Play Around with Wario Renders

Wario Posed

Finished rigging Wario and thought I would share a quick pose.  It's refreshing to see him with his arms down.

Texture Update

This one is a test of what I'm thinking I'll do with the eyes.  They'll be completely white and illuminate once covered in shadows.  The hat brim shapes were deliberately designed so lights from above would hit the nose but cast a shadow over the eyes.

Wario Texture Pass & Family

Luigi & Mario Normal Maps

Meet The Family...

Now that all the characters are modeled, I'll tweak them a bit to achieve a nice cohesive balance to their designs.  So far they all have strong silhouettes, which is nice:

If anything, Wario's shape could use a little more love.  His side view is the least appealing of the three characters.  Anyway,  I'm making progress.  I'm feeling that texturing might be the next step.

Wario

I thought I would take a moment this morning to post some progress on Wario.  I still have a few more hours of work to get all the details I want into the face, but you overall facial structure is here.  Below are some sketches I made of him before modeling.  Like Luigi, I didn't have a complete character rotation for Wario.  I'm winging the side view.  I deviated from my concepts a little bit with moustache and added the "lightening bolts". I wanted to carry that design over from the original Nintendo Wario.  

I'm imagining Wario to be a tall pugilistic type of character.  When I model his body I'll be looking at standing bears for inspiration.

Luigi, Completed Model

I finished modeling Luigi.  Here are some renders of the mesh.  I'm planning on going back and doing some texture work later but I'd like to move on to Wario before I do that.  I think the next step is to get all the brothers completed and adjust their textures together so they look a bit more cohesive.

Luigi's Body WIP

Quick update of Luigi's body blocked out.  The nice part here is that I've been able to use some of the geometry from Mario (reshaped of course).

Luigi's Head

Spent a little time on Luigi tonight and was able to finish the head mesh.  I purposely gave him sharper angles than Mario to give them some contrast when they stand next to one another.

Mass Update

I thought I would drop by and update the blog really quick...so hello everyone!  I'm just about wrapping on the big website/resume/blog/linkedin updating push.  It's been a real journey for me during the last week.  I actually can't believe how fast all the different pieces came together.

They say (whoever "They" is) that you should update your demo reel every 6 months.  While this sounds like a no brainer, in reality it's difficult to keep up with. Life always finds a way of intervening with your art.  Also when you work an insane amount of hours the last thing you want to do is come home and work on your demo reel.

But moving forward I definitely want to make more of an effort to do this.  The last time I made a demo reel was 2007 and for years my old reel sat around while my art progressed, mostly off the grid.  This new reel displays my talents much better.  It's format is almost much more friendlier to updates.  The template allows me to just swap in new characters in place of older ones.  Atleast until I do a major change to the format.

I'm also thinking that I would like to either do an environmental art reel or a generalist reel.  I have enough stuff that I think it would be kind of fun to put it on display.  Environments are really fun to render because you can move through them (the down side to rendering characters).

I also made a plan for new pieces that don't include any of the new Mad Mario stuff.  These are brand new and will be made to display very particular skills.  So look for news on that in the future.  For now, check out a shorter cut of the demo reel: http://www.dennisflath.com/projects/4452321#1
  

Website!

And now, I'd like to present......

http://www.dennisflath.com

I finally have a dedicate website up to host my work beyond blogger.  It feels great to get all my work collected and visible for potential clients to see.  I'm honestly having a great time looking through my portfolio and selecting the best work to display.  When I was in college, it was a real struggle to get enough work up there to showcase my skills.  It really is nice to be able to sort though a large portfolio and only select the best of the best.

On a completely personal level, it's a thrill to look at all I've done and feel proud for each piece of artwork (despite the flaws that are so hard for me NOT to see). I'm truly able to see the work for what it is.  I'm also able to see where I need to improve.

When I feel more comfortable with the website, I'll move on to a new short character project before returning to Mario.  I'm looking forward to both!

So check out the site.  I hope you enjoy!

