The deap sea critter

Final mesh for the abominable snowman came to 7138 tris.


Finally finishing up all this stuff I started. This guy is just under 2k tris

Lots more very soon!

Snow stuff

The cgtotal challenges were all based around Ice. An ice drill, the abominable snowman, and another creature capable of surviving very cold temperatures.

I'm done with the first two and just starting the low poly creature. I will probably also make the abominable snowman low res and texture him since his silhouette is so clean.

Ice drill: Build up balls of light and shoot them like a HADOKEN. Inspired by ratchet and clank weapons.





Abominable snow man: Mix of chimp and goat. Pose from Mr. Squatch.





Ice creature: Deep sea critter. Mix of angler, eels, translucent fish, and a chicken fetus.

So much!

So it's been a while since I've posted but I have been doing stuff, I swear! I got the white mage retopo'd and normal maps made (they are still pretty rough though). The black mage is modeled and ready for zbrush. The difference between the white and black mage pipeline is that the black mages clothes will not need to be retopod' much, I actually planned for low poly this time.

Also started scratching around some creature concepts for a manticore. MUCH more on that later.

I would be farther along on those two, but I found out that 3DTotal is doing a couple of really sweet contests, so I kinda jumped over to those for now. One is a high poly Ice melter, and the other will be the abominable snow man. There are time restraints, so planning and lots of reference images are essential.

"New" Project

While I'm looking for work I am continuing work on my mages. You may have seen the white mage in the flatbook, but here is some more in depth of what's going on with that. First off, the point of the project is to redesign the red, white, and black mages as the different body types.




Plus, I'm either gonna do the Dragoon, or maybe a monster for them to fight. These characters will be retopo'd and textured, posed, lit, the whole sha-bang. Basically a little diorama. So, far the white mage is sculpted, her face needs some work and she needs accesories. The Black mage is partly sculpted, no clothes picked out yet, though. So, the next step is to retopo the white mage, and start designing the black mages outfit.

White mage:


Black Mage:

PORTFOLIO SHOW DEC 18TH

Pretty sure nothing is new on here that isn't somewhere else on my blog, but never the less this beast took FOREVER to make. Mainly because I have never used after effects before, except for very minor rendering stuff.

It sits at about 2:30 and from all the sites I have looked through that seems to be an acceptable demo reel length. I wanted it a little shorter, but I'm not really willing to rip anything out unless there's a really good reason.

Please comment and critique! Be brutal! This thing has to knock the socks off of any employers/artists I show this too. Even minor stuff could be helpful!





Also you can go to my website

www.AndrewCQ.com

by clicking the banner at the top. Again, please comment! Building my first real site (lol, pun) was a huge learning experience as well. Tedious, but worth it. Just like UV's.

A whole month gone by

Been cracking my head over portfolio stuff. I took a break last week and decided to sculpt a new character and finish my horse by splitting it into a draft horse and a demon horse. More of those three later.

Also finished a green chavant sculpture of a fat guy, not entirely unlike Billy's dad. More of him later as well.

In the meantime here is my flatbook so far, and check out my website www.AndreCQ.com

Moar stuff

First up is the intro to my demo reel. Not rendered yet, but here is a playblast. The animation is still a little wonky, But with the camera shakes, I don't think it will be super noticeable. Ignore the placeholder meshes, they will be replaced with my weapons and shield.

Also attached is the inspiration for the whole piece from EA Mythic's Warhammer Online.




I also took Bryan's advice and tweaked my blend heads. I re-did the lighting so that much more detail is visible and tweaked the material pretty heavily for more of a clay texture. Sadly the badass decimation plug-in doesn't work for blend shapes, since it re-topologizes based on detail. I wish I would have known about that plug-in earlier, I've been using a workaround through 3dsMax that was kind of a pain.

Blend Heads Finished Kinda!!!

Here is the draft render (no background yet) for the blend heads. I ended up having to use the level 4 division out of zbrush, anything higher would crash any available computer. I think enough detail is preserved that making really clean normal/disp maps are probably counter productive.
Custom mental ray shader/lighting setup.

Portfolio Crunch: Now with fiber!

So this Wednesday is the start of what will be the most grueling 10 week crunch I have experienced thus far, and something tells me it will be only the first of many to come.

Up first are some more busts for the blend shape thingy. I'm re-posting the fish-girl and chupacabra-Anubis guy in video form. As well as the last 3 (for now) heads: a mob boss, the basic planes of the face, and the start of a toddler. Not sure if I like the pattern on the fish girl's head...





