Getting closer

Not quite there though.  He's scrawnier, which is a step in the right direction but he's pretty boring.  I'm also having a bit of trouble deciding what it is I'm going for.  Do I want more stylized?  Maybe I'll just move forward with something less stylized.  One thing is for sure, this guy just needs more character, and I need more character design practice.

Drawing Progress

Today went well.  I had to do a little 'talking myself through it' and keeping that negative voice quiet and it worked out.  The design of this dude isn't even close yet but I'm glad I actually drew something.  I also installed the latest Sketchbook Pro and it has a mirroring feature that removes my inability to draw symmetrically. 

This drawing turned into more of an anatomy exercise.  It's looking too much like iron man or a comic book character with all that muscle definition.  That's okay though, It was a good exercise.  I'm also going to go more stylized in the next round.  Maybe I'll put the guy in a t-shirt and jeans too... just make him a regular dude instead of all this techy stuff.

Frustration

I'm trying really hard to be okay with the fact that I'm not the best at traditional art but I'm getting extremely frustrated.  After attempting to paint my last post I realized I really don't know anything about painting color/light/shadow so I figured I'd try practicing that just to get a better base before starting artwork for the project.  I started painting a self portrait and of course it's really difficult. I'm not sure why I expect to be able to jump into something that people spend YEARS practicing and just nail it right away. This is a true test of patience.


I'm going to give it another try and do my best not to be frustrated... if it sucks, it sucks. The project can continue without it being great.  I can also just not paint things.

Face

I drew a more detailed face.  Oh and it's my birthday.  Sweet.

I think this is the main dude. Although he looks a bit more harsh than I had originally intended.  Maybe I just need to draw him with different facial expressions. 


I'd also like to get past skewing my drawings like I do.  I should work on that.

First Drawings

Technically these aren't the first, but I can't find the notebook that the other ones lived in.  Here's some rough workups of the dude... lets call him Benjamin.  I found an old mugshot of a larcenist from 1912 that I really like to use as reference.  I'm not going to mimic him exactly, but there's something about his features that are really interesting to me.  My drawing skills are very rusty, but I tried some variations and ended up liking the last 2 the best. 

3D Paint and Subsurface Scattering

I finished up this gross looking elf model with some even grosser looking additions.  I learned how to use the 3D paint tools in Blender and played around with the subsurface scattering.  I'd like to be able to control the SS settings on different parts of the model, but I couldn't figure out a way how.  For instance the ears need more SS than the rest of the face, and I'd like to figure out how to put some veins in there.  Here's the result. (click to enlarge)

I couldn't decide between a robot with organic pieces thing and just a flat cartoony jagged edge thing, and today I had the idea of trying both by having skin over moving parts. Hopefully I'll also be able to figure out a way to have the parts show through, though that might get a bit complicated in the rigging stage.

Normalmapton, Tennessee

I spent most of my day yesterday following this handy Blender modeling tutorial.  
http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/09/28/house_elf/
http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/10/04/series-house-elf-part-2/


Check out this gross Harry Potter elf I made.  It has nothing to do with my project, I'm just learning sculpting tools in Blender.

It's bumpy AND shiny.  A true accomplishment.  I'm getting much faster with Blender controls after this.  Here's what I got out of it:

• The normal map and UV stuff was touched over very fast so I don't think I'm going to remember most of it.
• Blender's way of handling materials/images is going to take some getting used to (it's also broken on my old laptop).  
• The multi-resolution stuff broke on me.  I was able to get around it, but it took my Blender hope down a notch.
• The stupid thing about modifying your preferences in Blender is that the only way to save your changes is to make your current scene the default "new" scene.  WTF!?  Must be some ancient thing that's a pain in the ass to change.
• The modeling tools are amazing, except for moving topology around... I can't really figure out how to do that as easily as you can in maya with the split polygon tool.  If your topology isn't created the way you want it's such a pain to change it.