Saddled animal: Retopping and Unwarping UV

 Process

The retopping of the jerboa took me quite some time to finish. Mostly due to how slowly I added more and more loops which cause the legs to mess up a lot when using the relaxed tool. But I eventually fixed it for it to work and the rest of the retopping was just slow steps that require a lot of patients.

Importing to 3dsMax and scaling it up to a reasonable size. 

Starting with a ring around the body, I slowly build up and use relax tool to warp the loops around the high poly

The tail was a bit tricky and caused a lot of triangulations and overlapping vertex after relaxing the surface.

After getting one side done, I symmetry it and relax the mesh to fit on top of highpoly.

The body of the Jerboa is done!

The saddle was tricky to get right as it was sculpted up with blobs and irregular mesh instead of building it in 3dsMax

Putting both of them together

making a small lamp for an asset.

Final Piece

UV unwrap

The body UV

The Head UV

The Saddle

The lamp asset

Composition in Portrait. Colour Aesthetics and Drawing Techniques

During this week I was away, so I did not manage to use life figures in the studio that the class provided. Instead, I beg for my sister to be my life model. During this week's task. I have to produce two observational studies of a model – one in cold, and one in warm colours.

Process - Cold colour

I start my sketch with light pencil because colour pencils are much harder to erase and I do not what to make mistakes I can not undo.

After sketching with a pencil (only shapes and main details), I draw over details with cold colour. Erasing the pencil after this process.

I added weight lines and basic shading. Her shirt is already blue which is easy for me to colour them in before using other cold colours to it.

I use purple and cream for her skin to control the colour tone and keep the picture in the cold colour scheme. Because her hair is a gradient of black to blonde, instead of yellow, I use light blue as the colour of the hair.

I finalize the picture with other cold colour such as shades of blue, purple, and white.

Final Piece

Process - Warm Colour

As for the warm colour picture, I make her pose in a different pose and start off with a light sketch of the

Because purple is both in warm and cold colour scheme, I use purple to line the sketch this time in hope I can achieve the same effect as the cold pallet drawing.

I sketch the rest of the figure with colour pencil and erase pencil guidelines

I started with the skin colour because her skin has a lot warmer tones it is easier for me to just colour what I see in front of me.

However, I think I used too much of an original colour than the cold colour pallet which caused the aesthetic to be different and in the end, I was not sure how to add more red to set the same aesthetic for these two pictures.

Final Piece

Overall, I am very proud of how the drawing turned out. My concept for this task is I will use the cold pallet on a softer pose to indicate that the picture is cool and cute while the warm colour pallet expressed the happiness that radiates from the model.

Boss Battle Arena: Colour iterations

The colour iteration of the stage was rather hard for me to grasp but I try to explore as many pallets as I can to see which one fits while still maintaining the colourful aesthetic of the circus while still having it in a more scary feels to it.

 

I try to use both warm colour pallets and cold pallets to balance the tone out.

Renaissance and the Golden Dutch Age. Focus on Portrait

During this week I was away, so I did not get to follow instructions and live models. I meet up with my sister and use her as a live model instead. This week's task is to create a tonal study of a model live. I use Charcoal as my main medium with charcoal pencils used to clean up the edges.

Process

I started with a quick sketch of the overall shape. I find myself doing this rather quickly from how used to seeing my own sibling's face almost every day.

I added the details and clean up the sketch underneath.

With the powder from the charcoal. I smudge and rub them in as the base of the drawing, creating mid-tone before using the charcoal to shade in the darkest part of her hair.

when it comes to the shadow on her face, I find it difficult to control the smudging and I make a lot of mistakes that a simple erasing would not work. So, I took this as a lesson and continue rendering with smaller details instead of using the wide surface to cover everything and smudge.

I use the smudge sticks and dip them in the powder I shave off from the charcoal pencil to swirl and create a fluffy texture for the scarf. It works better in my head but I think it was because I draw too fast to get them all in time.

Final Piece

Despite a lot of mistakes, I find smudging the powder to use as a mid-tone to be effective. But I should not smudge the darker shadow and take time with it using a sharp pencil. I understand my sister's facial structure from this task and hopefully, in the future, I can draw her more to accurately capture her character.

Saddled animal: Zbrush Modeling

The Jerboa

It start of pretty great after the base sculpture. My hand some little boy. (it does get better)

I smooth him out after building him up with clay tool.  

most of my progress is using  IMM primitives and sculpting in to it.

I added in the tail and using smudge and pull to create fluff on the end of the tail

The Saddle

To create a saddle, I started by using mask to create cloth that the saddle would stay on and extrude it.

The saddle is slowly build and sculpt with primitives and clay brush 

The straps are later added with extrude

The hook are created with boolean tool to carve out the circle shape easily

and my son is done!

The Fur

I struggled with the pattern of the fur a lot, each time I remake the stamp seems to make the fur too detailed and I can not make the consistency of the fur to be fluffy and cute 

For example, the experiment below makes the fur stamp looks like wrinkly skin.

So i resorted to minimal approach with few small strands that stands out with height 

It was a success!

Finalized

I finalized and created patterns on the saddle further for the bake so I would not have to hand drawn the details in to the saddle. I am very content with the result.