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!