WIP: bit more work

Nothing else done to it at the moment apart from adding the start of the dress.  I'm basically just using tongiht to kill time until my son goes back to school on wednesday if I'm honest.  So everything still subject to changes.

Thoughts on Opinions of all 3d Female Models

Work in Progress

As you can see above I'm currently working on a type of model that is a rare thing for me, a female sculpt.  (Don't worry she'll be wearing something soon enough) .  There's a reason I don't usually do them, female sculpts that is that I figured was perfect to cover in a blog.

Now a female 3d model suffers from something that just about no other 3de subject matter does.... the attraction of the viewer, what he (if a straight male) finds attractive, unattractive and pleasing not just to his eye but in some cases to his groin.  How many times for example have you seen crits on female sculpts that often descend into 'I like bigger breasts', or ' I don't like the pointy chin', etc etc?  I'm not referring to everyone here, but there are a lot who treat feamle 3d models like a virtual edition of playboy.

When was the last time anyone said 'I don't like this orc as he needs a bigger penis'? Or 'You know I really prefer my orcs to be more female looking and with larger pectorals and a firmer bum'?  But somehow treating a female 3d model as almost like a virtual beauty parade is somehow deemed acceptable.  Is it as it is still a male dominated profession? (judging by the views on my YouTube videos alone 95% are males). 
 

We don't see females in our industry complain  that a male sculptures knob is too small or he is not toned enough.   (Although that would maybe make a point far better than this article ever can.)

But for males it seems to be just natural.  THIS is the reason I hate doing a female model as it is less about the model itself and more about what the male looking at it finds attractive or aesthetically pleasing.

So why am I doing it? Simply as if I do not included one once in a while people assume I cannot do them.  It may seem strange that while my work often skirts the daemons from the 7th level of hell that I don't agree with objectifying women, or treating them purely as objects for visual gratification.  So  while this will 'say' something artistically once complete, it may not be what you would expect.  

So yes I do have a line that I do not cross, I expect some to disagree with that, but hey it'd be a boring world if we all agreed.  But I always stand by my principles whether others agree with me or not.   No point having principles if they are the same as everyone else.  So yes I would like to see less objectifying of women in 3d models and see them treated exactly the same as a male model or a one of a orc riding a space goat from mars.  Its all just polygons.... or we could just all moan about breast sizes and continue as is lol.

Beavering away

Yes time to drag the cathedral out again.

Started this about 5 years back, thus making it longest model to be recoverd out of mothballs

As I've been quietly working away on stuff for my next reel, I thought I'd show a few images of stuff that's both going to make it, and stuff that isn't.  Although I won't make a final decision on anything until I've got everything rendered out, both that I'll use and not use.

Although I am now after 3 weeks of rendering stuff out getting very sick of seeing my models go round and around lol.   Now usually this is the point that I start getting bored and do crazy stuff that people don't usually put in their demo reels, like the intro 'profile' stuff on the old Autodesk masters reel, or the hand sculpted environment stuff on the last one.  its anyone's guess if I will keep it sane and sober or start doing off the wall stuff lol.  

Wish I could lose weight...but not this much.

 Although judging by my latest work in progress I may well be starting  to edge towards the latter. (yes he will be in a ballet pose in the reel lol).  he actualy was at one point going to be my version of 'Mr Hyde' but thought 'hey ya know what? I'm always doing scary shit, so lets try something a bit less scary this time' lol.   Although a brute in a ballet tutu may still be its own special kind of scary on  several levels actually.

Go on laugh in his face, I dare ya lol

There is of course time for me to trash the whole damn lot and start over (it wouldn't be the first time I did that).  I'm trying to make sure  for once I do not rush anything so nothing shown here is 100% done with the exception of the cathedral.

Some Advice On Demo Reels

It's that time of year again...  The time when I look at my current reel through finger covered eyes and cringe.  That's mainly as each year, like every artist your older work doesn't live up to your current stuff.  It's also means trying to get footage etc out of this last 12 months clients that I can use in my reel.  now if that goes the way it usually does, then by the time they actually clear me to use it, it'll either be too late, or I'll have better stuff to use by then.

It's time to fire up the render engines and start rendering some of the hellishly long render times I have ahead of me.  I can't say I like that as it turns my office into a sauna.  I'm rendering everything on a single machine as I cannot afford to tie up both (or my 'spare'...mainly as my 'spare' is missing a graphics card at the moment lol.)  I also like to keep a machine clear even when works thin on the ground for doodles and making special things for a reel.  I always like to throw a couple of things in that haven't been widely seen.

My Advice for What its Worth:

Its less about making a reel people will go 'wow' over in the 3d industry, but more a reel that people who actually hire me go 'wow' at.  as nice as you all are, you don't pay my wages so on that side of things a client or prospective clients opinion is far more important.  For those just starting out making their 1st or 2nd reel I'll advise one thing.  Forget what other artists think of you on seeing your reel.  They do not pay your wages and are your direct competitors.