Luigi-Continued

Just a quick update of the head. I filled in the gaps a bit.  Here you can see me working out the profile...trying to get it into an interesting shape.  The addition of the eyebrows and beard are making this look closer to the original concept, which is great.

I'm also intentionally trying to work a bit of Beaker into him :)

Luigi

I've been doing some texture painting and sculpting at the office so I'm taking a little break from the Wacom tablet and using the mouse while at home.  I'll finish up young Mario in a few weeks.  In the mean time I'll be jumping onto Luigi.  I created several dozen sketches for him and really liked the design below.  (As a side note, all the characters and environments I intend to create for "Mad Mario" were concepted out sometime last year.  I'm holding off on posting each one until I work on the model.)

Luigi is a bit of an innocent in comparison to Mario.  He was fun to design since his shape and personality is the complete opposite from Mario.  I didn't bother to created a full rotation of the character in 2D.  I'm comfortable enough to go straight into 3D to work out the other views.  I thought I'd give you a glimpse into this process below since it's some what unconventional and a method I don't use too often.

I always start with the head when I don't have all the necessary concept images (front, side, back, etc.)  What you're looking at is a few "strips" of polygons that I've used to outline the basic shape of the head.  This helps me to work out the proportions as well as set up the edge flow of the geometry.  I love this method since I can see the entire character's head in about an hour.  

From here I begin to stitch the different landmark areas together (eyes, mouth, ears, nose, and jaw).  You can see it's taking on a similar flow to your facial muscles.  This is intentional and becomes very important for animation.  Setting this topology flow from the start is essential.  

 Here I begin to focus on the eye shape, socket, and the zygomatic & zygomatic arch.  I enlarged the eyes slightly here.  Even though the size matched my reference, they looked a little too small and plain.  This type of deviation from a reference image is necessary at times.  Often 2D drawings don't translate well to 3D or they loose their appeal.  When doing personal work like this, I don't hesitate to make big changes like this.  

I also added the moustache here.  This addition brings out more of his personality.  It also brings the face together more for me.  From here I'll fill in all the gaps you see left and move on to the hair.  

So theres a small look inside how I'm creating Luigi.  I've used this method for all the characters in "Mad Mario" thus far.

Detail Update

Getting a little more into the details here.  Most of the time was spent on the hair.  I end up using a lot of stitching and filters to get a somewhat painterly look to look to the hair. One of the visual pillars of this project is never going too cartoonish or too realistic.  It's always somewhere in the middle.

I've been reading "The Hobbit" again for the dozenth time.  That's melting a little into the character, since Mario is taking on a slight Bilbo appearance.  I'm embracing since I feel like young Mario is also somewhat innocent and aloof. 

Also something worth of note is the eyes.  That's the very first bit of detailing I do to characters, especially with children models.  It sets the entire tone of the character.  I always recommend working that out from the start.

Young Mario Base Color

Got a little time in tonight on the texture.  Mostly "under the hood" UV and ambient occlusion cleanup work.  However I made enough progress that my base hues have been chosen. I figured I would try to update a little more often with young Mario so you could see my process in a bit more detail.

The red and brown look of the original Super Mario (NES) was always interesting to me.  They switched him over to red and blue clothes later on.  Since I'm telling a darker origin story, I want to get back to those warmer colors.

I'll tackle all the texture details at the same time (face, clothes, boots, pants, etc.) however the head is where most of my time will go.  Children are very difficult to texture because they have such soft features.  My approach this time around will be to concentrate on the pinks and reds where the fatty tissue is.  You can already see part of this with the ears.  The nose and cheeks are next. 

Doing The Time Warp

Hey everyone, really quick update.  I finished young Mario's model sometime shortly after my last post.  Unfortunately the hand-me-down PC that I was donated kicked the bucket and I was without one for a while.  However I'm back up and running (with a new PC might I add!).

I'm all setup for texturing the character now.  Should be pretty smooth sailing from here.  The base texture is all worked out.  I just need to play with the colors and detail it up.

Young Mario Compared to Old Mario

The fun part of this is making a character at two stages of his life in 3D.  I love trying to make young Mario look like old Mario while still retaining that baby face.  I have to say, I'm really looking forward to making Luigi and the rest of Mario's extended family.  That's all I'll say for now.

