Speed Paint

Today's speed paint pshop copy.  Source

zBrush Learning: polypainting

Zbrush has a special texturing mode that allows you to use every pixel on a texture map. This method, however, leaves the texture essentially uneditable in any other normal image editing program, i.e. photoshop.  This isn't all the pretty and I could probably do a much better job if I took some serious time to do this and...if it weren't my first time. The plan now is to complete this set of basic tutorials and then do them again, but instead of building a zombie...I'll build something I can use.  Based on the list, there are only a couple sections left that deal specifically with developing the zombie. Then there are a handful of tutorials that cover, in more detail some of the newer features of the several releases of Zbrush 4.

What's been nice about these tutorials is that as I see how the process works, I see how I could set things up a bit better in the beginning to make the finish more efficient and stronger.

zBrush Learning: Inventing a Bug

A few days ago I thought I'd venture away from the learning program and test out some of the things I've learned on an independent critter.  So I made a bug.  I used zspheres to quickly lay out the general masses and structure. Then I switched to dyanmesh to pull out some details and push and pull the masses. Then I subdivided it and added some details. There's a lot more to learn (...hard surface modeling, for example).

zBrush Learning

I've been taking the tutorials on zbrushworkshops.com over the last week. To walk you through the program they have you build a zombie.  I actually bought the program for my BFA project when it was at version 1.5 back in 2004, but back then they were still very concerned about being a 2.5D program, which is cool, but is a very niche market. I think the interests of their customers and the appearance of programs like mudbox really kicked them into gear and over the last 5+ years the program has become a lot more user friendly. They've also been kind enough to update it for free.

Over the last few years I've thought of dozens if not hundreds of instances when I would love to use it for a project, but my ignorance kept getting in the way. I've always pulled it out and occasionally played with the program, but never developed any proficiency. The menus and options are quite daunting. There were also a limited number of easy to access and cheap learning resources, that has changed. There are tons of great ones now.

I decided to give Kingslien's zbrushworkshops a try after going through the free ones he provides as an initial sampler.  So far it has cleared up a lot of things that have always confused me about the program. The process he walks you through to demonstrate the important features and applications of the program is to build a zombie from scratch.  The free tutorials get you through sculpting the head. The remainder have you build the body, clothing, and other accessories. There are additional tutorials on other subjects, such as lightcaps, dynamesh, zspheres, and many others. 

Tree Sketch

Speed paint from last night.

Gesture Drawing Demos

I teach figure drawing at the 100 level at Brigham Young University. We focus a lot on the form figure and a simplified version of anatomical structure in this class. Students initially begin with the line of action, an armature, basic form figure, anatomical contours and notations, and simple light and dark value structure. We've just started applying enveloping and comparative measuring techniques using the head as a basic system of measure. This first image is an example of the process. The black conte was used for the underlying aspects and I saved the red conte for the contours. I had them break the drawing down into 20 minute segments for a one hour drawing. The First 20 was used to place the Line of Action, the head heights and widths, and the envelope. The Second 20 was used to lay in the armature and the form figure. The Third 20 was used to put in the contours and values. I spent about 10 minutes on this drawing, working up to each level quickly and then going around to check and see how everyone else was doing.

We start out each class by warming up with quick gestures. We start at 3 minutes and work our way down to 10 second poses. This is a sample of one session progressively going from 3 minutes to 10 seconds.

In these drawings you can see the underlying armature and line of action and how I apply them.

Portfolio Updated

Rainland Studios updated its illustration portfolio. Check it out.

The image below is from the Toy Story 3 game. It was also used as a background for some of the advertising.