You have to make a choice right at the start when your mkaing a demo reel, are you want to impress other artists, or protential clients?  If it is for clients then modesty is for another time, not for a reel that has the sole purpose of selling yourself.  You're not making one so other artists like it, but rather so a potential client will look at it and what to hire you over the next guy.  While the quality of the actual models is of prime importance there is nothing wrong with selling yourself.  Do not listen to those who are either too scared of what others will think if they 'sell themselves' or think that we should all sit like humble monks doffing our hat to clients with modesty.  There is a time for modesty, but when you are trying to make a living is not one of them.

BUT!!!!....

There is such a thing as taking it too far.  There's  a big difference between making the very best of what models, footage and achievements you have and coming across as a total dick.  By all means promote your big achievements that you may have over competitors.  But do not proclaim yourself 'god of 3d' unless you want to sit wondering why your not getting any work coming in.  While I will promote everything I can in my reels to the hilt (as my site is my shop window),  most people find when meeting me or talking to me that I have a rather pragmatic view of my art and career.  While I am confident in what I do, as you need to be as a professional artist, I like to think  in real life or work situations that I come across as a nice normal (ish) guy.

So finding that balance is crucial.  So while I will use every trick in the book to make my reel come across as the best thing since sliced bread (as should you all as well), I feel I've got to a stage where my work and achievements speak for themselves.    For example while my last proper reel was the one I made in about 2 hours for the Autodesk masters award nearly 3 years back and was very 'pushy', my next one will be a bit more laid back.  Although while some other artists detest that reel, clients ate it up. Although its prime purpose was purely for that one event...it just stuck around a bit longer than i thought it would lol.

 Personally I know who I see as being the more important people to impress.  Impressing your peers comes 2nd.  But remember what PT Barnum said  over a hundred years ago:

"You can please some of the people some of the time but you cannot please all of the people all of the time"

So my advice to those making a reel is to put your very best foot forward, promote what you have as well as you can and the achievements you may have made.  But beware of that fine balance.... on one side of the eternal razors edge are clients coming to hire you, on the other side is coming over as a total dick who no one would hire if you were the last artist alive.  Walk the line with care.

Zbrush Mech Timelapse:: Overkill

YouTube link for those who cannot view the above

First off no I have not changed apps to zbrush...  But I always test all apps when they release a new version.  I do however use zbrush for things there is no mudbox or 3d coat equivelant for. 

Its not often I do a critisism of an entire style of design of 3d modelling.  Its risky and it can piss people off. (but hey what else is new...)  But never being one to stand back from controvesy (and being a moody old bugger who hardly slept last night), I felt this critisism needs to be said.  ...and let the cards fall where they will.

This model from last night (named 'Overkill')  was meant as a heavy handed critisim of the recent plethora of Michael Bay-esque style mech design that I hate with a passion normally reserved for warring nations.     (Now I've nothing against him and I'm sure he's a very nice guy really though lol)  If I had simply put the critisism that follows without a demonstration of me actually doing it, then it would have simply been wrote off as 'oh he's only saying that because he cant do it himself'.  Just because I do not do a style does not mean I cannot...like a lot of artists.

This is not hard to do and requires no artistic ability whatsoever on the half of the artist.   You could teach a monkey to model in this style. Seriously I am not exagerating here.  Its takes no artistic talent whatsoever.  If you put no thought into function, forms and balance of design, then you end up with an abomination like this.    What I hate about is that just banging a shit load of detail onto a model does not make it good.   It is easy to fool the human eye into going 'wow!' just through sheer ammount of detail.

... that however does not make it a good model.

So this model is meant to show :

•  How easy it is to do something like this in about 75mins
• What happens when you don't bear in mind form, function and balance of detail.
• A lot of parts or detail do not make a good model...and this is junk....literally.  The difference between a good mech design and a bad one is the difference between a migraine and blamange lol.
• That you can make something that looks 'cool' (alledgedly) without it ever being able to be animated or even move.  Its is easy with a total disregard to how a thing would mechanically work to make something that is smothered in detail such as this.

So while this model may look insane detail wise...it could never move....it has no flow to the design or balance to the detail. It could not function.  So maybe this example will at least make poeple stop and think for a few seconds. This model was never meant to be taken seriously.

Simply covering something in pointless widdles can never replace a properly thought out design that can actually function.

...Thus end-eth the sermon for today.

How it was made:

Everything you see in the video is a default zbrush install of the latest version.  A shit load of mesh insert brushes were useed with parts from just about every single one of the buggers.  Unfortunatley the file /timelapse function in zbrush screwed up on this and corrupted the rest of the workflow, but its basically more of the same.  Then the part I had made was then canibalised into the other parts.  'Simples'.