I'm Back...Also Young Mario

I now have a brand new computer that was donated to me by an extremely generous friend. After MONTHS of being without a computer at home, I'm finally back up and running again.

During my down time, I attempted to take a little break from art. Of course, as an artist, I'm unable to completely turn off the brain. I continued to work out ideas in my sketchbooks. I'm happy to report that most of Mad Mario is now completely concepted out; there's very little left to be designed.

I tossed back and forth trying to determine if I would move forward with it in 2D or 3D. I love the raw nature of sketching and have grown found of these characters in their 2D form. I do, however, get very overwhelmed when thinking about how much would actually need to be drawn, inked, and colored.

So I settled on 3D for several reasons.

1.My primary motivation was that once I create a 3D asset, I'll never have to draw it again. I can reuse it as much as I want and never have to worry about perspective or drawing off model.

2. I'll have complete freedom of camera angle. I can essentially "play" with the shot and come to compositional ideas I didn't think about in 2D.

3. Once I start to build enough of a 3D library, I'll be able to start kit bashing (re-using existing pieces as a starting point) and production will be much faster.

I started the long walk forward. I have a pretty good task list scheduled out. Young Mario happens to be the first on my list.

Yes, that's right! YOUNG Mario!

He couldn't possibly have been born mad!

I was actually able to reuse Mad Mario's pants, boots, and hands for young Mario with a little tweaking. I'm only a few hours into this, but I'm making a lot of progress. The head is fairly straight forward, since he's so close to adult Mario. The area around the nostrils is a little tricky. I had to delete a few attempts already. I'll revisit it again after building up the zygomatic bone a little more.

I think it's going to be several months before you see the first finished "panel." In the meantime, I'll try to keep this updated with my progress so you can check it out!

Ocarina of Time

It's been quite a while since my last post. For anyone following my on Twitter, you will know that I have been extremely busy working on "Deepak Chopra's Leela" during the last 18 months. Since that has been such a large part of my life recently I'd like to blog about it, however the game is not yet finished and I need a little more time to reflect on that experience before sharing that with you.

Last month I bought a 3DS for the sole purpose of playing the rerelease of "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time." Ocarina is actually my favorite game of all time. That might seem surprising to you considering how much Super Mario art I create. The Zelda series doesn't need a parody. This series is perfect to me and stands alone without artistic interpretation.
At any rate, I've been replaying the game again recently so I thought I would share some of my personal feelings regarding Ocarina. This was not the first Zelda game I played, although it's the first one that I owned and finished. My relatives and neighbors had the previous titles but I didn't spend more than an hour with them. I did however watch the TV series growing up, so I had a general idea of what Zelda was about. I understood that it was about Link, a teenage boy from the fantasy land of Hyrule, that must rescue Princess Zelda from the evil Gannon. Armed with a sword, shield, and bow, Link fights his way through a bunch of creatures, some castles, and ultimately Gannon to reclaim Zelda.
Ocarina came out on the Nintendo 64 when I was in 8th grade. Pretty much all of my friends were playing it as soon as it was out. For whatever reason I was late to the game. At the time 007: Goldeneye and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron were the two big titles for me. After hearing about it for a year, general curiosity made me interested in Zelda.
I had never played an RPG before Zelda. My understanding of games were very limited at the time. I played arcade games, shooters, flight sims, racing, and fighting games, and platformers. I had no idea what a role playing game was. I was very shocked the first time I turned on the game. The first thing that was odd was being asked a named when I started. I figured this would be the game of my saved profile, so I entered "Dennis." To my surprise that ended up being my character's name!
Before I was able to play the game, a lengthy movie played introducing me to the story. Later I would learn to call these "cinematics," and they would become one of my favorite parts of video games.
Once I did have control of my character and figured out how to walk around Kokiri Forest, I was amazed to learn that I didn't have to follow a set path. Although I was told to go see the Great Deku Tree by my fairy Navi, I didn't have to. I could walk around and talk to the other child-like Kokiri. I was free to walk into their houses and break their jars. I could steal their money or their hearts. I could wander anywhere I wanted in the forest and make up my own games...like doing back flips off of a fence.

