Wrestler Designs

Some updates on things I've been up to the past few months.

I won a Chikara wrestler-re design contest! Here's my favs:

You can see all of the entries and all of the judges comments here: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/06/13/winners-announced-for-re-create-a-wrestler-design-contest-from-chikara-project-rooftop/ This was so cool because I got to read the critiques from some of my personal heroes (Mike Quackenbush included)

Here are some detail shots of a character I recently made. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out:

I'm still working on the dinosaur character models for Easley-Dunn upcoming game:

I did some more art for one of my past professor's card game. He launched a kickstarter for it but it unfortunately didn't meet the goal. He's not quitting however, and I'm hoping it takes off eventually! Here's a piece I actually did of him specifically:

And then in my free time I'm working with a friend to design a few games that we hope to get finished and release in the near future. Here is some concept artwork:

And to top it all off, I got a new job! So I have to pack up and head 3 hours south to a new city. Exciting times!

Recently I've been updating my Tumblr more than anything. Follow me at http://mattmuzzy.tumblr.com/ I tend to post all of my new stuff there before I sit down to put it all into a blog post.

New Site Design

I haven't had a lot of time to work on the snowball kid, but I did do a few animations. The programmer I'm working with has imported these animations into his Unity scene and is currently getting the character to run around and toss snowballs and such. It's pretty awesome to see! I can't wait until we get a working prototype to the point where I can start showing it to people.

Over the past month or so I've been trying to finish up my Jason Frank model. Here are some pictures of [what I'm calling] the finished high poly mesh followed by my current progress with the textured low poly.

The biggest challenge with this (apart from getting his face to resemble the real person... (I've kind of given up in that regard)) is getting all of his tattoos correct. It took a while to ink the outlines to all of these things, but this is as far as I've gotten. I took some liberties with a portion of them; ad-libbing areas, as it were. Since this step of the texturing process, I have halted and proceeded on to rigging; leaving the rest of the texture work alone until I get the whole character posed and animated. Here's a screen-cap of my rigging so far:

I didn't know 3DS MAX bones could squash and stretch, essentially making working muscles! I found that out online and instantly through them into this model. I have only just started the skinning process so I'm still unaware of how well they are going to work. But my fingers are crossed.

The only other thing I've been working on is my new website design. I've had a number of people (most of them professionals) tell me that my current sight doesn't display my work as best as it could. Hopefully my new site will help make my stuff more appealing. This is my design so far:

 

 Above is the home page and then this will be the content pages.

I am trying to organize my work better (separating low poly characters from higher poly ones) and just making everything a lot more accessible. The only thing I have to do now is code it... We'll see how long that takes me.

I'm hoping to get this site finished soon so I can post all of the new models I have. Here are some renders of the new work I've either finished or am currently on working in my free time for Easley-Dunn Games:

This team of dinosaurs is going to be really cool. I'm excited to get back to work on them because I think they are going to end up looking really badass!

I've been rushing to get all of this done because my current job is making it increasingly difficult to have time to devote to this stuff. The sooner I can get my new site online, the faster I can start blasting out resumes to potential game industry employers.

If you are an employer or have a friend in the industry, feel free to pass my information along! It'd be very much appreciated.

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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Dog face

 It's been about a month since I started my venture towards a new demo reel. The boy character is pretty much done and the dog is coming along nicely. I'm trying to make the dog a little cartoony to match the boy, but he's coming off a little goofy looking at the moment. I've been tweaking his proportions for a few days now, but I've decided to move forward and see how he looks after I get some textures going. Next stop though is unwrapping!!  I plan to have the dog done by this weekend and hopefully get both of these characters rigged by next week. The 3 day weekend this week will definitely come in handy!!

Next month will start a new character. Originally it was going to be the Green Ranger, but I have since switched up the roster and this girl will be next in line:

My portfolio is in dire need of some sex appeal, however I've feeling her to be a bit bland as is. I was digging Scarlett Johansson's hair in the newest Avengers movie, so I'm planning on having this character adopt that style of hair. I'm also thinking of adding some large shoulder armor and other ridiculous things to make her silhouette more extreme. On the other hand, I could just bulk up her legs with more  stuff and keep her top half slender. More concepts will be needed for sure.

TeamCoco Flaming C

My Flaming C fan art from my last post made it into the Flaming C gallery in LA during this years ComicCon! Someone snapped a photo of it here http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/07/24/conan-obrien-flaming-c-art-gallery-comic-con-san-diego/?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook

I can finally say I've been in a gallery (sans the one or two times from high school). This is cool though!

Anyway, I'm still building up the portfolio. I have a plan and have been scratching through it, making a little progress here and there. I'll post more stuff once I get it done. I'm also in the middle of a job change which will be extending my morning commute from 6 minutes to 20; and on 95 degree days like we've been having this summer, driving 20 minutes with no AC could be pretty unbearable. But I'll finally be making a fixed salary and have DENTAL!!! PRAISE THE LORD!