Gum Disease

Time has come to crack my creative knuckles and start getting back to my passion, making Monsters.

Oh stop sighing arty types I can hear you. I just want to make monster. Anatomy is great but I need a little break from studying.

Recently I have been engrossed in resurrecting my music career (mid life crisis) because I was becoming to obsessed with trying to be a ZB guru or something. Now I just want to have fun. Oh how the chin scratches will moan but god damn it we artists should be allowed to express ourselves through... monsters :D

Being serious for a second or 2 I did actually use this an an exercise to break appart the anatomy of the face as much as I fealt I could around the jaw.

Basically this unfortunate guy consists of 33% Hippopotamus, 33% Canine and of course Human makes up the rest. Dogs jowls always look disgusting so I thought that would be a great place to start. You know its that look when your dog is asleep and you push its gum up to reveal the teeth, that is the inspiration for the jaw.

Does that even make sense. Oh well hope you all like it anyway.

Comments as always are very welcome.

The Tooth Fairy part 2

The idea was to NOT copy the film version. As I said I prefered the concepts to the film version. This was a 2 part exercise and here is part 2. The idea was to really contrast the 2 expressions one hard and angry and the other soft and almost child like. Anyway hope you enjoy these updates. Here is the second tooth fairy, and yes I know the wings are motion blured and there is no SSS on the wings. Its suppose to be an illustrative approch I just liked it as it was. I will do a second pass in Mental ray but I love these images for now BTW - This is just a Zbrush render with a photoshoped background.

Again here is the turntable for those who are interested

The Tooth Fairy

And here is the reason why I have been so quiet recently. This piece is my favourite so far and I really hope you like it.

I am a big fan of Del Toro's Films and more so of the art in those films.

This is a homage to the Tooth Fairy in Hellboy 2. Beautifully concepted (originally by the great Wayne Barlowe and Francisco Ruiz) I was eager to try reproducing it in Zbrush.

My piece incorporates both the concept artists ideas and is a departure from the cg model used in the film. The Tooth Fairy only shows for a few seconds which I felt was a shame. I wanted a more permanent version so I modelled it.

If you haven't seen the film then see it because it's brilliant for character/ creature ref.

Anyway please let me know what you all think.
Here is the turntable for those who are interested

Its been a while and for that I am sorry

Ok I know I haven't posted for a while but all the work I have been doing recently is under NDA so it didn't leave much room for personal stuff. Still I have taken some time off in order to create new eye candy for my blog.

In my continuation of the age theme 'The Journey of ages'(working down from old to young) I have moved on to Young Man or young Teen. The idea was to produce a boy between the age of 11-15. Hers's the result. I really hope you like it and I don't get anymore question about why my sketches are always hairless :D

As always feel free to comment

The making of Dr House part 1

So A few people asked me to reveal my working process and I was happy to share the information.

So I am posting 3 images to hopefully help spread some light on any areas people are interested in looking at.

To start with the lighting setup. Then the shader and unrendered model. Finally the rendered model close up.










This piece is only partly finished so the settings will change and of course I will do the hair, eyebrows, lashes and hopefully stuble.


Anymore questions thus far please feel free to ask, I won't bite.

Thanks for listening children.

Sunday with Mental ray and Subsurface scattering

Usually it makes me shudder when I have to go through this stage of sculpting BUT for once it went well. I think I actually have a pretty good pipeline sorted out for doing these renders. When I did the chinese fishmonger my render times where over 15 minutes per frame, stupid. I needed this to change so after a few tweaks I have got the render time (for a 720p HD frame) down to about 1min 50seconds. Now rendering is no longer frustrating.

Anyway this is the middle-aged man with some extremely quick polypainting applied. The whole thing took about a day to texture in the end. The texture used are in no way finished yet but they include:- diffuse, epidermal, subdermal, back scatter and front facing spec.

The bust was then decimated in Zbrush to 400k and imported into maya.

I then rendered it using final gather.

So far I was so pleased with the results I thought I would show you guys on the blog.

I really hope you think the results are as good I think they are. Chinese fishmonger took months to create this took about 3 days so the pipeline is far more efficent.

Any questions please feel free to ask.

Sunny Sunday afternoon sketch

This week I decided to go for the 'hero' look. Interesting thing about this piece, at least for me anyway, was how hard it was.

Scuplting an older persons face is actually easy, well easier. It seems the smoother the skin the harder the form is to nail. Generally with an older person the folds and wrinkles help the eye to follow the muscles and skull under the skin. Obviously the younger the person the tighter the skin the less mistakes you can make with the overall form. However I love a challenge so it was also alot of fun.

