first near death experience and break

So on my way back to NJ I almost died haha, funny story so about half way during the 5 hour drive I was in the fast lane and last second I notice a broken down car halfway still on the road.  I don't quiet know remember why this happened, I think I might have been zoned out from driving for so long, looking at my gps, or I was behind a truck and switched lanes but what ever did happened I quickly pulled the steering wheel right and lost control, turned it back to the left and into the grassy middle section almost into the opposite traffic and back into the grass where it got stuck in the mud.  The cops that showed up for the other car called a tow truck for me and miraculously neither the car or I were hurt.  The scary part was how calm I was during and afterwards I believe most people would have pooped themselves.  Well I am alive and well and back at RIT because I've come too far for my journey to end now and I will keep blogging.

On break I watched videos and taught myself how to use zbrush and sketchbook so I wasn't completely unproductive.  I also got better with Illustrator and unlocked its true potential with the pen tool, I wound up making a t-shirt design for my fraternity's 40th anniversary as well as a series of tshirts for sororities and a photoshop poster for a dance party.  I hung out with some of my close friends and we decided to go make our second epic meal, based on a youtube channel.  Our first one was a white castle lasagna where we took a crave case which is 30 slider cheese burgers along with some of the sides like onion rings french fries mozzarella sticks and chicken rings and put it together.  This time we bought a frozen pizza from walmart a bag of shredded cheese and three baconators.  We put the burgers on the pizza and covered the whole thing in cheese, the pizza was 5 cheese so I guess it was 7 cheese total. It actually came out really well; it was extremely filling and hard to finish my portion of it though.  I also went black friday shopping with them,  this year didn't quite feel like one since there where no lines or crazyness since it started at 12 in the morning but it was still fun, I got some pretty cheap clothes and the last copy of a new video game, it was also pretty cool being in the mall at four in the morning but it felt just like any other busy weekend there.

Thanksgiving was fun with my family as usual and I ate the food for like the next day or two.  I'm back in the gym now so it wasn't too damaging to eat so much this break haha.  I designed a new workout since I am really tired of doing the same full body workout 3 times a week, the full body thing worked out really well so I decided to make two separate full body workouts (horizontal push and pull with quads for the first and vertical push and pull with hamstrings for the second)  its set up so you do heavy with one and do light with the other and then light again with the first workout and then heavy with the second.  I've always had an easy time gaining muscle but when it came to losing weight I had trouble so I think I will focus on that this quarter, you can technically do both at the same time but its a lot more difficult so I am going to do a lot of cardio and be more strict with my diet while keeping my strength.  My new work schedule forces me to wake up mon-wed at 6 but on the bright side I can try and get more things done during the day as well as workout early.  My classes this quarter should be interesting, I am taking Japanese which will fill my only liberal arts thing I never finished and if I do well and like it, I might make it my concentration.  3D modeling and animation should be really easy since its for game design kids and its for my minor but maybe I will learn some new things but if not I can always use more practice or time to work on my portfolio.  Senior thesis assist is a requirement where I think I help a senior do their thesis, and character design for 3D I am excited for since thats what I pretty much want to do for my career, but the first class was cancelled since my professors at a conference somewhere or something.  I ordered a zbrush anatomy book so as soon as that comes in I'll hopefully be sculpting some awesome characters to post up. Well till next time, hope my classes go well.

Modeling Strategies Final Presentation

After weeks of working on a realistic head... its done!

here's the workflow break down

So first thing I had to do was pick someone's head to model.  So I picked Scarlett Johansson because if your going to spend countless hours studying someone's head, why not pick a good looking head.  Another thing that I thought was that it would be more of a challenge to make something beautiful since it doesn't matter if there's a flaw on a guys face.  The last reason is because the day after we where assigned the project I got an awesome deal at Walmart on a blue ray copy of the Avengers.

reference images

more reference images

I took anatomical figure drawing last winter so I did a lot of drawings of muscle and skeletal structures which helped a lot.  One of the problems I came across while sculpting the head was understanding the characteristics that make the sculpture recognizable especially without color or hair.  I practiced sketching her to try and understand her facial features that separate her from others.  I also haven't had as much experience with females in my art so making the head look famine was also a priority; I remember my professor calling my model with male pronouns during one of the lectures. 

quick sketch

So I was new to Mudbox and I thought the program was pretty cool since you can just sculpt away with essentially 3 tools (scultp, smooth, and grab) without having any technical skills.  Most of the lectures where about ascetics but that was fine to me since you can learn the technical stuff online and being more artistic and understanding detail is more important in this field since technology changes and they could just pay some foreigner less to do grunt modeling.  During this process I learned a couple good workflows, like in Mudbox I would take an image and project it on top of my model and sort of just trace it for accurate porportions.  I watched a couple tutorials on Mudbox sculpting and learned to use the wax tool with different fall offs along with the pinch and flatten tool for certain effects.

checking Mudbox proportions with Photoshop

After the sculpting the head we had to send it to 3D Coat, another program I had yet to use.  I learned a lot about topology and edge flow.  I actually came to really like the program as well as mapping, to me it was kind of like a puzzle game to me since I tried pretty hard to get a really low poly count.

