 muscles which move the fingers and thumb
-17 muscles in the palm of the hand and
18 muscles in the forearm.
-48 named nerves
-3 major nerves.
-24 named sensory branches.
-21 named muscular branches
-30 named arteries and nearly as many smaller named branches.
I also built a custom shelf in Maya, which included simple scripts to make life easier:
-A custom layout button with a tear off for my dual monitor and grid removal
-Delete History with Center Pivot
-Delete History and Export Selection
-Convert selection to Vertices
(Again, small scripts, but complete time savers for me)
Timewise, definitely not the best standing record with me. I'm usually very fast. But I had made a conscious decision to model everything from scratch to freshen up insteading of importing from my junkyard. I'm still building my junkyard! Hands, Feet, Ears, Wings, Heads, props... you name it!
Tonight and Tomorrow and for the next week or maybe longer, it's onto zbrush again. My intention is to learn digital sculpting better than any other computer skillset I have, to match my initial concept and orthographic sketches, and to keep out of trouble, I guess.
Just an update. It's been a while.... Back on it.
