Zelda Items Redesign

The task was to redesign three items from the Legend of Zelda series.  I chose items from Link to the Past; the mirror, the fire rod, and the grappling hook.

The grappling hook was the most obvious of the items. I imagined how they might work internally, and for each of the designs, I tried to show that in the silhouette.  The fire rod was simply trying to decide how to represent a rod that can form fire.  Two were magical, and two were more mechanical.

The mirror, I thought was the most clever.  The purpose of the mirror is to send you into the past, a sort of alternate dimension.  In each of my mirror designs, I made sure the mirror could swivel; the idea being, when shifting to the other world, Link looks into the mirror, then turns the mirror surface around, shifting the world around him.

More Bouncing Ball Animations

Here are my first two animations for FIEA.  It ended up being a bit of a review, so I tried to make it interesting.  The first one was a basic ball bounce.  On the second one, I wanted to play with overlapping action, so I did the quintessential tail ball.




I used a program called Plastic Animation Paper.  It is like a digital animation light table.  You can get it for free from their website.  I used it last year for planning out 3D animations, and I highly recommend it.

Lutra Modeling WIP - Part Two

EDIT: I've moved this project to a permanent hiatus.  Perhaps I will revisit Lutra one day, but for now, I'm focusing on other projects.

Finished up a lot of the body, and face is started

I feel like I might be using too many polys in the body, since it really is quite simple.  Perhaps I need to alter the silhouette a bit, but that will come after I finish the head and hair.  That will be where a load of the silhouette comes from already.

Lutra Modeling WIP - Part One

I finally got a chance to work on the model, as the summer is drawing to a close.  I had some 3D 'sketches' done (in blue), but almost all of the actual modeling progress was done today.  Between full time work, a car crash, and moving, I've had little time to really sit down and model, so today has been really refreshing.  For now, I have this teaser.

I do want to say, Max is very nice for hard-edge modeling, but it feels great to be back in Maya.  I do like hard-edge and organic modeling, but I think I slightly prefer the latter.

D&D Campaign Session Sketches

These are notecard sketches I did during our first four sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.  These are events that happened during the adventure.  I have my own Nassa the Gnome, Robert playing Norgar the Human (Vryloka), and Cole playing Audrik the Dwarf.

If you're interested in following along, I've been taking notes and uploading them to D&D Short Tales.

Elephental Disaster Beat Boards

I just discovered these old beat boards when organizing my files.  For old work, I'm still pretty happy about it.  Click the images to make them bigger, and check out more information here!

Nassa the Gnome - Final

I just finished my Nassa the Gnome mini!  Unfortunately, our DM couldn't play this week, so I got to work on this instead.  I added the clothes in on Wednesday, and I went over to Sean's today (Thursday) to finish up.

I got some Super Sculpey Firm, to see what it was like, and it ended up making the head a lot easier.  It still wasn't perfect, especially because I barely left any armature up there, but I was able to hack it together long enough to bake it.  The Firm Sculpey did really help keep enough details in there for baking (as opposed to the regular Sculpey.)  From there, I did a bunch of Xacto-carving to refine the details.  And in the last step, I added the ears, hands, and daggers.

In the end, I'm quite happy with it, largely because it is so ridiculously small, but mostly because the pose is so twisty and dynamic.  The clothes really accent the turn, and the arms have a real attitude to them.  I'm having so much fun with this; I think my next one will be around 3" using Sculpey firm, and I'm getting excited to try ProCreate in the near future.

My next step is to paint this handsome gentleman and fine lady, and then give them fancy bases.  That macro lens really makes them look gritty, but it will all be cleaned up in the next versions.

Nassa the Gnome - WIP

I must say, she was quite fun to play last week.  She's a Gnome, who wears elven clothes, and appears to be some sort of rogue - appears to be.   I'm really looking forward to the next Dungeons and Dragons session.

But since I wasn't running the dwarf, I had to sculpt a new character.  I started this little piece today at Sean's place.  I was actually able to get some good progress shots on this one.  She's quite difficult to work on because she's even smaller than the dwarf, currently at about 20mm.

It also doesn't help that I'm using regular Super Sculpey modeling clay.  Sean mentioned Sculpey Firm might be a little easier for me to work with.  Nonetheless, using my multiple-bake layer method seems to work alright.  I just have to do a bit of Xacto work in there as well.  I don't work fast enough for the 2 hour window using ProCreate or Green Stuff... yet.

 Armature ready after two tries.

In-progress shots.  The clothing layer will be the next session.

 The sketches I was working off of for the character's designs.

Loren the Dwarf - Sculpt Complete

He's sculpted, baked, and ready for painting.

I used a method of baking and working in layers.  I made the base body, oven baked it for a short time, and used an Xacto knife to shape him a bit better.  Then I did the armor and cape, and baked it so it wouldn't fold.  The final step was the head, hands, feet, and bow.  I accidentally broke the a piece of the cape at this point, but it was fixable by cutting off a little more.  I had no clue how I was going to manage the head while working on it, but it ended up coming together well.

The funny thing is that I ended up rolling a different character to fit into the group better.  On the downside, I don't get to use this handsome piece, or the cool Scottish accent I've been working on.  But on the other side, I get an excuse to make another one!

Trumpet model - Final

I've been sitting on this for several weeks now.  I originally planned on UV'ing and normal mapping this, but I think I'm ready to call it done so I can move on.  Especially with me working 40 hrs a week modeling/texturing/UVing, I don't really want to come home to the same style of work; I'm ready to work on my character model for this summer.

I merged most of the pipes.  Then, I just applied a blinn shader to the parts, and added it to my archives.  Now its time to move on to bigger and brighter things!