CGAA Speed Painting Challenge 19/12/2012

30 minute speed painting with the theme of "Jack Frost's Asylum For Malcontent Snowmen"

Painting 01

I have got a really good start on the painting, I have kept the colour pallet to browns, greens and yellows. This is so it looks mutated and disgusting. I have applied a large amount of specular on certain areas (face and shell) so that it looks wet and slimy.

Sculpting finished

The sculpting process is finished for now, at first I sculpting the model to much and it looked messy. So I started it again and went for a more subtle sculpting. I happy with this at the moment and have looked forward to moving on.

Mudbox 03 High Res detailing start

Mudbox 02

The sculpting process is going swiftly and it has been an interesting part of the pipeline. The spinal pattern on the shell is giving the creature a mutated look because it's unnatural. I'm still working on everything, but soon I will be applying some skin pores and veins.

Mudbox 01

I starting sculpting yesterday and after a few problems and alterations this is where I am at. I'm quite happy at the moment with my first attempt with mudbox. However I have realised how easy it is to just go off and mould something that looks COOL! but has no reference to any previous work, so I'm trying to control myself in this process.

Modelling finished

Modelling is finished now, I'm very happy with the model and looking forward to putting it into mudbox - I'm not looking forward to UV's!

But I hope everyone likes it - let me now what you think.

Modelling 02

The modelling so far

Modelling 01

I just experience the first-sort-of all nighter - I started modelling the creature around 2 o'clock yesterday and really got into it, there was A LOT of problems as I was modelling but I actually enjoyed sorting them out. This lead me to keep modelling until about 6 o'clock this morning.

I have a few screenshots of the process, so I'll show them in their order.

This ofcourse is a big jump straight into the modelling process, and I appologise if anyone wanted to see a steady progress - I was filming as I was modelling but the video frooze near this point!

But on a brighter note, I was happy with where this was going - the overall shape was good and strong - I wasn't a big fan of the bumpy belly which I work into later to get rid of it slightly.

 This was the head but I deleted it because it really wasn't working for me - I know it is only half modelled but the shape annoyed me and it was just best to get rid of it. I realised that this is the way I work, I find loads of possiblities in photoshop but I can never truely find the right one until I see it in 3d - I will however make something amazing when I get around to the head, definitely something really bug like. The head is the selling point for my creature!

This is where I start applying the shell - it was really hard to connect everything correctly but at the moment it looks good.

....And this is basically where I am now - The shell is on and attached - The mesh modelling isn't great but this is just a basic which I will work into now I have it. The arms are on the way and so is the head --- Everything is hotting up!

Creature update

So its been a entire week since I last did anything on the cockroach because my dissertation has taken over and I have really missed it! I'm itching to get past this designing stage now and get a move on to the modelling - I think the design process is almost finished - I have the main frame and shape I just need to sort the face. The colour and detail will come when I have a chance to experiment with it.

So today I have been working on the head, but this time I made sure the body was in the image too so that I can work out how the head would move with the body.

So I had this idea that the mouth would open in four ways, almost like the vampire hybrids in Blade 2, however I didn't see this working - So I had a talk with Alan

He readvised me to keep the curved shapes so that the creature didnt seem rigid - he also advised that sort of simplify the mouth and have one that doesn't open that much. He suggested that I do this beak looking thing that will almost open like the first image. The side one shows the design better I think.

This is a quick outline to show the shape a little better - unfortuantly my painting skills hide the detail.

I thought that the beak thing wasn't really working but the shape wasn't far off - I remembered that I wanted this thing to be really scary!!! so I added massive fang like teeth - I then realised that the this structure in the mouth could stop it from closing his mouth completely and that will lead to dribbling (Which is always cool and disgusting on a creature and what I wanted.)

I then added a couple more pinsers at the bottom of the mouth, and for three reasons - 1. the creature would need them to put the food in it's mouth - 2. the underside of this creature is doesn't have a look on it. - 3. It looks AWESOME!!!

I think I am nearly there, I'm very happy with where I am, my next task is get this in painted form - then colour tests and then I may start painting him in the different scenes because I need to know what he is going to look like from any angle and I need to start looking at location shots for the final image.

Overall study painting

 

 

Here is a quick painting of the overall thoughts with the creature - The head is still a little wrong yet I'm kinda like it, I also added a shell like structure to the base of it for protection against humans.

 

I have finally remembered to put the human silhouette in so that I can judge the height difference.

 

New Head alterations

I'm a little worried about the head at the moment becuase these are looking awful! There is a lot wrong with it, but rather than stating everything that needs fixing, I'm just going to go and sort it out!!

