Harry Truman

  

I jumped in on that SHOWDOWN competition over on the Art By Papercut forums. I'm pretty sure they're new because I've never heard of them prior to now, but the competition sounded kinda cool.  You can check out my thread here: http://www.artbypapercut.com/forum/index.php?topic=32.0 I've got a few ideas for my historical figure: Harry Truman.  I have until the end of November though, so I'm going to try and finish some of my other work for my demo reel before I devote all of my time to Mr. Truman.

Speaking of which, THIS CHARACTER WILL NEVER END! I continue work on this girls armor. 

I... I don't know if I will ever see the completion of this character...

I keep finding things wrong with it...

 

...but it must be FINISHED!!

Female Armor - Part Five

 

I'm still making updates on this model. Hard surface armor modeling is tough. I've usually worked minimally with armor on my models and focused more on organic features, so constructing a character where armor is covering a majority of the body is proving to be difficult.  I think I'm getting better though.  Although the process could be snappier :)

I only have a couple weeks left this month, but I hope to have her done by September so I can start my Steam-Crunk character and go on to complete my demo reel sometime in October. If I hadn't mentioned it before, I've cut down on what's being included in the reel due to lack of time. I now plan to have Steam-Crunk head up the reel, following by the girl above, which will then break down her gun as well, and then end it with the boy and dog.  But in order to make the reel work, I have to make this girl and my next model the best fucking models I've ever created.

The biggest time suck recently is my incessant wanting to draw (which really isn't a bad thing!!) Since getting my Cintiq I've been wanting to just draw things all the time. So recently I've been going back and redesigning some of my comic book characters and posting those on Deviant Art. However, I'll probably end up forcing myself to stop drawing until I can get my demo reel models done.

Female Armor - Part 4

Updated progress on my armored, spy girl character (I need to find something better to call her)
Currently I am roughing out the armor shapes and starting some of the high poly work. The hard-surface armor pieces I am doing inside of MAX just because it is easier to control edges. I'm retopping her body in preparation to take it back into Zbrush to do all of the organic suit details. Once all of that is done, I'll bring everything back into MAX for a final retop of the model as a whole.

I've been trying to determine whether I want to retop the whole body (including the armor) as one solid mesh, just because when it comes time to skin that may cause certain armor plates to maybe bend with the rest of the body, whereas if I left the armor plates separate from the rest of the body, they could be skinning to the bones and more independently without bending or deforming. Although that way would rack up the poly count. DECISIONS!

I also must pay close attention to her silhouette as I think she may be a little too stocky at the moment. I hope to use the armor and some belts as a way to make her shape a bit more interesting. Her hair will be pretty important as well! I can't wait for that. I can't even predict the amount of planes I am going to use.

Recently I have been taking a break from the freelancing while I wait to hear about that projects status. Work has also bumped up to 50 hours a week instead of 40 which is going to limit my portfolio time all the more. Modeling work-related stuff for 10 hours straight only to come home and model more stuff is difficult. But THIS stuff is what I really want to do, so I can pull it off. :D

I just hope this all pays off.

I think it will.

Female Armor - Part 1

Got off to kind of a slow start with this new character. I wanted to have her concept done on the 1st so I could start modeling this past weekend, but I got caught up on the concept itself. I decided to go in more armored direction with her. Some discussions with my friends lead me to add more armor to her chest than originally intended, but it makes more sense to have her wear body armor than to have an open chest area that is fully unzipped.

The concept progressed further and now I've decided to go for a shorter hair style. Short hair is a challenge, but one I haven't tackled in a while, so I thought I'd go for it. I was also somewhat inspired by Emma Watson's current hair styles, so I'm using some current photos of her for reference.

 

The colors are still up for debate, but as of right now I am sticking to the yellow that I started with.

I managed to start modeling the head a little bit this evening. I look forward to really diving into this character and hopefully getting it close to complete by the end of this month.

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