vertexbee.com http://vertexbee.com vertexbee.com - The Online Portfolio of Martin Punchev Thu, 17 May 2012 20:48:39 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2 Demon Parrot http://vertexbee.com/demon-parrot/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=demon-parrot http://vertexbee.com/demon-parrot/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 20:48:39 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=574
Photo studies:

Demon parrot:

And a tip I want to share although I’m sure anyone familiar with photoshop already knows this – using the smudge tool for edge control:

]]> http://vertexbee.com/demon-parrot/feed/ 0 Creature Illustration http://vertexbee.com/creature-illustration/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=creature-illustration http://vertexbee.com/creature-illustration/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 20:42:58 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=566 Anthony Jones’ amazing course. If you follow my blog you’ve probably remember the weird dragon sketches that I’ve posted some time ago, some animal drawings and studies too. All those were assignments for the course. I had really great time following his lectures and doing the homework, learn tons of things and I feel more confident in drawing and painting than before. Did I mention the course was uber-fantastic x 2 ? :) Anthony is true master of his craft and during those 9 weeks of education with him , he shared tons of insights on design, drawing, painting, anatomy and more. It was very motivating and inspiring journey for me, I can’t wait to take another schoolism class ! :))

Here the angry fellow I’ve submitted for final assignment(click the image to see high-res):

Now, I know you are curious person and that you like to inspect images for imperfection so here is a link to even bigger version of this image (2500px) – click here

Some links:

Anthony’s blog : www.robotpencil.org

His schoolism course page: click here

Cheers! ]]> http://vertexbee.com/creature-illustration/feed/ 0 Old armor models for MMO http://vertexbee.com/old-armor-models-for-mmo/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=old-armor-models-for-mmo http://vertexbee.com/old-armor-models-for-mmo/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 18:17:05 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=559
I remember back then we were on a serious crunch and I needed to pump them out as fast I can. They are done with serious Kit bashing from older models and the help of a resurfacing technique I developed around that time that is perfect for clean hard surface modeling- basically

1)first I create a simple proxy volumes that resembles the large primary shapes of the model,

2)than I plan the details over those proxies by directly painting on them inside 3dsmax with the help of “viewport canvas”, and

3) the last pass is to retopologise the proxies using polyboost and taking into account the guides I’ve painted in step 2.

You can check a brief tutorial I did showing this technique >here< Download the english slides .rar , it contains around 20 slides explaining the process.

P.S. The credits for the concepts goes to Ed Mattinian, awesome artist, check his folio.]]> http://vertexbee.com/old-armor-models-for-mmo/feed/ 0 Creature Project Teaser http://vertexbee.com/creature-project-teaser/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=creature-project-teaser http://vertexbee.com/creature-project-teaser/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 18:32:45 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=549
Here is a quick creature concept just to tease you a bit (click the image to see high-res):

I can’t keep secrets, I already said too much. More information and artwork will be revealed soon ,so stay tuned :)

]]> http://vertexbee.com/creature-project-teaser/feed/ 0 Dragon compositions http://vertexbee.com/dragon-compositions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dragon-compositions http://vertexbee.com/dragon-compositions/#comments Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:59:11 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=524
This guy started out as a single dragon flying in a cave with no reason , but after a friend’s suggestion, I expanded the canvas and added a little area of interest – two dragon younglings crying for their mother.

This below is just horrible, so you only get the small size image and no matter how much you insist I won’t share the high-res :D

And a moon loving fellow :)

]]> http://vertexbee.com/dragon-compositions/feed/ 0 Kriss The Pinguin http://vertexbee.com/kriss-the-pinguin/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kriss-the-pinguin http://vertexbee.com/kriss-the-pinguin/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:58:42 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=532
(click the images to see high-res versions)

Can’t say much about it because I made him for an unpublished project that is still in development. I’ve just got the permission to show it, so here it is in his full glory.

