Merry Chimpmas!

This year's Xmas cards then.  Like last year, based on a silly gag.  The inside of the card was just going to have ooks and eeks but I tempered myself and added some English words.  He wasn't necessarily going to have fur but Daniel Bystedt's great furry character tutorial was on YouTube so I followed that for pointers.  Also I tried messing with the hue of the finished chimp to see if purple made more sense.  It did not!  No turntable for this, the back's complete but you're not really gaining anything.

Having said that about the turntable, here's an alternative.  I went through my incrementally saved projects and rendered out what they looked like at the time.  So you have, going clockwise:

1. Initial block out, I really do start with circles cylinders and rings.
2. Hands and feet.
3. Merge and remesh from many pieces into head and body pieces.
4. Remesh the head (a technical step that doesn't lend itself to a screenshot)
5. Head adjustment and body paint.
6. Head paint.
7. Body pose, banana creation, hat shape, insert curve brush fairy lights.
8. Hat refinement, bulb materials.
9. Hat bobbles, bulb inflation.
10. Head refinement and pose, new eyes, bulb inflation, material and light work.
11. Fibres!

I like:

• The fur!  Three separate sets of fibres: Close and dense fur, specific longer fur (thighs, ears etc), and sparse long fur for variation.  Very pleased with it.
• Those blocky squared off hands and feet.  Just what I was aiming for.
• The background, I remembered to add a shape for interest.
• The folds in the hat; largely started with very low level cylinder geometry pushed around to keep quads of the same row the same relative size, just like real cloth would  if it was quadded.

I dislike:

• Getting a really nice noise for the wrapped banana but then when it applied (or rendered) it broke my geometry, so I had to switch it off.  It looked just like slightly crumpled wrapping paper!
• The bulb placement (despite being an elegant solution) was a bit inelegant on the final composite.

Happy Christmas!

Stylised Lord Summerisle 3D Print.

And now something different!  Inspired by a line of vinyl toys called "Vinyl Idolz" I thought I would give aping their style a go but for a character that I would like to have done in that style.  So of course I picked Christopher Lee's Lord Summerisle, from The Wicker Man.  In his pose from the end of the movie that any google search would yield ya.  Here he is:

Neat huh?  Sumer Is Icumen In!  Created using my standard ZBrush to Sculpteo workflow.  It's a shame his build has been fraught with issues.  I had hoped to have him completed by the May Day bank holiday coincide with the film's timeline but ah well.  The jacket piece, in a resin that was a new material for me, I managed to snap trying to wedge the jumper chest in place.  Then the reprinted jacket came and was a surprisingly terrible quality so I had to get that part printed three times in all.  Also the chest piece needed to be re-done to actually fit in the middle.  This is the first print I've done that has had this level of issues, and I think it was down to me getting cocky.  Don't get cocky!  Lessons learned though.  He's a hiccup over 6" tall from soles of his shoes to the tips of his fingers.  A nice size.

I like:

• That he is precisely how I would expect a Vinyl Idolz Lord Summerisle to look!
• That hair.  Lots of curve tubes with a ton of refinement.
• He stands on his own.  A bit difficult to gauge when he's still at the virtual stage.
• The curve going from his ankles to his head.  It's a nice action line.

I dislike:

• Something's up with his feet pegs, they should be more flush with his trousers.  I think it's something to do with having the plastic dyed when it's not had all the dust removed from the internals.
• That it took three goes to get the chest / jumper working.
• My miniature painting skills are very rusty, but I've mostly got away with it.

So this might be the last graphics post for a bit.  My next project is most likely going to be an iPhone game so not really part of the creative geometry remit.  I may post stuff about that here too though, it should lend itself to screenshots although it'll be 2D and sprite based.

Ulala Blue!

