Maestro Andres' SB - June 1

[Maestro Andres]

mono2k5 Thanks man , glad you like the textures.

CouchPotato lol man, yeah Zbrush is a very interesting program, but powerful too. Let's just say that interface is very "unique" . Actually I am using Mudbox, which has a very easy and clean interface.

With the character designs, I appreciate your critique, that's a good reality check To tell you the truth, you are the second one to tell me about the afro of the 3 eyed chick, lol. In any case, since I am doing this during the weekends for a project, I just pick any old design I have and go with it without thinking too much about it. Like that robot thing, I envisioned as an aquatic soldier or whatever, was something I did on the spot while sculpting. Anyways, I would keep this in mind, probably get into the habit of doing thumbnails and checking those artists out. Greatly appreciate the insight.

Keep looking forward for that tut man.

Sawa Thanks for the kudos on the life drawings, I will keep practicing on those

So now for an update, this week's life drawings. We are focusing on defining form with line and tone, which means line shading and cross hatching. Usually my class consists on two and a half hour sessions on tuesday and thursdays. But this week, I have been attending other sessions on monday and wednesday, since everything cool down in school after the midterms 2 more hours tomorrow yey

The next drawings were done on the usual 18 x24" newspaper. The poses were 15 min long each. Later on, as an advice from my instructor I move to a large one, 24 x 32" paper with the same time for poses, which means I have to be more spontaneous and fast Also try to experiment with color pencils.









The next ones, are the ones I did on the larger paper.









P.D: Sorry for the photo quality

[Sawa]

hey mate what an update! youve been quite busy he?
theyre really coming off good so far. youre getting the feeling for the forms
in somes the porportions are still lacking a bit like in this one: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...8&d=1192681475
the arm seems a bit small to me, but ill guess u'll handle that automatically if you do more of those life drawing stuff
just go on with theses studies, they'll really pay off

[Maestro Andres]

Sawa Thanks for pointing that out, sometimes I lose track of the big picture, especially since I find myself against time while doing this. I will try to keep attending life drawing classes at this pace, though the other day I got so brain dead of drawing people, that I have to draw something else for a change

Random update. The last one was done from a picture, the one I used as ref for my avatar, but try to do a cross-hatching rendering.

[LEVIATHIN816]

good stuff man i like the 3d art nice id like to learn how to do that but im figuring out photoshop first but nice stuff keep up the work man ill look for ya and only thing i think you could improve on is more tones in your shading but other than that your figuring it out for yourself

[marioucci]

Hey man,

Good consistent work. The portraits are so nice and emotional. Good to see you starting on 3d works too.

a crit. would be it is all a bit bland and stiff for now,but its for sure due to the fact you are doing a lot and with a student aproach. that is a very solid base for any artist. something ive never had.

Keep it up man.

Mario

[Sawa]

hey dude,
the update is really looking good. that anatomy studies are great, they look very forceful.
also i like how you gave the portrait some texture while shading it! the only suggestion would be, dont let the texture have the same intensity everywhere. you can give the more important parts some really nice highlight by detailing it with such textures but if you add it everywhere, the effect will be gone

[CouchPotato]

lol, dude, thanks for taking it so nicely. I was afraid I might have went overboard with all that haha. And, omg, I completely forgot about my promise to explain things better lol, and no it's not a tut, just some sharing :o haha, I'm not in any kind of situation to be giving tuts heh. I'll write out something tmr or something.

Also, good work on all that life drawings. I really envy that you have the time and place to do so much in such a short time.


Edit:
Don't want to spam your thread, so I'm just going to add my stuff into this post. The thing is really simple. It's just a matter of understanding how meshsmooth works in Max, which I'm sure you already do. On the lowest level meshsmooth does it's job by taking a face, and adding more divisions in-between. This gives the face more definition, giving it higher resolution. Do you know what a circle is? It's basically a polygon with so many sides that you can't see the sides, so it looks smooth and curved. It is a similar concept for meshsmooth. Similar, but not exactly the same.

I'm not sure how the programming and the maths is behind it, so this part I have absolutely no idea. This is just my observation from all my modelling shit lol. The meshsmooth also adds a certain amount of tension to the line. If the original geometry you have has a side that's slightly convex, the meshsmooth will acentuate that, by making it smoother or rounder.