One thing that is worth to mention and I plan to do a separate, more detailed post for is that I used the new hair features in zbrush to get the feathers look the way there are now. In brief, I created them in zbrush , export them to 3dsmax and used render to texture to bake them for the final texture (actually I used RTTassist, but it is the same thing anyway). From then on it was regular old school painting in PS. I’ll show you some process images soon, I promise ! And if I don’t do it soon enough, you are free to spam my mail or blog until I do. :D

The original concept is done by a talented friend of mine and you can check it out over here. I think he did a great job of nailing the silhouette of this character , I tried to maintain it as much as I can , but in the same time I wanted to add a bit more definition in the face area and the overall look

Here is the model without textures:

Hope you like it ! I also would love to hear your comments and critiques.

P.S. Here are few non-relevant to this topic, but cool links that are worth spreading (I always feel the need to share something useful for you guys out there reading this forsaken blog):

screenmusings.org – large database of movie screenshots, perfect for conducting studies.

www.retronaut.co – retro photos, some really cool stuff in here!

]]> http://vertexbee.com/kriss-the-pinguin/feed/ 0 Animal Gestures & Horse Study http://vertexbee.com/animal-gestures-horse-study/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=animal-gestures-horse-study http://vertexbee.com/animal-gestures-horse-study/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:04:04 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=518

One thing in particular that helped me was to sit down and study horse anatomy. After that it was a bit more easy to draw horses, my eye started to actually see and interpret as opposed to just copying lines. What I really want to share with you is what I actually realized while studying the horse at my own (I mean without dvd guidance or tutorial of some sort). The stuff that I was able to observe by myself, the formulas that I invented to simplify the understanding of the proportions and the muscles, were immidietely stored in my memory. This made me think of the way we should learn, passive versus active learning (in this case passive will be watching a dvd and sleeping throughout it, and active would be learning and hunting for knowledge by yourself) and how effective it can be. Several days later I even stumbled upon an interesting article about modern day education which confirmed my theory that we gain most benefit when studying at our own. You can check the article here if you are interested in this kind of stuff. Think about it for a second, the great masters lived in an era where they actually invented all the techniques and elaborate methods of depicting nature, they didn’t study anatomy from books , they conducted autopsies and observed the real thing ! Enough talking, I’m going to invent, observe, and finally consume a quick sandwich, because all that effort of trying to write and think in English , made me hungry.

]]> http://vertexbee.com/animal-gestures-horse-study/feed/ 2 The Journey project revealed http://vertexbee.com/the-journey-project-revealed/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-journey-project-revealed http://vertexbee.com/the-journey-project-revealed/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 22:09:12 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=509
Here are few pieces that are part from the presentation, to see more of it ,follow this link.

Behance link.
Vimeo video. ]]> http://vertexbee.com/the-journey-project-revealed/feed/ 0 DeepOne Detailed Making Of http://vertexbee.com/deepone-detailed-making-of/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=deepone-detailed-making-of http://vertexbee.com/deepone-detailed-making-of/#comments Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:47:13 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=481
(click the images to see high-res…if you feel lazy and don’t want to read the full text – view the images they are pretty self explanatory and have little description text on the bottom:) )

Hi, In this making of I’ll explain the process behind the “Deep One”. It is a creature design based on the description of what H.P. Lovecraft calls a “deep one” in his novel “Shadow over Innsmouth” and it is made for Bryan Wynia’s cg course.

Before we start I want to mention few things about the course. It was a blast ! Bryan definitely have a unique lay of working and did put a lot of effort in his course. The three weeks of creature creation , following his instructions and videos were amazing experience…and the best thing is that I heard he will update it soon with ZB4 R2 stuff and more. I recommend it to everyone that have interest in designing creatures and wants to bring their game to a higher level.

Reference and launching of.

Knowing the subject matter, the first thing to do is a quick reference hunting. Quick is important here because it is wise to start as quick as possible and not spend so much time in reference gathering than actual sculpting. People often procrastinate and spend awful amount of time for their reference, but the true thing is that almost always any image will do the work ,at least for the beginning. So I spend half an hour to collect few photos and started sculpting right away.

Because I was quick in the reference stage this saved me extra time for analyzing and observing the photos that I found. I did couple of sketches of different fishes and sketched some details from the rest of the photo reference that I found interesting.This helps me to get familiarized with the subject and to start thinking. For instance , details from the blue-eyed fish from the ref sheet made there way in one of the speed sculpts, particularly the protrusions below the its mouth. The curves of the crocodile’s mouth in the upper left from the ref sheet was used in the second sculpt, the eye image served as a texture for the eyes in the later stages and so on.

