It's somewhat sentimental, I guess. I figured I'd use this post to recap my experience at a zbrush meeting in New York and catch up on where I'm currently at in my development to become a better artist.
A rundown of the meeting: It was hosted by a friend of mine Kathy Wang in the computer art department of NYU with the main presenter being a Jean Gorospe, who demoed a speedsculpt of his own and introduced some tips, his interface arrangement, and some tools he uses.
There was some valubale information floating around thanks to him, expescially when it came to managing dynamesh density. I value his teaching because as a gaming modeler, he is well aware of keeping his polycount low-- something that can easily get out of hand when working with dynamesh. The number he was throw out there to retain topology and keep a mamagable tool? Good stuff.
He also gave a guideline to laptop stats and zbrush modeling.
As I currently stand, I am without one and in dire need.
The real nerveracking part of the evening was the speedsculpt, of course. My First.
The concept was to create an alien head. Hurrrmmmmm......
The was the sound my brain made.
I'm not sure what it is about aliens. It may be that I have no proper "thing" to reference, and when I don't have reference I get completely creatively paralyzed. One would think it would be the opposite. But having reference around to me is like a map in the middle of a system of foreign roads. Nothing seemed to set off lightbulb that night.
And then I said screw it and just go with the techniques I learned and do the bascis: Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth. I couldn't see the bigger picture because aliens are just so otherworldly but the hopefully still have the same functions as we do. If not, creepy to imagine how they must communicate and interact with their surroundings.
Anyways..... way off subject.
(This is where the brain goes with me)
So here was my final product. It took under a half hour so we were told, but in my bubble I felt like I was taking forever. It felt like hours to be honest. I was sort of relieved when he said it was only a half an hour. And then, I tried to focus on what I learned.
One thing, however, that nearly stagnated the whole process for me? 'View Mask' was off! I learned about that thankfully ;-)
Don't judge me too hard, folks. The only thought I keep on hanging on to that Jean had said-- was that speedsculpting was mainly for concepting an idea to a director. Which, of course, is important. But if one is not a concept artist, and instead is an illustor or digital painter or a modeler after the inital concept maybe the time wouldn't be as harping. That made be feel a bit better.
I thought I had done better with the last ten minutes of my lunch break at work to be honest. Danny's William's awesome creation has calling to me-- once I get a bit better and a bit more confident! If you're feeling those things, definitely join it. It's a free group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lunchcrunch
Here was my dude from lunch. No specific character of mine. Just randomly created him while applying some of the techniques I learned so far.
So, I went home that night and after seeing all the amazing zbrush work and meeting some amazingly talented people, I felt both inspired and challenged. I want to be that good, that fast, I kept thinking. The only way to get there is to keep learning and to keep practicing and to keep surrounding myself with supercool and supertalent as much as possible so I can keep inspired.
I decided that I was going to attempt one speedculpt a day. I'd like to try to stick to that, but it's been difficult while I'm trying to teach myself other areas of zbrush. I am still going to try though. Maybe give myself one hour out of the day to just tear through a model fast. This one below took me about a half hour. Again, it my first speed sculpt with zspheres, so please don't judge to harshly:
RUNNING TIME: 10:56 Minutes
SOFTWARE: Zbrush
OVERVIEW: I didn't want to showcase the design on MacBruley yet, because I'm still fleshing out color/texture on Insanity and next is up for modeling is Clementine. I just wanted to use Mac as a test run. So, if you'd like to see a small preview of what he actually does look like check him out under my charcters section:
(3rd Row, 3rd Over)
I'm not sure how well this went, but it didn't take that much time (to me). Under a 1/2, which is great. I'm excited to lay out the muscles and planes at some point, but I will probably do a few most of these first which other characters. And then I'll try out the dynamesh and shadowbox approaches. I find working with zpsheres nice, though-- escpecially for a creating the underlying skeletal system to flesh the muscle groups onto. It helps give more of a accurate visualization to work out in my head.
I am little behind with my blogging, and have a lot of stuff I'd like to write about, including sketchbook Pro in conjuntcion with Gnomon's "Practical Light And Color-- Theory and Application" with Jeremy Vickery.
Em, awesome.
