Happy (slightly belated) Christmas!

So this is this year's card. Yes the list had names on, but I have obfiscated them as they were the actual recipients:

It's all pretty straightforward stuff. I like the list the most, it had a nice workflow to make and make look good. Also there's many Photoshop texture overlays to save me doing the texture work in ZBrush which was a new technique for me (bricks, mortar, paving slabs, wood). Here it is direct from ZBrush:

Also, after getting Space Gal and the Green Man Knight printed out to hang on a wall it turns out I've been running with my monitor's brightness set to 100 which wasn't even vaguely representative. Hence the lower pic being so dark, and the upper being corrected. This is true for everything I've posted before too, which is well, irritating, to put it mildly! Fixed from now on though.

Wishing you all the best for the season!

Green Man Knight Turntable.

Associated turntable for the Green Man Knight.

Green Man Knight Turntable from Tom Lewis on Vimeo.

Green Man Knight.

Cor long time no post!  I blame a few things; the World Cup, a long hot summer in beer gardens, and needing to create something up there with Space Gal and Space Skull (not necessarily Space *something* though heh).

The idea that'd been bouncing around in my head for ages was "Green Man Knight".  The Green Man being an ancient possibly pagan symbol, frequently appearing on churches (and pubs) in the UK.  I figured a knight with that symbolism would work as a sculpt.  Here he is!

And yep, I think he is up there with Space Gal and Space Skull.  So, for back-story I figured different trees would give different benefits to his armour.  Here I've made him a traditional gaming tank, where the Oak symbolises stamina bonuses, and the Ivy symbolises resistances.  Note the acorn studs on the mace.  I'd be made up to have this armour in a MMORPG hah!

I like:

• That he's both menacing and a bit twee.
• That he's from my own mind rather than someone else's concept, although I suspect that's a big factor in why he took so long!
• The fact the only red on the entire build is the eyes.  I had to change the snail from "garden" to "grove" to remove some browns.  It's a really nice palette choice.
• His integration into the background, which was initially a photo of the Wye Valley, taken by me on one of my trips back to where I grew up.

I dislike:

• Hardly anything!  But if I were to be super picky I'd refine the wood more, put a little curve into the arm guards, and well, try and not put as many man hours in as I did.  I lost a good few evenings trying and failing to remesh the helm to put UVs on it.  Also some lines are too tangential; the shield into back of the elbow guard, and the scratch that intersects the snail's eyes, both only spotted in post.

Overall though, delighted!

So do I 3D print or not..?  The leaves would need bulking up, and I'd lose the snail, and he'd not be pose-able without spending another age on him...  So probably not for now.  Plus I have Christmas cards to make!

Skull Chaser 3D Print.

Still grasped by the 3D printing bug, over the late May bank holiday weekend (and another two days) I went back to some Jake Parker illustrations for resources and inspiration and decided to take his Skull Chaser as inspiration.  I'm not going to post ZBrush shots as there's plenty of end result real ones to get through and as Slimer proved, the end result is precisely what is in the virtual realm!

As before all the visible joints are the model's own.  All Revoltech.  These were much easier to get in this time as the material printed in is plastic rather than the much harder multicolour material Slimer was.  Again, all printing by Sculpteo.  Onto the pics then.  He's about 15cm tall.

Neat huh?  I really need to get my own IP so I can sell this stuff hah.

I like:

• That he can stand on his own without the stand (that admittedly fits lovely into his backpack.)
• The plastic material.  It has WAY more give than the multicolour.
• How spot on to the reference it is heh.
• How nice it all fitted together.  The only glue is on the tips of the white antennas to attach the visor.
• The helmet pivot.  It's a standard pivot joint, but so satisfying to click in place.
• That I've managed to fit in a 6mm joint as a neck inside the helmet.  Not a lot of range of motion on this one but enough to offset the helmet being unable to look up or down.
• That the knees and elbows can't bend the wrong way due to good cuts when slicing the model up.
• All the extra bits (spare head, hands, gun) makes it feel like a proper Revoltech piece.
• That he can facepalm.  Always a good test of a figure.

I dislike:

• Snapping the antenna when gluing the visor on.  Grrr.
• Paying extra for "polished plastic" on the black plastic.  I can't discern much of a difference.
• The angling of the hips pivots.  They needed to be angled off horizontal to fit both into the slim hips.  It's making posing harder than it needs to be.
• My pictures.  Don't do him justice, especially on the white plastic which is quite translucent.
• The gun.  I didn't hollow it, so it's overly heavy, and I didn't hollow enough out for the grip to go in and had to file away a chunk of material.  You can see the uncoloured white plastic at the top of it in the pointing pic.

My First 3D Print!

So the *other* ZBrush Workshops course I was enrolled in was "3D printing for artists", hosted by Pixologic's own Joseph Drust.  This week I got my finished piece(s) shipped to me after having them printed through Sculpteo, woop!  So diving straight in, here they are!

Yep, Slimer from Ghostbusters.  Technically from the IDW comics version of Ghostbusters.  An old sculpt tidied up (improved musculature, creases, and hopefully appeal.)  Here's a quick ZBrush render:

The joints in the first shot are standard revoltech joints.  I've had to cannibalise some of my regular action figures for them, but that's fine, someone else made those hah.  Here's some closeups to show off the multicolour material:

As far as materials go it was a good choice for colour purposes, but it has literally zero give in it, and is quite heavy (despite the body being hollowed out, what a mission that was!)  I did test filing down some of the ridges, but it took too much colour off, so stopped that pretty quick!  The material is akin to ceramic, and as such has really good compression strength.  However, not so good if you are trying to twist in joints into holes that have set a hiccup too small.  Here's a pristine hand, and after me screwing in a joint.

