Almost a week to the day of my last post, I can safely announce that I have FINISHED ALL MY WORK FOR MY FINAL MAJOR.

These last days were spent finishing up the presentation, which was just a case of assembling all the pages I have been doing throughout the course of the project, adding the last tidbits and RENDERING.

And, even now, I still get as bored as I always have whilst waiting for pieces to render. Luckily for me there it was mainly images which I had to render out, so I didn’t have to wait that much.

A breakdown of my last days (according to my faithful planner, which I would have scanned was it not a pile of scribbles, crosses, scratches and notes in the various languages I speak)

5/May -> 7/May: Finish drawings for last couple of pages: Interactions amongst characters. Sketches/B&W

8 + 9/May: Finish full colour pieces

10 + 11/May: Assembly and write-up of PDP, amongst other things

12/May: Maya scenes, render out images

13/May: render out and assemble showreel and write the final thoughts page

The videos for my submission rendered before lunch. I finished typing up my final thoughts about an hour ago, and it was only once everything was written down I realised I forgot to update my progress blog. So here it is, the final update before my hand in.

The only thing left to do, and which I will do after I finish typing this entry, is go out and print out the presentation pages, so I can mount them and make a really pretty printed sketchbook to hand in, and put all the work in a USB stick.

As such, I leave you with the final glimpses of work I produced during these last couple of days, presented in their page format because why not.

One more week and I am officially done with my undergraduate course. I feel both excited, nervous, numb… and slightly sick, but that may well be due to the burnout. So close to the end, and I feel my energy slowly seeping away. All I want to do is sleep. Literally sleep. Forever.

Which is not good, as I still have a bit to go. One more section and my presentation will be done. My showreel video is partly done… I have so much stuff almost done and so little actually done it’s worrying. Motivating, though, as the moment I get it all done it’s just going to be one thing after the other and I’ll have everything finished in one go.

To compliment the post, a screenshot of how the presentation is doing. Only 9 more pages to fill! And they will not take me that long so… lets hope I’ll finish it today. If I finish it today, i’ll be the happiest person on earth.

So, almost two weeks after my last post, I blog again. A small post, only showing all the drawings done so far, as I am still caught up with the massive amount of work needed to be finished before the hand-in. The presentation is almost done, which is a bonus, but that is only a fraction of all I have to do in order to have a submission that is up to my standard.

Next update will probably be near the hand-in date, just recording my thoughts on being so close to the end.

There clearly was a theme to today: Shark mermaids! Currently working on the presentation, as the characters are almost done, but I seem to have gotten a bit sidetracked…

The mermaids play a vital role in the ecosystem of the Cold Bay, but I did not focus on them for character development for some reason, and I do not know why. I have come to love their creepy design and fierce predatorial nature. I did a very quick model of the head of one (the WHOLE thing has literally taken me an hour, and did it as a break from work) and some concepts, but I do not think i’ll draw any more. For the time being. As soon as the hand-in is done I am coming back to them and making a full one in Zbrush.

Meanwhile, enjoy some art from today!

and a little sneak view of how I’m arranging my submission pages! Loving the simple, clean layout

So far, so good! I am happy to report that two characters have a base paint and I am ready to start the third one at any time!

Ideally, the three of them will have the base paint by the end of the week. It is a very nice feeling to be on top of things!

That’s the happy part of the post, now the more daunting stage: My Easter work timetable.

I’m going to be staying in Cambridge during the two Easter weeks, and planning on going in to class every weekday, arriving at 9 and leaving at 5-6 (depending on how tired I am that particular day). Easter will only happen during the evenings and weekends, where I will do something entirely not work related… ideally play some games, read some books and exercise.

– Just adding a sidenote to praise the calming and relaxing effect working out has on the body, and thoroughly recommending it to everyone. It provides total disconnection with computers and anything technology related for an hour and a bit, and after you’re done your mind feels clear and crisp and ready to tackle more work –

Why am I being so strict to myself? Essentially because Easter is giving me the perfect opportunity to bulk up my submission, go over things and make sure everything is up to the standard I want it to be… as well as two extra weeks to do things. This mainly being because everyone else is going away, which means the distractions that tend to take up my time will not be there to distract me, and I can get a full 5 day work-week instead of the three-day week i’m currently doing (Mondays 11-6, Thursdays 9-6 and Fridays 12-6).

In the end, it is worth it.