Speed sculpting

For the speed sculpts we were provided with a simple basemesh of a human bust. It has the right topology and loops for easy sculpting and at the same time was simple enough and not constraining in any way.I don’t recommend starting with well defined and dense basemesh because it can lock you in the forms already established.

The fun starts here. The task at hand was to develop several speed sculpt that will serve as bases for the next stages. I want to stress on two very important things in my opinion:

1)Don’t rush to subdivide the mesh too early on in the beginning but play with the silhouette slowly. Concentrate on the silhouette and the gesture first and establish them by using the move brush on the lower subdivision levels. Don’t move on until you are happy with it. When you come up with something cool than it is time to subdivide further and to continue to add volumes and secondary shapes.Now it is important not to screw up the silhouette you crafted earlier on, lay lumps of digital clay slowly and methodically.Lowering the z intensity might be a good idea so you don’t add or subtract from the sculpt too rapidly and eventually destroy the silhouette.

2)The second important thing is to break up the symmetry early on. This is so important and will give life to your sculptures,eventually they will start looking more natural. Don’t be afraid to do it and don’t save it just for the details at the end, turn it off early on.

Here is an example, the sculpture below is by Bernini and it’s called “Bust of Cardinal Scipione Borghese”. I’m sure you can recognise which one is the original, but to give you a hint the image on the left looks more natural than the one on the right. Why? Because in traditional sculpture there is no automatic symmetry.

Here are the three speed sculpts I’ve made:

Thumbnailing.

Using the liquify , puppet warp and a simple round brush, the aim is to generate different ideas and push the design as far as possible. This approach is very suitable for people with stronger 3d capabilities than pure 2d painting because you don’t start from scratch, you don’t confront a blank sheet of paper, but rather start with the foundation you did in the previous stage and build on in.

At this stage I spend a bit more time searching for more reference, this time narrowing the search not only to fishes and frogs but to other animals and also for color patterns.

I started first by varying the proportions and the features with the liquify and the puppet warp. Puppet warp is a new feature in CS5 and with its help I could quickly distort, pose and change the proportions of the characters.

Liquify is really valuable tool, not only for varying the features but also as replacement for the eraser tool. Lots of the times it is better to transform , push and pull with the liquify than to erase and start over.

Using the basic round brush overpaint on top of the base renders.The main point here is to explore and come up with different ideas that you can choose from later than to have many thumbnails that looks the same. Also you may trow up some pattern design at this stage although I didn’t focus on that.

Here are the thumbs I did. Initially I really liked number 10 from the image below, but decided to go with 8 because it fit the character description better.

Refining the 3d model.

Using thumbnail number 7 as mine design choice, I refined one of the speed sculpts to resemble better the concept. Details and alphas came after that.

At this stage you can continue to explore the design further this time in 3d and you probably should not stick strictly to what you’ve thumbnailed. Rotate and look the sculpt from different angles, make sure it looks good from everywhere.

I remember that I particularly struggled with his expression giving him more pleasant and intelligent look than it should have. That was pointed to me by Bryan and I didn’t notice it while I was working on it so I later fixed it.

As for the brushes. It doesn’t really matter ,but for the sake of clarity I use mainly clay, clay buildup, modified pinch brush that pinches really tight, trim dynamic and trim adaptive to establish planes. For smoothing I really like the smooth directional brush because it doesn’t wipe out the forms as the normal smooth.

For detailing I used few alphas of pores and wrinkles that we were provided and I layered them on the character. Then I hit them one more time with the standard brush to reinforce here and there, varying how embedded they were so they don’t appear equally recessed in the surface.

Here is a turnaround of creature at this stage:

PolyPainting

I made a quick overpaint of the revised 3d sculpted to explore patterning possibilities. The first one I liked I then tried to transfer onto the 3d model using regular polypainting.

This stage was all about layering glazes of paint using the standard brush with “rgb” turned on and stroke set to spray.

