Sunday, December 30, 2007

Finally Hit the Mark!

OK, it's been a while since I updated this blog, but it hasn't been because of a lack of progress as I have been spending a lot of my spare time working on the characters. It's just that I haven't had a lot of spare time. I will admit though that I have spent some time playing Guitar Hero 3 and UT3. It's nice to just veg out every once in a while, especially over the holidays.

Anyway's, the latest development is that I have accepted the fact that I will be auditing this class as there is no way I can keep up with the assignments and produce quality work. It is a good thing too, because what you will see as my final Jake below comes from what is actually the 4th concept (one was so off the mark that I ended up not even using it, although you might get to see it changed a bit for Cooper or perhaps the bully character. Stay Tuned.

First here is Concept number one all colored and ready to go. This one was pretty much thrown out from the begriming as it was the first time I had drawn in years, so I kind of knew I would end up not liking it. But I have to say that I am extremely happy to see it is kind of like riding a bike. A little wobbly at first, but I am slowly getting "it" back.

jake_gatsley

After this we got the assignment bomb dropped on us where we were to do two concepts of each character including neutral, action, and head shot. This also included image planes as well as a rough modeled head in ZBrush. THAT'S 14 total concepts for me!!!! Due by Dec 24th with a holiday Extension until the 2nd as 3D Buzz was pretty much closed down until then. More on this in a few.

 

Next I decided to throw down some quick (remember quick for me is an hour or two) sketches to get a direction to go. First was this:

jake2

Still not working for me, so I moved on to this:

jake3

Now this really started working for me. So I spent quite a bit of time on it today and came up with the final sketch and then inked it in. Getting to the coloring now.

jake3b jake3bInk

Now if I had just followed the assignments just for the sake of getting them done in time I would have never come up with this character. That makes me more than happy to audit the class. I absolutely love this design! And there is also the fact that this is just my hobby, so I am not really interested in pushing myself in that fashion right now. But who knows, A lot of the class is having trouble meeting the deadline even with the extension, so we may get a reprieve and I may still stay in the class. But there is still the rigging that I know will take me quite a while to get those Trip Park / Skottie Young style expressions that I am going for.

 

On a side note I also did start working on Tweak and have this done. I will end up going through the same exercise even though I really do like it. I just think it needs to be refined a bit more.

tweak

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