As reported on my previous post, I have been occupied with the fun task of UVing. My respects to the people that enjoy this part of the pipeline; I personally loathe it. I can see it’s uses, but I don’t think it’s my cup of tea.

A minor setback occurred in the form of me having to completely redo the low topology mesh for the selkie as the one I was working on was too high to be a low-res mesh. But with that bump out of the way, here comes the next part of the UV adventure!

Baking out the normal maps:

Now, I still have no idea what I am doing wrong, or why this keeps happening, but seriously:

WATCH OUT FOR FLIPPED MAPS!

9/10 times zbrush has decided the UVs I created would look better flipped and produces the maps the wrong way round.

There is also the strange situation in whic only once out of all the times I’ve baked out a normal and a displacement map they have worked properly…

I’m confused, tired, and fed up of this. So, in order to avoid a burn-out, I am going to leave the maps for the mean time (until someone can explain everything in baby speech to me) and I’m going to concentrate on painting the models for now.

The plan for this next week will be to finish as much of the basic painting and first pass textures as possible, so as to work on the finer details over the Easter weeks. The first week will be spent painting, the second one polishing. Hopefully this way I will end up with three characters i’m satisfied with and ready to make a showreel with.

At least, that’s the plan…

The title of today’s post kind of summarises the general feeling of the last week and a half. I don’t think i’ve felt as numb as I’ve been doing currently (and having a cold does not help at all).

Workflow has been slow, work has been dull and monotone, and REPETITIVE.

I knew I would have to do things again and again, but I didn’t think I would have to do them this much! I have the process down to a T now, so i’m thinking about doing another tutorial post soon to explain it for those interested in Zbrush that would like to know a simple way to do things.

So far, this is the advice I have to offer: In order to get your UVs in Zbrush… USE MAYA.

The process breaks down to this:

1. Export your subdivisions/models out as OBJs
2. Import them into Maya
3. UV each of them roughly and export them again as OBJs
4. Back in Zbrush, use UV Master to create neater unwraps for each individual piece
5. Yes… export them back out as an OBJ and into Maya
6. In maya, rearrange all the newly UVed pieces out in the grid.
7. Now, export back again as an OBJ! Isn’t all this repetition fun?
8. Now, when you import all the final UVs into Zbrush, they have kept! So yo can essentially polypaint and export each individual paint out into Photoshop and just piece everything back together there.

That’s all for today, I think. Still got more fun UVing to check!

One would think reducing the topology of a model would be an easy and quick task, but it took me a bit longer than it should have done… mainly for silly reasons that I hadn’t picked up on.

Namely, with the giant’s model, I hadn’t realised that one of the versions was much bigger than the other, and I had to spend quite a bit of time rearranging and realinging the two versions… until I got tired and I just re-exported everything again to make sure everything matched and it was to scale.

The giant was the only one that gave me trouble, for some strange reason. The selkie model and the mongrel model were all perfectly fine and exported smoothly. Yay for me!

I’m going to spend the rest of the week looking into the UVing process and doing some trial and error tests before setting off to try it out on the final characters. I know the process I need to take… but knowing how these things works, something can go wrong very easily. And it most probably will, so it never hurts to be prepared.

I never actually expected to be getting back on track at this stage, considering this is pretty much the half way mark. 6 weeks down, 6 to go, and although my concepts are lagging a bit, my 3D work is pretty much there.

It’s a nice feeling, not having to stress much. I have a plan deviced to catch up with the concepting and the presentation side of things, but for now 3D work takes priority.

However, even the 3D work is pretty much there! There is not that much left to do:

• My three chosen models are complete, and already at the polishing stage:
  – my giant needs scratches on the rocks and perhaps a bit more defining around the rock area
  – the selkie only needs the scars to be touched up
  – the mongrel needs a new hair-do
• Once the little fine-tuning is done, I shall move on to the reducing stage! Which is pretty much what is sounds like; reducing the topology on the models by taking out any unneeded vertices and faces, mainly the ones that are unseen

And once all that is done, and I am satisfied both with the high-poly mesh and the low-poly mesh (and have made sure they are both 100% identical) I can get on to UVing, mapping and painting. I can’t wait!

Having had a play with the polypainting tools, and knowing how much fun it was to paint a simple head, I cannot wait to try it out on the full characters. Should be so much fun!

I was quite curious about how one could texture in Zbrush, and even though I am nowhere near the stage where I should be trying these kind of things out (my primary focus so far should be finishing the models and UVing) but during one of my afternoons I decided to give it a go. I had about an hour left or so, and did not really want to continue sculpting as I had been doing that all day.