 

Minor Project Interm Pitch

Minor Project Pitch

Number 5 revised

I wanted to do some extra work on the number 5 head because although I really like the shell, I'm not too confident on the face.  So, I'm starting really like the face on the new on now - I like the contours and the extra pinsers that help the bug look.

- My only problem so far is that it is really far from an original cockroach head. That may be a problem or an improvement but I would like to do more designs to polish off any problem I have. I have reallised that the new shell design I have on this head will add some interesting details to the body because the multiple shell must continue throughout.

Number 5 open mouth and side profile

More Head Designs

Head concepts

Here are some of the head designs that I have been doing for the last couple of hours, I believe that this is going great so far, I'm really happy with how they all look. I did start by using fully black silhouettes with a 100% opacity brush but it looked to boring for me to work with. So I cut the brush down to 40% and worked with that - this allowed me to work with the shapes, textures, and light balance that the brush created. Some are a little far from cockroach's original face, however they really work as evil looking killing bugs!

Page one

Page two

Quadruped Rigging Lesson 2

A small leg model and animation

I wanted to play around with a bit of 3d so I modelled a basic leg and them sculted it in Mudbox - then animated it in maya.

Wooooo it's working!!!

This is starting to really work now, I get a real feel that the legs are holding weight and that they are also jointed the right way.

As you can see I have also drawn the creature in the crouched down position which will be used when the creature is going through tight spaces.

Work Update 3

This was supposed to be an improvement but I think I may have let it go a bit. With this drawing, I wanted to fix the direction of the legs, which I think the back and middle legs have worked, but everything else about this creature is awful! the front legs aren't too close to the body and its way to fat! This model may be more suited for the queen.

Work Update 2

I have extended the back legs on this particular form, it makes it look more stable.

Work Update - Sorting out the shape

On my tutorial with Alan, he told me to sort out the base line of the body. I will have to scan in and post up the drawings I have done over the weekend to compare with these. But for me this drawing is working better than the those ones. The drawings I have done over the weekend makes the creature bend the other way, however the problem with this is that the creature looks to circular and somewhat cute.

What I wanted to created via with new bend in the creature is a more creepy and scary structure.

Painted workings

I'm very happy with how this turned out - what im not happy with is the way its painted but I hope my skill will improve.

 

I'm not itching to move on so that I can do more studies from different angles - things are starting to fit into place :)

 

Figuring out what the creature looks like

I have finished making silhouettes and it is time to move on, if I stay on the silhouettes, then nothing would get done. I wanted to go back to the creature that I thought worked really nicely and got many good comments and work from that.

So with this creature I want to add the pieces of the cockroach that defiantly need to be in there and take out all the pieces that isn't needed.

My first step was to go into this ones silhouette and fix the pieces

 

I had a thought pattern when I was doing these silhouettes and that was thinking of the anatomy of both the cockroach and the possible creature. So what I wanted was this creature must be only what it needs! In another post, I mentioned that I wanted the abdomen and shell to defiantly be in there and to be the main focus point.

The legs also took a lot of planning, almost from the beginning of the of the project I have been using these spicky bone like legs and thats mainly because I really liked them when I painted them, and the cockroach legs never looked good enough for the creature.

My original thoughts when I created the first silhouette was that the pinser arm things are the 5th and 6th legs that you would find on a cockroach - but when I did the 5th silhouette I thought that I would try and see what it would look like when the creature had 6 main legs aswell as the pinser arm, however it looked a little weird. With number 6 I wanted to extend the arms so that the creature can use them as stabbing weapons but also the creature can lean over and use them as extra legs for more speed.

I picked number 6 and did some small line work and things are getting very exciting!!! In number one I tried to use the face from the original piece because I like the whole insectiod pinsers. In number 2 I tried to bring the cockroach face in and then make it mutantly disgusting.

So here I have picked number two and I have annotated the areas that I have imported from studying the cockroach closer.



My next task

What I will be doing next is going into this silhouette and paint so details and possibly some colour. I'm not entirely happy with the face some some new studies will defiantly come in handy with that.

I also would like to get some different angles sorted because we can't see the abdomen that well and that will take some thinking about for the modelling stage.

@ Alan

Hey Alan just a quick question - Where do I find that CG community website that we all signed up to yesterday?

Thank you in advance.

Maya Lesson Quadruped Rigging

Cockroach Studies

Dissected the Cockroach for a design

I realised that most of my designs are quite far from the cockroach anatomy, so I want to bring it back a little. I have also got a little inspired by the cockroach walk cycle, it has made me want to create a more precise creature.

So I took an image of the bottom of the cockroach and decided on the areas that I liked, from this image you can see that I like the abdomen, shell, and legs - I don't really like the head too much, I fell like it's a little too 'cute'. However I will work on manipulating the head to work with the whole frame.