Now this workflow can of course be used for things with far better designs that this piece of crap.  in fact i do have something in mind at some point soonish (time allowing) that will do exactly this workflow, only in a fashion that would produce a model with good design ethics.

Now while I may hate this style of modelling, its not the first time I've modelled something in a style I personally cant stand.  Part of being a profesional artist is not just making things that you like or think are 'cool', but also to be able to still produce your best when you cannot stand the model or subject matter your working on.  

But when producing portfolio pieces, maybe we should all make a vow to try not to just add etail and various nwiddles just so people will have a eye orgasm.  Make it mean something and the detail have both form balance and purpose.

Now I'll keep this model on my site purely so I can then tell what clients have good taste and who has bad taste lol. Thus meaning I can then add a 'artisticly blind' tax to my invoices. :)

Wayne...

Messing Around in Zbrush

 

I thought I'd give teh new version of zbrush a proper run out tonight.... so came in with no concept art (I harldy do anyway these days for personal stuff) and my existing zb knowledge.   So this hideous nightmare is my old 'Big Blue siggraph model 'coming to get you Micheal Bay' lol.

Its all default parts as a warm up for an even more 'proper' test and done in about an hour and a quarter. 

60 min Textured Practice sculpt

Here's a quick 60 minute practive sculpt.  Yes I still practice and will do until the day I die probably.  The aim for this was to sculpt a head with 1/4 million polys or less.  I also stuck a diffuse, specular and bump maps on it.  I cheated with the eyebrows and did them in post in photoshop, as people without eyebrows look a bit freaky to me, although I did screw the mouth up a bit on this for some odd reason lol. 

The reason for the self imposed quarter of a million poly limitis a simple one.  I belive in never wasting a single polygon as they all add up.  The more you can squeze that last bit of detail and form out of a sculpt..the better.  I'vge been doing this poly limited practice routine on and off for over ten years now.

So it's not a serious sculpt, just a doodle done without refs for practice thats all.

Still waiting on olympics stuff, now if I was a betting man I'd say they are going to make us all wait until after the entire olypics is finnished and then pass it out (by then it ceases to be 'news' of course...this may or may not be on purpose ;) )

If your doing some FXPHD courses this term check out the bachground fundementals video week 4 which Mike Seymour uses some of my stuff to explain the ins nand outs of displacement, vector displacement and UV mapping.

What I'm finishing off today

Here's a quick shot of something I'm working on for  Mike Seymour at the moment (I'm just finishing off in fact.)   Ironically the back angle shown here probaby wont be seen lol.    But dont want to give much away from the front without the client (Mikes) say so.

Mudbox Hard Surface Sculpting

Finally some art today as opposed to just typing about other stuff.   Something I was messing around with today as sort of a practice exercise, the idea was to sculpt al the mech parts from the base mesh with no retop or extractions. (The only parts that are separate meshes are the teeth, tongue and arms....everything else was sculpted from a low res mesh.)

It's a good exercise as people often take a short cut these days, especially if they are using Zbrush and extract the shit out of the base mesh into a load of seperate parts making life so much easier. however, easy is NOT what I want from a practice sculpt... The idea is to make life as uncomfortable as possible.

I've included a quick render and the turntable from Mudbox so you can see how I ran out of ideas once I got below waist level lol.

BTW the upper body rough sillhoutte was taken from a very old Doctor Who monster...if you noticed it was a blatant ripping of the sea devils sillhoute then you get a bonus point. ;)

ReDucto Update: ReDucto Standalone & tweaks

Always one never to give advance notice of when I'm putting things out app or plugin wise, I've just uploaded a tweaked version of ReDucto my poygon reduction app.  The main tweaks are:

• A standalone installer for ReDuctro for non mudbox users
• Getting rid of the annoying bloody windows UAC notices whenever you use it

I do urge any of you who had problems due to work or home computers having UAC still switched on to reinstall ReDucto.  This should fix those problems through a very unwieldy bit of tweaking from me.  You may still get false positives from norton etc, I've still to find a way to stop these barring kicking the programmers of anti virus software repeatidly about the head and body lol.

Just to clear up a misconception or two that  never  had time to back when I released it. ReDucto is not a mudbox plugin, it is a standalone app.  It was originally packaged together with MudWalker as those would be the main people using it I guessed.  You could say I was wrong as all sort of people and places use it.   So the reason for splitting ReDucto into its own installer was a simple one.... that way its clear that anyone can use this and that you do not need mudbox installed at all.