I was surprised at how EASY it was, and I enjoyed the experience quite a bit! So here is my little try at polypainting on the head of one of my characters:

1- The first thing that is needed is to colorise the model -meaning you click on the little paintbrush in the subtool panel that appears beside each subtool and they turn white. Now you can paint on them!

2- And then you paint. Simple as that. Making sure only RGB is on, as you do not want to sculpt on things as you paint, you just pick your colour and get to it!

You can assign new materials as well as colours, and that is done by activating M (which is beside RGB), disabling RGB and then choosing your material. The subtool you selected should then take on those qualities.

And that’s all folks! I cannot wait to try it out more… but for now, it’s back to finishing the models for me.

They’re pretty much done, anyways.

The trend seems to be updating with massive weekly posts explaining what I have been up to, and updating from time to time with little things that I have learnt that are worth me preparing a massive screenshot post for. I have done a few of them already, but it does annoy me that it takes me much longer to produce those tutorial posts than I should. It’s part laziness part exhaustion; by the time I get back from uni I don’t exactly feel like sitting down in front of a computer again and getting back to work. What my body tends to ask for is for a cold drink -water, wine, pepsi, juice… anything I can get my hands on- and chill for a good hour or two before getting back in to the swing of things. Throw working out and dinner in to the mix, and by the time i’m done all I want to do is sleep.

I do have a pretty thorough work schedule that I tend to stick to, and it means I don’t exactly fall behind in my work… I do everything I need to do, just not always when I should. I tend to neglect my blog a bit more than I should, but that will be rectified soon enough.

So how can one best describe week 6? High-lows. I finally got the hang of how to produce a low poly mesh from a high poly mesh (which meant my hours of researching worked out!) and I can now confidently say I am in the next stage of my workflow: reducing the models.

The selkie was the first one I tackled; the model had hit the very scary polycount of 10 MILLION polygons (even Zbrush was starting to struggle) so that was the one I tackled first.

I now have a reduced model with topology i’m relatively happy with, and all the texture information it should have, but much easier to deal with. The topology of the model will be refined later on; my focus right now is to reduce all the models before attempting to bake or uv anything out.

Which leads me to my complaining/ranting moment: UV MASTER in ZBRUSH.

That thing, is a nightmare. During my research moments everyone praised UV MASTER, and made it sound really easy to use. And I took diligent notes and made sure to follow every step and do it as accurately as one can.

So then…

why does it refuse to work?!

or more like: why does it have to do things ITS OWN WAY INSTEAD OF LISTENING TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY?

If i wanted the UV seams going right through the middle of the face I would ask you to put them right through the middle of the face. But it so happens I want the seams to go round the back of the body, so please do as I ask. The program, however, decides to ignore any of my imputs and does whatever it wants.

So I end with a lot of seams going through the front of the body, face and eyes, and it refuses to remove them even when I correct them.

Hence, my decision to reduce all the models before attempting to try again. I may also give MODO a try (a new program which is supposed to make UVing very easy), depending on how i’m doing.

Sunday evenings are usually the time I spend organzing my work and other things for the following week. I sit down, draft new checklists, tick off old ones, re-evaluate how I’m doing work wise, stress a little… I don’t always remember to post about it, but I did this time.

This week’s balance is overly positive, and it’s also a reflection on how I’ve done so far and where i’m heading/what I want to do. A hectic week awaits me, but I think I can manage.

A big thing this week was my birthday. I’m 21 now! Celebrations were had, and although work was not forgotten, not as much of it was done as it should have been. However,  I am at a stage where I feel I can afford to take half a day off to celebrate my birthday.

Asides from that, I have been trying my best to work as diligently I have been, although it seems like I have reached a bit of a stagnant point. Having four characters at a very similar stage, I have finally reached the dreaded point of SMALL DETAIL. Which does mean spending countless hours going over the models and adding those little bits that will be baked on to the normal maps.

Which has also led me to research. A lot of research. Research for methods, techniques and advice on how to do those things I want to do in order to make my characters look pretty. Baking textures and maps, reducing topology, UV mapping, texturing… The fun stuff. I may have to change the tablet pen for the pen and notepad for a while as I plough through the research, but it will all be worth it… I hope.

It is moments like this in which I wish that knoweldge was something innate for people. Learning and discovering is fun, but if you got things straight away instead of having to sit down and remind yourself every time because you got distracted is not as fun.

