Unwrapping the head

After finishing the texture of the main characters face in Zbrush, I took it over to Maya to Unwrap, I used the new Unwrap tools that have come with Maya 2015 to give me a healthy initial unwrap, from there I began to smooth out and shift the points until I got a unwrap that I felt would be good for the 4K map projections. I then took the model back Into zbrush, and copied the new Uv's over to my Model inside of Zbrush to see how the detail responded to the UV's. I was very happy with the result, and decided to continue working a little extra detail into the model with the newly UV'd model knowing all the detail would be kept. 

Head development

The main character for my small collaboration project the lonely road is in full production at the moment, i'm currently finishing up texturing, I broke down the model into separate parts for skinning purposes and have enjoyed working on the model in four separate parts, The body, The hard surface mechanics, The helmet and the head. This is close to my final texture for the head. We tested the texture on the rig and after a few tweaks we are getting very nice results, definitely made us both that little more excited to see it coming together!

The Unknown Turnaround

The 2D turnaround for reference when I come to modelling my character in 3D, Worked a real large grown into the side of his body, and worked lots of colours of rot and infection into the flowery flesh, I took alot of influence from 'The Last of Us' I'm also liking the idea of using 'Marvelous Designer' to create the worn clothes, and add extra distress in Zbrush!

I like the concept, but plan on using this as basic reference when coming to my 3D model, I like working into the character alot when it comes to 3D, so may change it slightly, the growth does feel a little heavy, but i'l see how it looks when I come to it in Zbrush!

Texture Development - The Unknown

I began working colour into my developed shapes, and started to get interesting fungus/poison type colours mixed into the flesh and blood of an infected human, I then look at how distressed I wanted the character aswell as changing the colours of the clothing.

Sillhouettes - The Unknown

Some quick silhouette shapes of various monster's I sketched up, playing with limbs, growths and adaptions. I like sketching out sillhouettes as they sometimes give me a cool base to work from, and can begin working colour and texture into the shape aswell as still changing the shape very quickly and easily

Gathering Inspiration for a Personal project!

Gathering alot of influence from lots of different sites and Artists here, I think my biggest resource was ArtStation, absolutely brilliant site, A new clean cut way of showing off your work, an online portfolio which is gathering more and more publicity, Check it out!! 

I began of looking at a variety of influence to see which route of monster/alien i'd like to design, after a large collection of material I started getting drawn towards models and concepts that were more human like, but distorted, so a good underlying anatomy of human shape, but infected or an alien. What I like about this project is that its a slight spin off of 'The Lonely Road' Project, I wanted to think of a personal project that I could give a little more depth to the vague Lonely road story!

A 'Making of' overview of The Lonely Road's Pre-proudction

The Lonely Road from Josh Rogers 

Video Inspiration

Here is scene from 'Falling Skies'. This was one of my initial inspirations to create a project like this.

A Short that could show of my design through a dramatic and intense scenario.

The Lonely Road

Using a few different techniques from photo-bashing to using custom brushes i've been practicing building up images in a similar way to how i am going to approach the Final Matte painting which will be undertaken in my production time. These concepts are merely for understanding a rough idea of the angle and feeling of the Matte painting I will Create,  I've found my developments lead to a mix between a very Silent hill feeling world/the glows and blues of a Sci-fi/futuristic styled world. 

The mood board shows a great few examples and colours which will influence my Matte painting/Set extension.

Initial Scenery Concepts

I started off with 6 different routes that i could explore, I tried to make them varied but still with the post-apocalyptic, Single character stance. I really liked the the though of having the character approach a Bridge, and thought of films like 28 Days later, when the city is completely dead, and Planet of the Apes, when the mist is settling just before the fighting begins, aswell as the Classic poster shot of I Am Legend with the broken bridge taking main stage compositionally above Will Smith's character. I had these in minds as I started to develop the bridge idea in the second set of concepts, I used various technqiues, photo-bashing, drawing over the top and custom brushes to get various effects. These are still initial concepts, and I plan to develop and redefine a single finished Version that can give our piece more understanding visually.

Understanding the project

As i'm still developing the piece things are still up in the air narrative wise, But to make sure the Animator/Rigger was on the same wavelength as me I collected more reference footage from various VFX shorts that contained certain qualities that I want this project to be pushed towards, I also broke down the basics of project so far and will be updating as it develops along with sending through the development of the Scenery concepts. this is to make sure the team has enough information to begin with rough Animatics, and throw in potential idea's to enrich the project and its direction. 

Mechs&Scenery Research

Before delving in I collected a range of compositions and strong scenes I liked with powerful silhouettes/Characters placed in them. I specifically found reference using Mech type characters to focus my reference images more for when I begin the concepts for the scenery, to see what works well. I'm exctied to start the concepts as this is around the time i'm also progressing the story behind the project, and visualizing the character and potential Scenery's together will definitely help build upon the story of this project.

something to keep in mind

“Life is nothing but imperfection and the computer likes perfection, so we spent probably 90% of our time putting in all of the imperfections, whether it’s in the design of something or just the unconscious stuff. How the camera lens works in [a real] housing is never perfect, and we tried to put those imperfections [into the virtual camera] so that everything looks like you’re in familiar [live-action] territory.”

-Andrew Stanton

Collaborative Proxy Modelling

Been focusing alot on my collaborative work for my FMP recently, just finished basic proxy modelling of the character and helmet for my rigger/animators reference. Production work doesn't start till early January, but its good to get in early pieces of work like this so we are well prepared to start when we get back!

Realistic Eyes

An interesting post from Disney Research Hub, I've been gathering alot of realistic and next gen CG research recently for my FMP 'Advanced Mech Character' as well as looking at alot of resources of creating realistic CG features, a friend showed me this, really interesting to see this advancement in eye modelling.

Collaborative Mech Character Pre-production

Face Development

I already knew the qualities I wanted on the face, if you check out the first development page I have a list of features that would give me the type of action face I want, I wanted it to be a hardened, bald type figure, the classic main hero worn face that you see in a lot of cinematic trailers, I wanted a stubble on his face and scalp, with a chizzled jaw and sharp features on his face with a button nose. I decided to do a one of sketch of what I was picturing then worked different hairstyles on top of the original to see how different hairstyles would effect the look of the character. 

I'm really happy with the different versions but I may just go with the bald as if still has that feel of a post apocolyptic have to stay clean shaven/cut to survive and for ease etc.

Collaborative Mech Character Pre-production

Body Development

Collaborative Mech Character Pre-production

Helmet Development

I decided to tackle the helmet separately form the character as It was a going to be a separate prop, So I began with rough silhouettes around a roughly shaped head, I then continued with various shapes I liked and started to add some more shape and colour into them, It was a very on the fly technique of continually working into which shaped I liked most. Once the shape started to develop I had to start working out exactly how it as going to work, and which parts of it I wanted to move so that the rigger/animator could easily set it up once I handed over the model, so i drew up some 'How to' pages that explained the way the helmet would work and shift when opening and closing, aswell as a colour breakdown of the different materials!

Collaborative Mech Character Research

I love collection alot of research before jumping straight into a project. In my head I already knew i wanted to look at some type of male character with an army influence, I looked at many different influences from a very general grab straight away then whittled it down to different film and game concept work, I looked at The new call of duty artwork to the edge of tomorrows artwork, but my favorite collection of images was form the artist 'Vitaly Bulgarov' who creates alot of 3D concepts for mechanical company's but also does concept work for some films. some absolutely brilliant mechanical concepts for Robocop underneath !

Check out more at his website at: http://www.bulgarov.com/