Demo Reel 2010 Thoughts

As I type I'm rendering out the first shot for my new demo reel. It's been 3 years since I've put out one. My instructors recommended in college that we should put one out every 6 months. I'm wondering how that's even possible if you're working as much as I am.

Regardless I do have time now and this is long over due. It feels great to finally be creating some renders. I decided for this reel that I work just concentrate on a characters. My original reel is very general and shows a little bit of everything. I think coming out of college you need that. At this stage in my career though, I want to get away from that and really show what I am capable of as a character artist.

I'm doing three character sections: Togo-Next Gen Character (High & Low Poly), Secret Agents (Low Poly), and Creature (Have not narrowed down this slot yet).

I want to be able to show off not only the models but the variation of styles, shaders, texturing, and workflow. What hurt me with my original reel is that I was thinking of it too cinematically. I naturally want everything to feel like a film. It wasn't until after I made it that I realized it should feel more like a tech demo. This is what I was missing. Showing potential employers how I think and how I put the characters together. So I aim to fix that this time around.

I still have plenty to create and assemble for this, but I should be done this month if I don't catch too many snags along the way.

Once I'm finished I will either move on to an environment/prop reel or go on to finishing up one of the various shorts I started. I'd like to do the latter of the two, but that all depends on my current state of employment.

Ah, also I'm working in HD for the first time with the reel. It's taking up a HUGE amount of space on my hard drive, but the resolution is well worth it. I can't wait for this 22 hour render to finish so I can begin to composite the first shot!

Medieval Character Designs

Just a quick update since it's getting late. I'm working on a team project at the moment. I'm working as the lead artist, creating around 20 characters in total. Here is a quick glimpse at two of the finished characters.

Snowed In

Nothing says "blizzard" like a fallen frosty tree outside your bedroom window.

Shaken, Not Stirred

These are a couple characters I created for a canceled Wii title called "Secret Agent."

I was extremely excited about this game's art style. It was inspired by the original Casino Royale film, James Bond, and The Incredibles. These were some of the most challenging models I've work on because they are so low poly. Each one is around 3,000 tris...which isn't very much. A lot of the detail had to be created with the texture maps. But I'm really happy with the way they came out. It's a shame that you won't be able to play the game, but you can take a look at what would have been.

Eye Candy

I am finally happy with Togo's eyes. After a lot of research and some trial and error I think I've arrived with a result that looks good. I had this moment when I thought, "If I do any more tweaking I'll lose his character." I ended up re-modeling the eye completely. Cornea, iris, pupils, whites...all over again to really get the correct shape. Then I also modeled tear ducts, which I completely over looked. It made a huge improvement.

I'll never forget to do that again!

But after this, the character really came to life. It ended up being more of a modeling issue then a texture issue. I kept changing the textures but realized after a while that I was not getting the right highlights in the right areas.

The whites of the eye ended up as a SSS material. The iris was a little tricky. For that I used a falloff map (with texture bitmaps) and found that if I added a slight self illumination gradually increasing is it gets further away from the camera...it made for a good effect. It makes Togo look real.

I also created a rig for the eyes so I could move them around and make the pupils dilate as well. I find that this helps because a character never keeps their eyes stationary anyway. You can see the light play on different surfaces of the eye.

So for now, I'm happy with it. I'm going back for one more "grit" pass on the his body texture map. He's still a little too clean and not aged enough. After this I have a couple props to make for him. Hopefully I'll be animating and rendering him for the new demo reel next week.

"Some Where, Beyond The Sea..."

...I present to you, my new Art Deco Jelly Logo.

Eyes Are The Window....

We've all heard that before, and continue to hear that throughout our lives, applied to many different things. Poetry, photographs, watching other humans to see if they are lying, or to see the truth in their words.

I have to to realize just how important this sentence is to an artist. There is something there, behind eyes, that tells us a soul is within. A light. A glow. A burning desire to live. Our bodies are really just shells, and our eyes are no different. Yet the thing that fills them is so intangible. It is hard to grasp exactly what makes us look human.

In 3D space, I can not simply click a button that says, "Add Soul" ,although imagine how wonderful that would be! Instead I have to study and analyze everything in the eyes. The pupils, cornea, iris, the small beads of liquid tears hiding within the eye's duct. The way in which light plays off of each anatomical surface. Reflecting and refracting. But yet sometimes after all those things are done, we still miss the point. We can not quite grab that element that breathes life into the puppet.

I am in that stage right now. Togo as a character is very complex. And his eyes will tell many things about him. All the struggles and pain, his own selfishness to be accepted, yet his monstrous nature that he is unable to contain. The task ahead of me is large. How do I show all of these things? An eye is an eye. We have all seen them illustrated in anatomy books. By themselves they are mostly all similar. Yet when that eye is in a persons head, it completely changes.

Togo is also not completely human. He is slightly frog like. And so that complicates this further. Changing the eye to become more frog-like makes him more into a monster, when the point is only to make him vaguely frog like.

So I will continue to experiment and analyze, over and over. Trying to find that which makes us look alive.