The problem is, if that particular side has too many division in between, that tension can get very high. From here on, it's difficult for me to describe in words, so I'll just put in a few screen shot from my early model.

So, number 1.) Look at the first picture, at the places I circled in red. There's a slight ridge in that area. A bit hard to see, but if you squint a bit you can see it. That is not desireable, and I haven't corrected it yet. (I still haven't lol, and what I will do here is just for demonstration purposes). Why is this so? I will turn on edged faces for you to see.

Number 2.) Can you see in the smoothed version with edged faces turned on, that particular area has a lot more lines compared to the other areas? Let me turn off meshsmooth and let you see the base model.

Number 3.) As you can see, in fact, the area with the pinching, the two edge loops are very much closer to each other compared to the others. So, next, let me move those edges apart.

Number 4.) As you can see here, I moved the edges apart. I think you can predict what will happen next with no problems lol.

Number 5.) The smoothed edge face view show no more congregation of lines, if you will.

Number 6.) The ugly pinching thing is gone.

So how is this translated to our topic on topology for the face? Well, the face is a very complex area. It's got so many features. The eyes, the nose, the mouth are just the more obvious ones. We've all drawn more than a few portraits right? And we know that in a realistic face there's a LOT more details. The cheekbones, the hollow caused by the zygomatic arch, the browridge, the cranium itself is actually 4 or 5 seperate plates joined together.

That's just the skull. You know that in the final model, ideally, you need to make it riggable, or seriously, the model is a wash. No one can use it. The face needs to be animatable, which means you need to know the underlying muscle structure. The two circular muscles at the eyes (can't recall all the names lol), the circular muscle at the lips, the bunch of muscles connecting the eyes to the lips, so on and so forth.

For such a small surface area, it's quite dense in terms of details. Which means to get all details that you need a lot of lines, a lot of edges etc. etc., and because the surface area is so small, your lines will get too close to each other if you're not careful lol, and then you'd get that awful pinching effect you see in my model, and in a face, it's very hard to smooth out pinching in my experience lol. On a monster like my model, or an older person, that's fine. You might want to have that effect anyhow. But on a young and beautiful person, well it simply won't do lol.

Well, hopefully all these is not repeating something you already know lol.

[Maestro Andres]

LEVIATHIN816 Thanks man for the visit and suggestion.

marioucci Good observation man, guess I am trying to tackle a bunch of topics together at the same time About it being flat and bland, I am guessing you are referring to the content right? Like it's been studies, life drawings but not too much of original stuff. If is that I agree with you, I would love to draw on designs and painting but I really want to get the basics right. Thank for pointing it out.

Sawa Didn't thought about that, but now I see you are right about it. Guess I overdone it this time hehe.

CouchPotato Dude, that's a very deep and useful explanation. That clears a lot of doubts I have so far. I appreciate the time you took to put it together, with paintovers and all, lol.
A funny thing, is that I am not sure what that object is, but my first impression was of a butt, LOL. Awesome none the less, thanks man
Edit: I shall return the favor, so if there is anything you think I might be able to explain you, give it a shot and I'll try it.


Small update, I had been working on this thumbnails for some character designs and then chose 3 appropriate ones from these. They are based on some old story I wrote about some mercenary group and I used as ref some poses from characterdesigns.com. I will have to improve the designs for something more fitting any critiques and suggestions are welcome.

Couldn't render the final ones because you see... I need to have modeled, textured and render one of this by friday..... let's see how that comes out

The last one was for a team poster design thing for school, so is not for profit or whatver. I got the weapons from Turbosquid and modeled the skull from 2 spheres. I have such a hard time rendering (killing Mental ray a few times ) so I end up compositing this in PSD. Anyways it lacks a lot of stuff such as BG and all, luckily my team used other poster.

[Sawa]

hey man!
the character designs look very interesting. can you post some larger images of the tumbs? its hard to make out any details...
on the 3 you picked out: they look nice to me so far, the poses are coming along good. concerning the design, im not sure about the colors... they dont really seem to fit together, though i cant telll exactly what it is lol...
however, i guess these designs may come out really nice when youre finished with them

[Maestro Andres]

Sawa Thanks for the suggestion, I upload the big thumbs now. With the colors that's true, it was a quick decision since I have been with this time constraint this week, nevertheless I have to workout this designs later and definitively the colors as well.

