And this is the point where Zbrush and I became the best of friends. :). This time I had refrence photos, I started the head model in 3D max, and I remebered to use the symmetery tool, and also I had Colin show me different useful tools to define this man's face. I attacked this little project full on. I think this was the piece that made me sure of what I want to do, which is to improve on my figurative sculpture skills and apply them to characters.

These pictures are of one portrait bust I tried doing from my head. I push and pulled the generic sphere that Zbrush provides you with. It was very different for me coming from a figurative sculpture background in the ways that I can't put my hands into the computer. ;) . But all in all, by the end of class I didn't want to stop. I probably would have had it going faster if only I used the symmetery tool.

Different shots of the final wall

Doing the normal maps and working out the diffuse made this wall come to life. I love seeing the bumps and textures come out of the photoshop painting. Colin showed me alot of awesome techniques and how to play around with the Zbrush interface. It was nice to play with the textures in Zbrush for a couple of days to really get used to the program. Another cool program that Colin showed us was Crazy Bump for the spec maps.

This process was a bit tough for me at first. Thanks to Mondul and Colin, I got the hang of it by the end. It's just alot of information to take in during the two days with Mondul and the other half of it with Colin. This picture is just the start of the wall with Mondul. It was cool to have Modul show us how to paint the textures and using that as a reference helped me out alot. I liked how the colors came out and applying the textures helped out too.

For me, painting in photoshop was a hard to get used to, but was really fun in the end. Keeping up with the layers and then forgetting which layer you used to paint what was frustrating. However, I want to keep practicing and painting new upcoming characters in photoshop. Later on with the column, I really liked painting textures ... especially sculpting them out in Zbrush.

For this part of the assignment, the environment sketches that Martin had us do helped me see all of the ways my character could be applied to an enviroment and how important an environment is in understanding a character.

This is the final character for the Pinocchio. I did a mix of Jiminy Cricket with a Kung fu master during the Boxer Rebellion times. This excerise for developing characters really opened my eyes to how far you can go with a character, when it comes to reworking it and refining the details. I had fun with this pose because I think it defines the personality that my character would have. The best part of this assignment was learning about the use of silhouettes with a character.


Sid's Post:

ps. Any constructive criticism or comments would most appreciated. My email is Smarra22@gmail.com. And thanks to all teachers that were a part of the class. This class was one of the best classes I have taken at MICA. Thank you so much!