Model finished!

Ha, cake toppers again, so sue me.

Coated in Sculpey now. White, you say? Why yes- that's how I've made my clay sculpts for years. Make it white, paint it afterwards. Which has twofold benefits- it avoids the problem of discoloration during the baking process, and it allows me to paint in finer details, or mix colors in very paint-specific techniques, which I find therapeutic.

I'll be painting these guys with a solid pearlescent coat, though. And adding the wingwebs with fabric pieces, to keep them light.

You know what

Guy Gardner

Now in Low-res def, with 200% more starscape! As it occurred to me that some may not be aware of his...character, here is a pic for reference.

Wireframe Wednesday?

You see? Because it's a wireframe! It....yeah. A real-world sculpt I've got the literal wireframe made on. Eventually, wedding cake toppers. For right now, a load of jewelry wire and tinfoil.

UV mappan

So, REALLY not terribly exciting work going on right now, since I'm just combining all the meshes and UVs for the low res model. Still working on the mesh part, but I can share the final maps (normal, spec, and texture).

There's an alpha map as well, but since all that affects is the ends of his hair, I didn't deem it particularly interesting.

Camping and UVs

So, as I am at the stage of cleaning up maps and combining the low poly mesh, it's not terribly exciting stuff to look at. But I will say that camping over the weekend gave me some tremendous inspiration.

I mean seriously! It's like a postcard! And our campsite was nestled in a grove of enormous evergreen trees- how cool was that?

Base sculpt= done!

So, I've finished the sculpting part, and mostly finished the textures (well, as far as straight-up polypainting is concerned). The moon boots feel so out of place to me!

I'll be working on polishing the textures next, and exporting all the maps to 3DS Max.

Dragons and wireframe once more

So, I've been working on terribly unexciting parts, like the wireframe

And drawing up some dragon concepts for a wedding cake centerpiece

Neither of which, I bet, are particularly interesting. Or really fleshed out looking. So, yeah.

Head progress (again)

Thought I'd put up a nicer looking picture, for general progress' sake. Gonna work on mapping things out now, photoshop cleanup and such.

Sketch of the week!

So, while I go about detailing Guy, I figured I'd flesh out my Mesmer sketch with a bit of a rough color job.

Vest makeover

Let's see... I've been working on second passes, so I'll just pick a piece. How about a vest.

Yep.

Sketch and update

So, many things ado here. I'm currently working on the second pass of each component on Guy.

(head's ready for pores and texturing now)

As for this week's sketch, I didn't feel like it warranted a post by itself, because it's a bit atypical of my work here. You see, I'm in the throes of making my own wedding dress from start to finish, so my creative downtime was spent making a first draft concept.

And if I haven't compensated enough for this odd post yet, let me plug my other blog! Click here to see what my fiance and I have been learning about gluten free cooking and dining!

Roughed in gloves

Got the basic glove shape down now. I've also taken a second pass on the face and vest, but I'll be posting that later.

(yeah, no ring, blah blah blah. It's not a glove.)

Are you hyped for Guild Wars 2?

I know I am! After a rather rushed first try during the stress test, I wasn't so sure. But I gave a Human Engineer a shot this past weekend, and actually began to feel the open world atmosphere being put out there. Just going around and seeing all the townsfolk, listening to their one-lines, and helping the local farmers feed their oxen. Seriously, I was actually having fun doing mundane things. Kudos!

Oh, right, this is a portfolio blog. I drew a mesmer costume, based off of a rose sort of flower. Maybe a sylvari designed it.

I'll likely put some painterly colors to this. Maybe even model the dress. It's been a while since I've done something so soft and flowing.

Vest progress

Did a first run on the vest, as well as beginning on the rest of the clothing.

No scans again

So, since my own computer and scanner are still unplugged and waiting for a router, I don't have anything to show for drawings again this week.

Not only that, but I suddenly obtained the need to figure out how wedding planning works. Which is amazing, but highly confusing to a girl who didn't plan it all out when she was six. On the bright side, though, I will be starting up a new blog with my fiance, in a completely unrelated topic. Stay tuned for more info in the upcoming weeks!

I always seem to do this

Noticed that the clothing wireframe seemed to be lacking a rather important aspect of the costume, so I'll give it it's own post.

Yep.

Temporary lack of scanner

So, I should note that my projects will be a bit on the quiet side, as I am moving from one side of the country to the other today. I should be set up completely again in a week or two, but you'll have to bear with me in the meantime.

Clothing progress

I've also extracted the basemesh for the clothing, by the way:

(the arms and legs are the usual skintight superhero thing, so I'm just working straight on a copy of the body model)

A little insight

When I'm doing work for myself, I'll tend to do a quick sketch of the character to flesh out concepts and the occasional detail, then refine the idea during the modeling process. For example, with Suzie,

I made a sketch more to decide on general feel and clothing components than anything else. As you can see, most of the details I had originally placed were rethought, since I found the lace embellishments to be too...uppercrust for her.

Head wireframe

I went back and made a cleaner basemesh for the head and neck:

Now, to attach that to the body model.