Quick update, couldn't get the character done but will try to finish it during the weekend. I have still to textured it and work out the other maps. I attached the progress shot of it so far. It is a bad practice indeed but I got my base mesh from softimage and the sculpt it in Mudbox, which is really fun to do since I have been learning anatomy to do it . I have built the clothes and add random materials just to suggest color so far, but is not final, just a rough layout.

Last, an sketch for the NOW activity of a zombie (been a while doing painting) and skull renders. Just regret that I haven't spend any time at all doing Loomis this week but I still have more figure drawings which I haven't had the chance to takes pic yet.

A final note, just got my ticket to the Revelation Workshop, woohoo!!!!! Who's going from CA? Hope to see familiar faces from here

[Carnifex]

hey man,gotta say i'm really impressed with the multitude of costume design variations,don't think i'd get that many.
now all you need is some more solid anatomy and alil practice

[Sawa]

hey dude
thx for the bigger image on the character design. i see some interesting designs in them
that zombie one is funny, i really love the expression of it lol.. made me laugh
also good job on the model of the woman! though in the colored version, i feel smth is missing... maybe you should add some more armor details to the rest of the body as well? im not sure...
well just go ahead im looking forward to see the figure drawings u did. oh
and have fun at the workshop! i'd love to go as well... maybe next time

[PredatrHuntr]

Awesome work...I love it all...

[Jakers]

Hey dude, nice thumbnails! Did you poke around some reference when sketching the costumes, or was that all from your head? Are you in school right now, and is it focusing on 3D art? I haven't done any personal 3D work in forever! Characters just take so long to get a nice result...are you going to flesh out the concepts for those 3 selected characters from your thumbnails?

[Maestro Andres]

Carnifex thanks mate, I will!
PredatrHuntr thanks man .
Sawa Yeah that model wasn't done yet just added quick materials to give a general look until I finish it. Too bad you won't be going to the workshop, I know it is really far from you, but who knows, I'll share with you whatever info I learn over there
Jakers Hey man, I wish they came from imagination! lol, actually I look at a lot of reference from other artists designs such as Marko D. and spend a lot of time looking at designs of jackets, boots, armor, pants, trenchcoat, etc on Google images, that's for now until I can develop a good visual library of clothing for more designs. With the character, I agree with you, it took so long to finish!!! I already spend like 5 days on it, but it is very satisfying. I am in school right now, and these characters are part of some project sort of, I am free to choose what to make. In theory, I will be doing the other two characters and as much as I wanted to flesh them out and paint them, right now I am refining the design on the fly, which is probably not a good thing. Anyways, since you are experienced with 3d stuff, I will appreciate if you can give some critique in those works, thanks for stopping bye


Ah well, this might be my first 3d only post so far, life drawings can wait till tomorrow since I still need to finish some HW. At this rate, I should start a 3d thead in the sculpture section as well XD Finally got to finish the character model, couldn't get the normal map to work well, it still needs some refinement but it seems I have to another one for next week.

The last ones is just something I want to share. They were the product of happy accident that happened when I use the wrong textures or flipped the normal one in different ways. I think that the results were interesting.

[Chermilla]

Hi there!

Some great stuff going on here, your sketchwork is improving a lot, but just one suggestion, try and clean up your lines a bit and maybe erase some of the 'smudging' that's going on currently as it ruins a lot of the pieces somewhat. It will give a cleaner and more professional appearance to your work and make the characters stand out from the page more. Maybe also try using some more stark contrasts between the dark and light areas in each one?

I really like your 3D work especially, really cool.

Cx

[Maestro Andres]

Chermilla hey, glad you stop by for giving critiquing. I appreciate your feedback and have to admit, I am very messy when sketching but I see your point. Thanks for the reminder about pushing the values, I have hear that sometimes, don't know how to do it with colored pencils though, I will see what I can do

Finally, life drawing updates. Some had poor quality due to the camera. These are 30 min poses. I know that from time to time I will screw up in some but if I keep repeating the same mistakes let me know and any other critique is welcome.

The last study was basically overlay the skeleton over a previous drawing. I have to look for a hard ref to do the pelvis and probably screw up on the foreshortening of the femur.