Frankly I was intimated by the vastness of an open world that didn't force me into a liner progression. It was completely freeing and oddly terrifying. What if I got lost? Or stuck not know what do to? Would my actions or inactions have a consequence? I felt as if I was some how going to break the game. After a few hours of playing I put down the game and got a strategy guide.
I've reflected on that decision heavily throughout my life. I wonder if I would have enjoyed the game more having to discover everything myself. But theres a part of me that was happy I did that because I was free to just walk through the game and enjoy it without being scared or frustrated at my progression. Even now I get frustrated at a game's puzzle or difficulty, often putting it down for days or weeks, dreading revisiting that particular challenge. And if it's a poorly designed challenge, it skews my confidence of the overall game design and warps my opinion of the experience. I think I'm glad I did this. After all, I didn't know how to play an RPG. I had to learn how to play the game.
This was my first experience with The Elements. Forest, Fire, Water, Light, Shadow, and Spirit. Not only were they talked about in a mythological sense, but I experienced them first hand. My character had to go into Temple for each element and defeat a boss that represented the element. It was the first time that I noticed that the world, our Earth in fact, was symbolically made of these elements. Not only that, but also noticing that mythological stories throughout time used this same elemental archetype. That was a pretty deep realization to have made while playing the game. That was the spark that actually made me interested in studying mythology, not Star Wars.

Time Travel. When I started the game I had no idea that I would travel through time, although the title suggests it. Or rather, I did not think that time travel would be as "epic" was it turned out to be. As a child, Link is told to go to the Temple of Time and retrieve The Master Sword. You assume this is going to help you defeat Gannon, who is after Zelda. Once you find the sword and take it out the stone, you are "frozen" for 7 years. During this time you mature into a teenager while Gannon destroyed Hyrule in your absence. Whats really powerful about this is that the world really is completely destroyed when you arrive back after 7 years. Everything is crushed and burning, zombies roam the old market place. Hyrule castle is gone and Gannon's floating fortress hovers over a chasm of swirling lava.
To me, this felt like my fault. I left the world and because I didn't stop it Hyrule is gone. It's explained that this needed to happen but you really don't want this to. So in a sense, you are even emotionally engaged in the world because it's your responsibility to correct it.

The characters are sad. Not all of the characters are sad. In fact they are mostly happy. But as you play through the game, most characters only have one animation and three lines of dialogue. So they do the same thing over and over again though your 40+ hour play though. It's a little sad to see them always in the same place, never really doing anything differently, unless you time travel. In that case, they are either the same, dead, missing, or their futures have dramatically altered...usually for the worse. To me, it's like seeing someone you knew from high school 7 years later working in the same fast food place, still living with their parents. Its sad that they're unable to change. It's also unfortunate that theres probably not much you can do to help them.
With a game as big as Ocarina, there's a ton to talk about, but for now that's what I'm thinking about during my 20-somethingth play through. Maybe I'll drop a few more random thoughts on here as I think of them.

Wario Design Adjustments and Mad Mario Update

After I created the concept image for Wario, I placed Mario in the same image and began making some minor adjustments to each character. These little tweaks helped bring about some unity. I thought I would share this with everyone.

I also thought I would update you all on the overall Mario project. I currently have the entire Mad Mario story outline complete. I've been over it with a fine toothed comb and finally have it in a place that I'm very happy with. Its been extremely difficult but well worth the trip.

Each night I have been sitting down to a notebook and work on 2 to 3 pages of the script. So far I'm done Act 1 (out of 3) and have moved on to Act 2. As I'm working on writing, I'm typing up what I have so far, editing, and plan on sharing the story with several friends for feedback.

This has been a real creative journey. What started out as a fun, quick, artistic experiment has become something very deep and personal to me. I'm committed to bring my vision of these characters to life and don't feel that I can tell any other story until I get this off my chest.