To learn more about either ReDucto or the MudWalkerX suite go to www.psychocore.com

So I've been going back to that other old hobby of mine, writing and recording my own music, so if your inanely curious or just want to have something to moan about feel free to pop over and have a listen on soundcloud here:

LINK

Guardian of the Rings

Here's a little something I've been noodling about with last night and this afternoon. Not incredibly serious sculpt and wish I'd had more time to fix the arms and complete the claws, but alas it'd need a total retop to take futher. As usual created using Mudbox and 3dmax 2013 and renderd in mental ray.

Camera update: memory card if defnalty totally screwed, and cant test camera until I buy a new one tomorrow, so keep those fingers crossed.

Lighting storm causes 5Dmk2 (MC) damage

 This cloud brought electrical death!

I normally don't put photography stuff on my blog, but as this is such an interesting story and also a cautionary tale I felt just this once I was allowed.   Just after dinner this evening we had a massive storm right over our house.  Now as I'd just got delivery of my 5D Mk2 about 3 days beforehand I thought this would be the perfect chance to use it (I've been too busy with work the rest of the time).

So off I went outside with my wife and daughter (who had never seen a storm or lightning before) and started filming and taking photos.  I didn't think too much about it, even when a massive crack of lightning happened and my camera flickered like I had just shorted out the battery or something.  I kept filming and caught some amazing footage of a lighting storm about as close as you ever want to get. 3 inches of rain fell in a little over a minute and a half.  The worst storm I've seem here since the Epic consett lightning storm of 1995 that fried electrics over a 2 mile radius. (anyone local around at the time remembers it well!)

So after it had passed I rushed to my computer to download everything...only to find that the storm had screwed up my brand new Scandisk memory card (that cost £90 as it washigh speed and intended for video).  I got a handful of photos off it but the camera and the card kept giving errors.  Finally I stuck the card directly into the slot in my main PC and started a recovery process...followed by recovering corrupt unfinished MOV files.   

The video above shows what I could recover from the storm footage up to the moment it all went 'pair shaped guv'.

Now I have to admit being scared shitless of testing my camera again in case it screwed that up as well. It took me a fair old while to round up the money to spare that I could spend on it (as my rule is only money I make selling stuff or paid directly into ebay gets used for my camera stuff.)

So I am putting off testing the 5D at the moment..that going down only days after I bought it would be to horrible to contemplate. (although par for the course with the epic bad luck I usually have).

Weirdest of all... the storm also shutdown every single mobile phone in our house, all unplugged and fully charged.  I've no idea why...answers on a postcard please.  But anyway here's the video I caught such as it is (with unfortunately the best parts missing with epic sheet and fork lighting.)

Onwards and ...well onwards

I'm sitting here just doing the final stuff on the contract I've been working on for a client for a month.  Hopefully sometimes in the next couple of months I'll be able to show and go into detail about what I've been doing and what for.  So now it's back to hunting down freelance gigs and firstly having a bit of 'doodle time' for the next week as this jobs been full on long hours for a month now and it'll be nice to get some time back to 'have a life' again lol.

Yesterday I finally got the 5D Mk2 DSLR I've wanted for 2 years now, so also I'll have a bit of time to play around with that as well.  although its less for 'DSLR film making' and more for project related stuff.  (Although that's not to say I won't be testing out the video features lol).

I'm also REALLY looking forward to saving an archive copy of what I've done and then deleting the other 125gig of incremental saves lol.   So it's back to what passes for normal and enjoying not having to be within phone answering distance stuck at home.  

On my list of stuff 'To Do' is to do a Linux compile  / port of MudWalkerX and ReDucto, do some opening titles for a TV Show and try and get around to putting together stuff for my next demo reel, although as usual the biggest problem will be actually rendering it out on a single pc.  It's ironic that more people now have scenes I've came up with as part of the FXPHD classes I've gave in their reels than I do. but still...I've got to smile at that.

So now if you'll excuse me, I have a bit of speed sculpting I want to doodle on with....

Interview with CGPHD now up

Short blog this time as still in midde of working in the stuff for a company I cannot mention, on a thing I cannot hint at and as such can't say anything about that till its out. (Once it is I promise you it will be worth and ...and very hard to avoid lol).

LINK

A while back I was asked to give an interview with CGPHD which they have just put live on their site.    You can reach it at the link above.  ...and no I have not grown the beard back, they just used an old photo lol.

Busy as a Rabbit in the...oh shit I already used that title for a blog

I've just signed to do a months worth of work for a firm, I cannot tell you  which firm, what it is for, what type of thing it is, what my job will entail, what I am doing.  Almost sounds like I'm James Bond lol (and no that was not a clue as I canot give clues....I would be strung up if I did.)     For those of you who know this industry I'll be on a remote lockdown so I cannot utter a word of what I shall be doing until cleared whenever that may be.  So if the art side of the blog stuff gets a bit thin for a month that is why ;)


Wayne...