[Maestro Andres]

Small life drawings dump from the last few days. Poses were around 40 min long with an hour of postwork later, mainly clean up contour lines and enhance contrasts. Never new drapery was hard especially when it is silk with transparent areas

[Sawa]

hey dude
wow sorry for not replying for so long! missed quite some updates as i see lol
the 3d model is looking great so far. but i still dont think the colors work that well... theres something in the color of the face that concerns me lol, just cant point the finger at it
though that "accidents" look interesting. might be a good thing to find new shapes and stuffs
in the life drawings you get seem to have no big problems to get the forms of the body, but i see your hands and feet are much too small in some pictures. remember hands are as big as the face
the drapery looks good btw. youve really got that transparent thingie in it

[CouchPotato]

Wow! I missed a whole lot of updates haha! I need to drop by more often lol.

I'm glad you found the little post thing I made to be useful lol.

I'm liking the progress on your 3d model, but I have the same issues with Sawa. The color's a bit off, and the face is also, but I can't put a finger on it. I'll look at it more closely tomorrow and see if I can spot anything.

The only other thing I will add is that your arms look funny. The upper arm seems fine, but the forearm looks too thin. It also looks too short.....but the entire length seems fine, which means probably your elbow is located too low lol, and that your upper arm is too long.

Uhh, I'm rambling haha. I'm not sure, but check to see if you got the proportions of your arms again. I'm almost asleep as I type this so maybe I made a mistake heh.

Also, I'm going to Seattle too, if everything works out! We should meet up man! And if Sawa is going as well, whoohoooo!!!!

[Maestro Andres]

Sawa Like your crits and comments a lot, so don't worry, take your time with them, I rather like receiving a good critique or having some mistake being pointed out than a lot of good jobs and all that, because with critique we grow . I agree with the hands and feet looking small, now I see why they look funny, gotta break those bad habits.

CouchPotato The face is something I wasn't very satisfied with, should check that out with the arms too, that's a good observation!! Definitively I will check that out with my anatomy books. Concerning color, yeah, I agree with you guys about it, I will see what I can do, though color decision is a hard thing to do. But that's cool you both emphasize that, I will be fixing that model soon.

So here is my crappy SP for the event on thursday, not very satisfied with it, not even for the 3 hours I put into it and probably using that close cross hatch brush is not a good idea hehehe. Anyways, just being practicing some digital painting even when my tablet has been acting funny since I spilled some water on it the other day. For the color thing, I have to admit that whenever I get lost finding the right color, I use the color picker for guidance but I choose my own colors in the end. It is not finished and now I see that I have to rework the nose. Oh well...

[Jakers]

Working on this observation stuff is great. I'm in the same boat when it comes to drawing from reference and checking my colors...I just get discouraged when it constantly feels 'wrong'!

Trying to get very accurate with something like a portrait is difficult. I find that if you move your eye back and fourth from the photo, to your painting, several times in quick succession, you can often spot mistakes compared to just glancing between them. Maybe I am just crazy. I notice on your picture of the girl that her nose is a little long, the angle of the jaw by the ear is stronger, and the area between the lips and nose doesnt push out enough (looks like its pressed flat) but you did great if you ask me!

The portraits were cool, I still need to put up my final one as well as some new things when I go home. later

[CouchPotato]

lol, maestro, it takes me a whole week to get a portrait to about 90%. I'll spend 3 days just drawing it, and the rest of the week going back and forth looking at it and correcting.

So far, from what I can see, the portrait you made off that photo's got a couple of things I feel you should change a bit.

First off, you probably need to tone down on her chin by juuuust a tad. Also, you want to again tone down the two lines at the nose/cheek bones area. It's making her look older than she should.

This part regards the painting, but I'm just shooting my mouth, because my painting sucks lol. The patches of light and dark on her skin is really obvious compared to the photo man. And the result, again, is making her older than she should.

Otherwise though, you're doing great!

Anyhow, regarding the workshop, I'm probably going to hit Seattle on the 2nd. It's the only ticket I can find that I can afford lol. I guess I'll be waiting for you guys haha. And the self portrait is a wonderful idea. I'll work on one of my own. And our challenge will be how well we can recognize each other from our SPs!

