I was fortunate enough to win ZBrush at WonderCon a few years back but only recently have I really started to use it and learn all the new features. I spent a good year doing Lynda.com videos, reading bookazines, articles on zbrushcentral and the CGSociety workshop. I’m itching to use everything I’ve learned (before I forget it) and ZBrush keeps coming out with new features. The last two updates have already altered some of parts of the pipeline I learned in the CG course.

Here are some screenshots from ZBrush of sculptures I’ve been doodling. The barbarian and trex are for a PS3 dynamic theme I’m working on between projects at work. I wanted to use my 3D modeling skills to push the limits of what the themes can do. It’s my “20% time” but instead of inventing gmail I’m giving the world more scientifically/historically inaccurate prehistoric depictions. More updates on that later.

Here is the final in-game model I turned into the CG Workshop I took last year. High poly was created in Zbrush. Low poly retopo built in Zbrush. Normal and ambient map bases created in xNormal. Rigged in Maya 2011. Texture, normal, spec, and ambient maps created/modified in Photoshop. The image below is a screenshot of the final model with all maps applied in Marmoset Toolkit.

I was cleaning out old archive cds and found a six year old Batman illustration. I started painting over it to see if I’ve improved. I need to get more hints of texture into it and I feel like I’m missing some landmarks on the face that keep it from feeling finished. You learn a few things and you forget a few things.

Still not bad for a 6 years, oh man that’s over half a decade.

We’ll never forget how it ended. All those poor reindeer…

Happy Holidays & Happy New Years!
-Hoa

Oh yeah, the genius stroke to turn the canister into pepperMINT spray belongs to my buddy Kevin. Peppermint! Get It?!!!1111!??HA.

It’s the first week of class in the High-End Fantasy Game Art Creation workshop offered at CGSociety.org. It’s been several months since I’ve done any Lynda.com or Conceptart.org classes, I’m itching to learn again. I’ve been heavy into Javascript and painting the last two years. It’s time to sharpen my 3D game art skills.

The course is taught by Katon Callaway, a character artist on God of War 3. I’m stoked to learn everything I can from his class. I’ve only watched half the videos from this week’s course and I’ve learned a few important practices already.

For our first assignment we are to pick the character we’ll be building through the course. We’re encouraged to pick an existing character/design so we can move forward quickly and not waste time developing costumes or updating our blogs that two coworkers and maybe a cousin who clicks the wrong link from Facebook ends up at. My top 3 choices are Prince of Persia, Mitsurugi from Soul Calibur, and Lion-O from the new Thundercats. I’m leaning towards Mitsurugi cause he has the most interesting costume in variety of materials, patterns, and layers.

I’m itching to get started on the modeling… but alas I have JURY DUTY in eight hours.