 Front Edge Flow Plan

Quarter Edge Flow Plan

Profile Edge Flow Plan

After doing the topology, which I actually did about twice after an in class critique, I did the UV layout.  We had this kind of eventful lecture where 3 other people did speed lectures on UVs and how to lay them out.  I really liked the one method where you use 3D coat and can finish the UV's in about 7 minutes.  Hiding the UV strategically was another part of the thing you had to worry about.  I decided that I would try and make hair so I quickly modeled a base mesh in Maya and sculpted it in Mudbox, I didn't care about the topology at this point due to time and other classes so I just went straight to the UVs for it.

Side Topology

Topology of the Front

back of the sculpture

Ear/Side Topology

UV layout for head

UV layout for neck

UV for the hair

 After dealing with all the technical stuff it was back to sculpting for me.  I would post images of my sculpture  on Facebook or show my friends and see if my model was recognizable or not and they would say things, sometimes painfully blunt that sometimes helped me when they where not trolling me.  After re sculpting you turn that mesh into a normal map and apply it to your base mesh to have a low poly count.  So after weeks of studying these images and trying to reproduce them in a sculpture, here are the renders.  Besides doing the  hair as extra I also decided to try and texture, I found a nice video on how to take an image and project it in Mudbox to paint on the sculpture. 

base mesh

Wire Frame and Poly count

Normal Maps Applied

Mudbox turntable render:  https://vimeo.com/53294863

Textured

Mudbox Screen Shot

 So in conclusion I learned a lot from this class, especially out of class when I tried to learn new things to improve my head model and take it a step higher.  The workflow, a few new programs, a little bit on characteristics/proportions/anatomy, and also a new portfolio piece.  In the future I will probably be able to do this again but a ton faster; I am also interested in learning ZBrush since it seems like its a more flexible program than Mudbox.  Another thing that I didn't mention was that while I was doing this I was also doing a character I designed using the same workflow.  See a short reel I put together of it on my portfolio site, PhanManCG.com

finals week... finish push to finish!

Hey I'm back... its finals week and as an art student that means getting all my projects done with a couple papers sprinkled on top... I've been so busy that I didn't even post last week heh. well I'll make this quick since I am just taking a short break from finishing a few projects, I'll also post up some progress on some that I am currently working on.  So lets see what has happened in these past two weeks.  Halloween was pretty fun, I had a little get together at my place where everyone was dressed up and I was a ninja again since I make such a good one :].

final detailed mudbox model, low poly version being exported to maya and normal/displacement map created from the high poly version

Some crazy awesome video games came out including the 4th installment of Halo 4, I originally pre-ordered the game on a website in July but I used my debit card that expired in August and while talking with customer support to figure this out they annoyed me to the point where I decided to just cancel the order and wait until Black Friday since I am too busy to play it right now anyway.  Some other games are Assassin's Creed 3 which takes place during the Revolutionary War which I actually predicted years ago since where would they go after the Renaissance.  I might also pick up a copy of the 9th Call of Duty since it does look pretty interesting.

My attempt to texture the model; was not required for the assignment but doing it for practice and to go above and beyond the scope of the class, learned how with google and youtube

I am looking forward to see my family again this Thanks Giving since it's been almost 3 months, I just hope the power is back since the Hurricane hit my house in NJ pretty hard, everyone I knew turned out to be fine but they just lost power for over a week.  I think that I also changed a bit, besides a haircut after 10 months I worked out consistently every week and ate healthy.  My little sister who is in first grade now should be getting pretty big too, hopefully my mom isn't letting her eat too many treats or fast food since it made me a really chubby kid back in the day.  To be honest my little sister is probably the person I miss the most even though she can be annoying sometimes.  I also wonder if my brother passed his driving test yet, a lot of things are happening at home without me there and it'll be cool to see how things are when I get back.  I just hope my car doesn't break down on the way since my check engine light has been on for a few weeks but was reassured that it wasn't anything from my dad since it's an old car.  My mom probably misses me the most, whenever I get back she tries her best to make me fat and buy me things.  Catching up with my hometown friends should be fun as well, its just too bad NJ is so boring but just chilling with them should be fine.  Well back to finishing these finals, I probably won't sleep this weekend haha.  The next post will probably be after break, I might just make them every two week from now on as well, maybe.