So next week I will try and focus on a younger face to continue my age study from middle aged to baby,

For now however here is my 20 something 'hero style' face. I really hope you all like this piece as it is one of my favourite sketches so far.

Till next week dont forget to leave a comment.

Rainy Sunday Afternoon Sketch

Ok it may have not been rainy but I was so in the zone I lost track of reality. I also came up with a new method of working. Well new for me anyway. I won't reveal that method just yet (mainly because it is not that interesting)

but anyway here is my NEW sculpt.

I seem to be creating a lot of different base meshes these days but I am most pleased with this new bust base mesh, so far.

It's so easy to use I think I will put it up on here for you guys to try out. Got to test it a few more times first though.

So settle back and enjoy this sculpt. It took a few hours
and was a lot of fun.

Till next time blog-watchers.

Anatomy study - Male Mesh

I have been working this week on my Male base mesh. Honestly I think I started this model about 1 year ago but I have thrown it out and restarted it again and again. I guess it is therefore a new sculpt.

I really have been trying to study muscle groups and the rhythm of those muscles within the body. It is a very interesting study but it has left the sculpt a tiny bit stylised. In order to make this more realistic I will redo the tone of the muscles at a later date (next week). For now I am happy with the general grouping, even if it is a bit to symetrical.

Still need to work on the hands, back and feet but I liked these renders enough to go public with a W.I.P. post.

As usual let me know what you think.

2 of my favourite brushes

Been a little while since I have posted because I have taken a small break for the ZB.

Here's a little free offering to anyone who is interested.

I have put up two of my favourite brushes for people to download for Zbrush.

Let me know if they are of any help to you.

Download here

That naked lady is back.

After listening to many fine comments from people around the net I decided to revisit the base mesh I thought was finished. She really wasn't finished enough.

So may I present her again NOW WITH POLYPAINTING. So textured and with eyes and teeth she is almost ready to go. Oh appart from her seeweed hair which will not stay and was just a test.

One of the things I am really happy about in this piece is the ZB shader I have used. It is a tweaked basic material that I have used for her skin. No Matcap. This way I can still control the light direction in the final renders.

Anyway I am sure I will keep tweaking her but another project has come up that I need to put some time into.

Keep you eyes open for an update. I am off to the Hurricane Festival for a few days this week, need some R and R, so no more udates this week I am affraid.

Nightwatch Man 3D

I was going through my old stuff last night and I came across the piece I worked up from concept.

I opened up the old Zbrush 2.5 version and started to work on it and you know what. It was FUN. It seems doing creatures is just so liberating. I love doing my anatomy studies but when you start doing a piece like this it just seems to flow so easily.

I think doing this kind of work should be on everyones agenda once in a while just to let the mind be free.

I love Carlos Haunte and his style is what motivates me but he has a very solid background in anatomical correctness. It is great to learn from a master like this and he has helped inspire this creation. So I hope you all like it. It is very much W.I.P so don't be to harsh.

Return of the Crab

An old piece I thought I would return to. I have a really good idea for a big scene involving this Coconut Crab.

Btw going through the reference material for this piece was brilliant. THESE THINGS ARE HUUUGGGE

Hope you like it

Naked Lady

Ok so today the task was to get my base mesh into Maya and render it. Now usually this is a very painful process HOWEVER this week things have vastly improved. So this mesh in Zbrush is about 1.9 million polygons, to much for Maya BUT pixalogic released Decimation Master this week and now the sun is shining.

No more displacement maps HURRAH simply run this neat poly crunching program and hey presto a nice easy to manage 200k mesh.

I have also added an occulsion map to help out the SSS Shader.

Great results all hail the Decimation plug in from those wonderful people at Zbrush HQ.

Testing out my new female base mesh.

I have finally finished my female base mesh. I thought I would spend the day doing a quick test pose.

Very pleased with the results so far. Not bad for a days work.

Hope you like it

Competition Time

Yes for the first time in my life I have entered my 'art' into a competition.

The competition is a Speed Sculpting one. I have included a worksheet to show the process I
used to achieve the final image. I used Zbrush of course.

The Rules:-

We were given 8 hours to produce a dragon.

No post process work

No textures
No rendering

Just lots of fun.

Here is my entry to the competition. Wish me luck

I have arrived!!!

I have finally stumbled into the world of the Blog. I guess this will help people keep up to date
with my artwork n stuff that I produce daily (well at least I will try).

So please give me a shout if you have any questions or advice

Bye for now, whoever is out there