D'oh.  Then I promptly went and did the same with his other hand.  They're not even symmetrical pieces!  Ah well, live and learn.  Next print will be in the Sculpteo plastic material.  Interesting to see the cross section of the multicolour material though.  It shows how deep the colour goes.  Anyways, after a bit of judicious gluing and a lot of not so gentle wearing away at the holes with watchmaker's screwdrivers, here's the finished piece:

That, is pretty cool.  Note the tongue, it's on a joint, although due to me angling the hole so I couldn't get access straight on (the hole points at the pallete rather than forward, silly design decision) it's not as perfect as I'd like, and I don't want to start twisting it to pose it in case the torque does bad things to the eggshell of his body.

And finally, a source, ZBrush, print pic all in one.

Learnt a lot from the course, and it's really fired up my drive for getting more stuff made "real".  Next project is actually almost finished, and will be in plastic, so will hopefully be even more refined.

Space Gal Turntable.

Associated turntable for the Space Gal.

Space Gal Turntable from Tom Lewis on Vimeo.

Stylized Character Design Finished!

Crikey that was a lot of work hah.  Finally completed the Space Gal project I've been working on as part of the twelve week course I was on.

Cheated the angle of the dog for the sake of the 2D version, he's not looking anywhere near the ball, not that you can tell.  A lot of the posted 2D concepts had similar tricks so I figured I'd steal that for my final composite.  Turntable is "correct" angles though.

I like:

• The heads - both have come out appealing.
• Suit wrinkles - I don't do enough cloth, this was good practise.
• The pose - took a while to find one with minimal tangencies.

I dislike:

• The gal's eyebrows - they're more defined than that, might've lost something on posing.
• Composite feels a bit jagged - should've done an anti aliased half size render.
• ZBrush's transparencies - it works to a point but isn't proper caustics.

Frankly I'm delighted with the end product.  Okay, back to the 3D printing stuff I'm now literally weeks behind on!

Plaits in ZBrush

So someone had a question in class yesterday about how to do plaits.  I typed something in the gotomeeting chat box about how an insert mesh can do it, but that's barely the start of the story!  Mulling it over on the way to Sainsbury's and back I figured I'd do a little how-to on plaits.  It's 10 steps, and took me under one hour to work out the theory in ZBrush and make the below in Photoshop.  Efficient use of time for making something historically rather complex.  Plus I'm logging it here as I'm not massively active in the ZBrush community but others in my class might be, and as this is such an elegant solution that I bet more people do characters with plaits so I wanted to time-stamp something here heh.

Stylized Character Design WIP

So I'm currently doing a course online through ZBrushWorkshops.com: Stylized Character Design with Michael Defeo. Learning a lot. Only on week three and because of the high level of anatomy focus it's been hard work. When we get to accessories and posing I'll be all over that but for now, it's surprising me how much actual anatomy we're dealing with in spite of the end-game being a non-realistic character.

Anyhoo, after a week's hard graft on the head of the gal that's the class default project, I felt like sharing my progress. For now I'll spare you phase one and two and leap to a fully painted up phase three.

Both Michael and I agreed she has appeal, even though there's something otherworldly about her.  She's going to be all dressed up in a space suit walking a wee dog when finished.  Next week is hair.  Bring it on!

Beastman Chaos Champion Turntable.

Associated turntable for my Beastman Chaos Champion project.

Beastman Chaos Champion Turntable from Tom Lewis on Vimeo.

Beastman Chaos Champion of Tzeentch

So I finally finished the project I was doing before Xmas cards.  Yikes, this one's been a slow one!  Not really sure what I can ascribe that to, although complexity may have had a hand in it.

Anyhoo, I give you, Traegor Galdbuck, Beastman Chaos Champion of Tzeentch (I'll come on to the backstory in a bit).

The seed here was a skull of a blackbuck antelope from my big book of skulls, and to do a daintier beastman, one that wasn't extrapolated from a burlier ungulate.  Tzeentch was chosen as the patron as I could use my Realm of Chaos book for backstory / ideas, and Nurgle discounted as I'd be forever on the skin doing numerable diseases (yeah this post requires mad levels of knowledge of Games Workshop in the 90s)

I like:

• Chestpiece - Fiddly, masses of detail, painted and sculpted, scratches, good result.
• Face - Brief fulfilled.
• Eyes - They're version four, and hand painted.
• Horns - Just right.
• Horror hand - Ludicrous but it works.
• Legs musculature - Largely made up, but it's sensible enough.

I dislike:

• Chainmail - It's too perfect, despite being sculpted geometry.
• Hoof hair - I should've added more further up getting progressively shorter.
• Photoshop composite - Wound up too saturated and not enough contrast, possibly, seems quite monitor dependent.  The 90s GW colour scheme didn't help there!
• Symmetrical ears - It'd be simple to just adjust one, an oversight.

NERDY BIT:  Okay so this chap's a patron of the chaos God of change, Tzeentch, hence the blue and gold colour scheme, and the choice of decals.  He's been awarded the following visible gifts in service to his God:  Hand of Tzeentch (the pink one, it's a manifestation of one of the demons of the God), Rune of Tzeentch (but on his right shoulder so you can't see it, check the turntable), and a warpstone charm, fashioned into his watch-like bracelet.  The runes behind him are correct for spelling his name and title.  The colour scheme is VERY Games Workshop circa 1992, with its very saturated look.  Souce material - Realm of Chaos - The Lost and the Damned, Games Workshop, 1990.