And after that are the base mesh of my coat of arms: 2-hand orc blade, pump action grenade launcher, and a shield with my logo in place of the Triforce.




SIEGE was this past weekend and I got some really great input on my portfolio stuff, and some very honest criticisms of the Nightmare tower level that I've been doing with Yusuke and Aaron. So one of the many tasks next quarter is to retool most of the assets and textures to make them really pop and actually look next-gen.

Update:
I did some testing in maya just to see how exactly I was gonna do the animated blending of one head to another. So i ended up just using a blend color node in hypershade to blend between one normal map to another (just color in this demo). I initially tried doing really clever stuff with animated gifs, but turns out you can just key the blender attribute :P

Only small snag is that the blender node only has 2 blend targets, I have like 8 heads. So I will have to render each section separately.

Game Jam 2009

So, last weekend was game jam, a 48 hour contest between groups of students from AIA and SPSU to see who could make the best game. All assets, programming, and even game ideas had to be made within the 48 hours.

So my contribution to H.E.A.T. (Hyper Extreme Attack Tanks, lol) was to model 4 tanks, each with its own set of stats. The game itself is sort of a mash-up between Joust, Blaster Master, and Smash Bros. First day was spent on modeling, second day was for title screen and other junk.



Tank 1 is the Slug. Average build, basically the human in D&D terms, ho-hum.
Tank 2 is the Heavy. Obviously has higher attack and defense, but really low jump and speed. Also fire rate is pretty bad.


Tank 3 is the Bike. This one has the lowest attack and the least amount of armor, but it's also the fastest and has really fast fire rate.
Tank 4 is the Pider. Look up Baman and Piderman. Basically average, but with really great jump ability.

some creature bust WIP

Probably will leave these alone for a little while, gotta go make furniture now!

Bust turn arounds

Some busts that I have been working on in very tiny increments. I will post the level that me Yusuke and Aaron have been busting our butts on for the past quarter. But for now I am goin to catch up on sleeeeep. Also, I'm calling the Goya thing done for now.

What does a wraith, a horse and a possesed statue have in common?

They are almost done! Or at least they are progressing along.

So, some more work on the horse. Really trying to get a better understanding of it's anatomy. Once you realize what you're looking at, it's odd how similar their anatomy is to ours.

And the wraith. Textures are mostly done, just got a couple seems to play with. I have been experimenting with ambient and alpha maps on his skin and cloak respectively. I would post actual renders but...



THAT is what maya is giving me right now. The normal map must be completely off the scale. I can either tweak some stuff in maya or I may just render him in unreal. Me, Yusuke, and Aaron are putting together a psychological thriller horror level and I have a feeling he will fit in just great.


Speaking of which we have a segemnt similar to bioshock where when you turn your back, the statues move around. So this is them so far. Gonna clean em up a bit and try to find a plaster matcap (or maybe make one). If not he might be bronze or stone.

Also, the goya sculpt will be getting some more attention now that the wraith and horse are finishing up! WOO!

updaaaaates

Some stuff I've been working on. Nazgul is nearing completion now that if figured out the problem with the uv's. Looking pretty sweet if I do say so myself.


Nazgul's horse. Just making it a regular horse to begin with. Later it will be emaciated, undead, and posed. Maybe give it that broken back thing that some horses get.
with hair planes and such


starting some busts to be put into a blend shape animation (good example here at 2:30) . I plan on doing several by graduation, so I'm trying to spend under 10 hours each. nearing 5 on this one.reference from good old 3d.sk

Finish Him!

I am seriously sick of messing with this nazgul guy. I never get to spend a big chunk of time on him so It ended up getting spaced out over like 2 quarters. He WILL BE DONE in less than 2 weeks, including most of his horse!!!!!! Beginnings of texturing. I tried reapplying normals, texture etc to lowest poly mesh (around 5k) looks crummy, so i will probably just use a higher subdivision, or crunch a higher one or somthing.

Also his teeth are glowy because of matcap and reversed normals, and he will be MUCH paler.

"AAAAAaaaaaarrrgggghhhhh!! Fear me and my horrible UV seams!!!"

Colossal again

So, Bryan Wynia's concepts blew my mind so I started doodling around with a Shadow of the Colossus creature. Just starting, but I think I will do either humanoid or a dragon thing.