Considering week 5 is up, and I have four characters that are currently being polished, I am quite happy with my work. I am very very pleased with it. There is a bulk of work here, and although I did focus on the 3D for a while and have not done as much drawing as I may have needed to, at least the drawing I can do in my spare time. When in class it’s always better to take advantage of the powerful computers to work on Zbrush as much as possible. Even if it means having people stare at your work from time to time.

The stares are usually followed by good comments and helpful feedback, but it is distracting nontheless.

Where am I going?

Well, I can safely say that the improvement I have made in the space of two/three weeks has been AMAZING. I never actually thought I could do the things I am doing right now, or be as confident in Zbrush as I am. It used to scare me, but now it is the program I swear by. I will become a master of it one day, that’s for sure.

I don’t know about the future, but my immediate plans regarding Zbrush are these:

• Finish polishing the characters
• Bake out the details
• UV and retopologize

This might take me a week or two, but I’m quite confident I’ll make it. The ideal plan would be to have all that done before the end of the month. As for drawing (as I NEED to draw more), it’s just a matter of:

• Silhouette concepts
• Body shape diversity drawings
• Situation sketches
• A couple of polished drawings

My new laptop should be arriving at some point this week, and with it it means that I can now draw anywhere I want. It is a small and portable little thing, which will be a lovely contrast to my current 17inch macbook (affectionately named THE MONSTER because of how huge and bulky it is). The new laptop will also mean I have no excuse not to do any research or work when I’m in town or near uni, as I can take it anywhere. So far, the attitude has been ‘I’ll take my sketchbook and do some traditional art’. Which I do, don’t get me wrong, and it’s lovely to go back to a traditional medium… but it feels like it’s more of a distraction than things that will go fowards to the actual submission.

This has mounted up to quite a lengthy post. I will update soon with a full balance of how much I have done and how much needs doing still, as well with a small update on my self-taught polypainting technique. I am enjoying the tutorial blogging, and I have already been told by others that they like it. Horray for me!

I suppose one could say I have an excuse for taking a bit with this update: I was gathering enough screenshots so I could make a decent post about it, and in a way share my newfound knowledge with those that peak into this blog from time to time. I remember mentioning I had been given some feedback by a Jagex senior artist. Well… here are the results of some of that work:

Four massive images explaining some of my work process. I have more screenshots now, so more will be coming, and hopefully with more detailed explanations. For now, this is all I have. I may do a small tutorial post concerning IMM tools and how I came across them later on…

… When after spending countless hours working on something, you lose some of the information on it? And find yourself having to backtrack and spend more hours trying to get the model back to it’s previous polished state?

Well, this has happened on two of my character models, and has me quite annoyed at the moment. Luckily, the information loss was minimal, and I had had the common sense of saving it in a different format so I could just easily import it and not that much damage was lost…

But damn it zbrush. If you tell me you’ve saved something, and the date and hour on the save file says you have… Why don’t you!?

Rant over. I will do a big post on the afternoon explaining the countless new things I have learnt (It’s a happy post! yaiiii) but for now, let’s go back and finish the two characters that I had finished last week already…

So that thing about posting regularly week by week? It may be a bit harder than I thought, mainly due to the hectic rhythm that my life seems to have taken. Thankfully I do keep progress notes of what I do (and checklists. So many checklists) that I can roughly update on what has been going on.

WEEK 2 (last week)

Consisted mainly of concepts and completing research I already had on the go. Completed informations on the selkie, started on the gem giants and roughed up Lahja’s design things… Lahja is proving to be a bit of a challenge, but the other two characters, so far named Ila and Baldr, seem to be doing quite well. So far there’s more development going into the selkies than the giants, but I am aiming to rectify that very soon. The aim is to start modelling as soon as possible, but there are some things I want to get out of the way first.

Overall I am getting very good feedback from the people that are seeing my work, and that is pleasing me It’s always nice when people enjoy what you’re working on!

WEEK 3 (this week just ended)

Things took a turn, both for the better or worse, depends on how you want to see it. Mark, a senior artist from Jagex, came in on thursday and reviewed our work, giving us one to one feedback. I like to think he liked what he saw, as he gave me a lot of very good pointers that will surely help me improve my work! The downside is, his feedback somewhat renders the research i’ve been putting into the characters somewhat useless, as he did suggest to focus much more on the individual as opposed to the back culture. The suggestions he gave as to presentation means that more work can be easily produced to rectify it and hopefully improve it for the best, but it does mean that I need to somewhat change the angle  on my work.