Okay, so not as rapid an update as I was hoping.  Mainly due to 3D print woes on another project which meant I've been working on two in tandem, and generally not having time for either.  Anyways, more Ulala work!  A sister piece to last year's Amazing Tales magazine cover, using most of the same layout stuff from that, and my Ulala model, although with a new outfit:  Whenever I unlock a new costume in Space Channel 5 Part 2 I assess it for using for these projects, and this is one of those!  A very Courreges feel to the outfit and the layout is shamefully an homage to a Cosmonauts poster I saw in the Science Museum.

It went through a lot of revisions on the actual scene.  The intent was to have her walking on a small planetoid a la Super Mario Galaxy, with alien flora, as if her and the Morolians were out on a school day trip.  But I couldn't get a look I liked, hence this being in purgatory for a time.

I like:

• Most everything on this one.  Very pleased with how it all came together once I worked out the scene.
• That a friend thought it was a targeted ad when I showed her a sneak preview!
• The outfit - with a specular overlay in Photoshop it really looks like a futuristic shiny mini-dress.
• How easy it was to reuse whole groups of layers in Photoshop when on the layout stage, probably just how a professional would!

I dislike:

• Ulala's blown out face.  One brightness contrast layer too far.  D'oh.
• Everyone's a bit disconnected from the rainbow ring, as it glows, it's got no shadows cast on it.  A necessary evil, but it does make it a bit airy.
• How many iterations it took me with some masks and overlays in Photoshop.  I need to tweak my workflow on some of it to help with layer masks updating with the right layers.

Whether another cover of Amazing Tales gets made, I'm unsure, as I really want to move on to making an iPhone game which will take a lot of my creative run-time, and as such I've been trying to finish this project and the 3D print one.  I will always gravitate to Ulala though, my space reporter muse.

Gundam - Shaldoll Scout Turntable.

Associated turntable for the Gundam - Shaldoll Scout.

Gundam Turntable from Tom Lewis on Vimeo.

Gundam - Shaldoll Scout.

Crikey!  What do we have here?  A finished project!  I have had a bit of a block on finishing stuff:  I've another two projects that are 3/4 done, hence the lack of updates.  Here's a bit of a departure from ladies and monsters though:  A robot!  Not done one before and yes it's thematically similar to the Tortilus but this felt much different to build.

I say "robot", it's a Gundam, technically, and a RGE-C350S Shaldoll Scout to be precise.  I have a big book of Gundam line art of *all* Gundam ever, so thumbed through and found this model to use as reference.

So it felt like a departure from the Tortilus as this was 99% zModeler and dynamic subdivisions, which as an old box modeler makes me happy.  I can think in low poly cages.  No visible UV work either (the shoulder has a decal on it but I couldn't have a front view and that in the same shot) meaning all the noise is procedural noisemaker 3D placement rather than UV placement which made it way quicker.  Three layers: erosion, dents, and paint colour variance.  All composited together in Photoshop in post.  I'll definitely use that tactic again.

I like:

• Big robot!  Definitely fulfilling my own brief there!
• All the lines aren't super sharp, there's a little bevel on most everything.
• My noise work.  It seems too much up close but when it's printed A4 size it should be just right.
• That I didn't spend another x hours doing more kibble that wouldn't be visible or in keeping with the cleaner Gundam style.
• I have had all the practise with the zModeler brush I'll need for a time!  With that it's so easy to add secondary detail on low polygon cages then cheat the high polygon look.
• The Photoshop composite has made it look like there's WAY more fidelity than there actually is.  It oughta, there's 50 layers actually doing something!

I dislike:

• No visible decals.  Would it have killed me to add some warning signs in a PS layer?  It would've helped sell the size even if they became barely visible.
• That I didn't bevel the shoulder gun where the barrel meets the housing.  Look at it!  Amateur hour!  I mean, I'm not being paid so it's not professional hour but still...
• That you can't really tell that he's 18.2m tall but I did keep the camera low to aid that.
• Gundam v Transformer gripes:  If I'd done that latter I'd've had more visible interest with an endoskeleton, it wouldn't all be one material, and it would have been way more poseable!

Right, time to man up and finish one of those almost done projects!