[Maestro Andres]

Jakers Hey man, thanks for stopping by again. Thanks for the observations about the girl's portrait. Faces are indeed, one misplacement and the face looks totally different

CouchPotato Hey man, the things about the Self Portrait, if you miss the boat, on the first they have the event of International Self Portrait day, that's why Sawa and me did SP the same week, but still it will be great to see one from you!

Geez guys, I intended the girl's portrait to be an exercise thing but with so many observations, I guess I will go back and finish it! Thanks for pushing me

Well I been busy this week with some LD and all this other 3d stuff. 40 min poses for each. The pirate one, I put two hours of postwork into it, trying to get the damn silk cloth highlights right...

Thanks for CouchPotato about the observation about the elbows placement and arms thickness, that really helped! I believe the things of colors was due to the saturation, that's why I turned it down some. Yeah, so I fix that model, tried to make the skin more believable because I couldn't get the skin shader to work well, if someone has a suggestion, it will be greatly appreciate it!

Also, as "part of the project", did a second costume based on one of the thumbnails. Kinda went for a pirate thing but it ended up looking resident evil-ish, oh well that happens when the design comes out while doing the texturing. I'll probably change the design of the chest. Since I have been doing textures, here I upload the ones I have made from scratch, like the hair was made from a cross hatch brush I modified.

[Maestro Andres]

Small dump. Just spend the weekend sculpting one of my Professors in Mudbox. Not quite equal, but it was fun doing a "portrait" in 3d while it may not be useful for animation, oh well...
A new render of the previous character, with a small tweak in design. The last one is something for Life Drawing of taking two drawings and merge them, I did in PS and add some color. Don't know what the hell I was thinking with my colors, but that's it for now...

[CouchPotato]

Maestro, good work on your professor's bust! And I mean it. Good job.

I'm also here to apologise lol. I think I'm going to be out of comission for a while, because my network has gone kaput. I have no idea when it'll be back up, but I'll keep periodic updates! Well, as much as I can lol.

One more thing. I'm wondering if I can have the honor of adding you to my msn or some such lol. Mine is [email protected]

[Sawa]

omg i missed so many updates... again!!
there was some neat stuff going on in here as i see lol!
i love the girl with the red dress, though you could added some more red-ness to her dress but its hard to find the right colors without just picking them, i tend to do that much too often lol

with that woman warrior model youve got a great progress with the colors both the black and the blue one work much better than the first one imo.
only thing i have to crit here () would still be the face... i think that the nose is too long and the eyes too narrow together... i hope u know what i mean

lol that portrait model of you professor is just great! i love it!
did you show it to him? hehe maybe that would be some extra points...

[Maestro Andres]

CouchPotato Cool man, thanks for that. Though the model is around 800,000 polygons is not a good model for animation. I try using a lower res version but didn't look that well. Well, I will keep looking forward for when your network gets better and of course I will add you up!

Sawa I agree is really hard to choose the right colors without picking them directly but still it is something that with practice should get easier. About the woman warrior, it was an example of another costume design since at the time it was more feasible time wise to do a second costume than another character at all. About the face, it is really MESSED UP like you pointed out Normally, I didn't knew it was possible to correct it but I give it a try anyways. Also, by the fact that I already rendered some turntable animation of the character. Here I post a preview of the face fixed though the nose got distorted on the attempt.

So here is stuff from this week, life drawing, mudbox and 3d renders. Also I did bought a DS for my brother and have to try the Colors application in it, which is really awesome and because it is for a DS becomes a nice portable mini sketchbook. I included stuff I did yesterday in it. For more info about it, check out this thread: Nintendo DS/Colors

On another note, I might not being able to update that often these weeks because the semester is wrapping up, with senior project and other animations due, and plus still dunno why but I got into the Last Man Standing 3 which should kick in this week. Let's see how that goes...

[schlichte]

bring that ds to class on monday i needs to see that shit, ohh yeah nice work by the way, did you work on that dood inside the cage more after class

[Maestro Andres]

schlichte Weird seen you here man, since we have class everyday. That cage one was all made in class, spend more time on the cage than on the figure


Been playing around with DS colors, it is fun, but must focus more on painting from life. Also, for LD class has to make this thing called Inventive Distortion, which basically is about combining figures in a surreal way that doesn't seem possible. This is what came out, of course there are some obvious anatomy problems like the twisted arm, those were intended. Sorry for the pic quality since it is too big to scan.