I am keeping all the research I’ve done (there’s no way i’m leaving all that to waste!) But it will most probably go into separate blog posts as opposed to featuring in the final submission. It is part of the research I have conducted into the characters, but not relevant to the individual personality of each character, which leads me to what I will be doing this week:

WEEK 4 PLAN:

• Amy (second year student) messaged me with regards with her digital practice module. Apparently she’s having some trouble with it, and would be interested in animating some of  my characters. I am very much excited about this idea, as she is a brilliant animator, but I need to talk to her in order to iron out exactly what her time frame is and how to go on about it. But I would be extremely happy if she animated one of my characters having worked with her in the past and knowing what she’s capable of is a bonus
• Sculpting wise: the aim is to get Ila’s model (the selkie) finished. Or at least the base, which would mean I would only need to fix topology and add the detail to her before baking it.
• If i got time to start on Baldr’s model that would also be brilliant, but not to fussed if I don’t. I’d rather have a near-finished model than two started but not quite there ones.
• This also leads into my third character, Lahja: her design is being tweaked due to the feedback from Mark, so when not modelling I will be working on variations for her. Silhouetting during my free time and then completing some of those sketches on photoshop seems to be the way to go, so I shall be doing that. I am taking everything he said on board, as she was the most troublesome of the trio, so perhaps this will lead me to a design I am 100% satisfied with. She is a character I am very much attached to, so being satisfied with how she looks is quite important.

Quite text heavy post, but I suppose it does make up for lost time. Hopefully posting will be more constant from  now on, as the changes made to my work means there will be more stuff to post about

So I’m taking the sign that the tablet drivers crashed and pressure sensitivity stopped working on Photoshop as a sign that I should stop work. Wether I should actually do this could be up for debate, but I’ve been working since pretty much 9am and I think half 4 is a good time to call it quits.

At least to the digital work. I have some sketching to do still before I can call the work day over.

So, what have I been up to today?

Well, it’s been a day of general doodles, with the purpose of warming up to the characters I have chosen. Quite a few selkie drawings, as I do not seem to tire of them, and quite a nice pic of Baldr the Gem giant talking to Lahja, who to him is nothing more than an annoying lizard-ling.

I also spent a good part of the morning reading up on the inuit culture, partly out of boredom partly out of curiosity, as they could prove to be a very good source of material for developing the selkie clans. I also took a couple of notes (which I will need to decypher later due to a massive case of chicken-scratch handwriting) on the adaptations to hot and cold climates. It was surprisingly interesting, and it pointed out certain aspects that I may need to add to my characters to make them more accurate.

I am aiming to be done with the concepting stage roundabout next week. I have a massive amount of research done at home that I will be posting about in the next couple of days as I piece all of it together, but which I hope illustrates my thought behind the designs of the characters.

Then, back on to the 3D modelling Exciting stuff!

Ten days after my last post, I post again to somewhat announce that my tiny break is over, and to run the people that might read this blog over my thoughts for next semester, and why I took a turn and went for something a bit different to what I had originally planned.

The main reason for the change is some personal problems that happened during the last project that made me resent the work a bit, and to avoid full blown hate over the concept, which I actually adore. As such, I will be doing something more investigation based rather than story based, which will also hopefully lead quite nicely into what I want to do in my masters.

The idea was planted in my head by Baris, who suggested anthropomorphism as something to look into when I do my masters degree, due to my obsession with humanoid characters with animal traits, monsters and the sorts. I love a bit of Frankensteining, getting two or more elements from various species and creating something that could work, so I am actively chosing to pursue that next semester and fully developing monster-like characters.

I’ll be using the character concepts I already drew up as a base for these ones. I’m not going to let all the work I did go to waste. However, I am not going to let myself get into another project so big. I will only develop five characters, the five I like most: A selkie, Lahja the Swamp mongrel, a gem giant, Gea the Human and her friend Aras Bleu, who I like to call the peacock.

I’m currently on the train to Brighton to take some days off, but ideas have started flowing into my head and I’m already taking notes and planning things in my sketchbook. I actually feel like I have this one under control, and this time the idea is not as daunting. This concept already feels different to the one from semester one, and that couldn’t make me feel happier.

Bring it on, Final Major Project. I’m gonna best you.