After I finished the coloring job I step back from the computer and realized that this character with fit ridiculously well in environment where it is surrounded by watermelons – he will have the perfect camouflage. :)

Rendering and composing:

The rendering was done entirely in Zbrush by exporting out many different passes. I’ve experimented a lot applying different materials and the ones I liked the most I exported out. I ended up with about 20 passes which includes few ambient occlusion renders with different settings, several lighting passes simulating main light, fill light and rim light , few specular passes that catch light on the tiny lumps and bumps of the sculpt, different color materials and so on.

All those were brought in Photoshop for the final composition. The process was mainly an exploration, trying out which of the blending modes will serve well for a particular render pass, erasing the unwanted stuff, mixing and matching .I literally cut out the parts from a pass that I liked and blend them in with an appropriate layer mask.

You may already noticed from the previous images that the 3d was actually a bust but in the final render the body is extended beyond the picture frame. This as well as other areas and details like small shadows and highlights was directly painted in Photoshop. Here and there a texture was used but not too much.

A cool trick to know is to use the layer’s “blend if” sliders. Right click on a layer and choose “Blending Options” this will open the Layer styles dialogue, and on the bottom you can see two identical looking sliders, one called “This Layer”, the other “Underlying Layer”.

Moving the black and white sliders for the bar on top will cause areas of the currently selected layer to disappear from view. Moving the sliders for the bar on the bottom will cause areas of the layer(s) below the currently selected layer to show through the selected layer, as if it’s punching holes through the layer. The effect will be harsh until you drag the sliders by holding the ALT key. This will add transition to the effect and will give you more control over the blending.

Good example for using the Blend If sliders is when you want to remove lighting information only from the recessed or occluded areas. Select the layer that contains the lighting information and using the bottom blend if slider move the black marker to the right, you will notice that the areas from that layer that sits above dark areas from the layers below, will diminish quickly. Use ALT to split the marker in two and adjust the falloff until there is nice transition.

Final touches:

A week after the final render was done I returned back to it to fix some things that I noticed later and other things that colleagues and fellow artist point me out. I think it is very important to revisit your work after a while, because you often see mistakes and chances for improvement you couldn’t earlier.

For example, almost at the end I realized that i didn’t render the passes with the proper anti-aliasing options and all of the edges were jagged. To fix this I went over the edges with the smudge tool at a lower strength and with the blur tool. This way I was able to polish the edges and blend the character with the background better.

I run a “paint daubs” filter onto a flattened copy of the image and masked out parts of it so only the face and other areas of focus could look more sharp than the rest.

To sharpen even more the main focus point I used the sharpen brush tool and gently stroked the face here and there.

The final result

Outro:

Here is something else I did to chill out while doing these…In the book “Shadow over Innsmouth” these creatures live in abandoned human houses …after a while of trying to think how a typical innsmouth fellows look like , I began to imagine what these guys do in their normal day by day live. After all they don’t chase foreigners every day, so what do they in their houses away from the visitors eyes ? Below is a typical innsmouth family , the father, his wife and son (obsessed with his favourite cartoon hero).

I think the most important thing is to have fun while working on whatever type of art you do!

Thank for reading, I hope some of the information presented here is useful for you. I’ll really like to hear your question and opinions in the comments and don’t hesitate to write me :)

P.S most of the process I owe to Bryan Wynia, who I strongly admire. I’m looking further to his next course.

]]> http://vertexbee.com/deepone-detailed-making-of/feed/ 0 Weird Dragon Creatures part 2 http://vertexbee.com/weird-dragon-creatures-part-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=weird-dragon-creatures-part-2 http://vertexbee.com/weird-dragon-creatures-part-2/#comments Sun, 11 Mar 2012 08:50:03 +0000 vertexbee http://vertexbee.com/?p=472 first batch and wanted to explore more this theme.

(click the images to vew high-res)

This is a butterfly dragon (but probably “bat” suits him better). It came out as an experiment. I wanted to explore a new technique involving 3d modeling for generating interesting shapes. You can see example of this process at the bottom of this post. About the dragon, the long transparent extrusions that looks like butterfly wings are just for peecocking, only the males have them at extreme size to increase their chance of attracting a female. This species has extremely well developed ears that helps them to track their pray using echolocation.

The guy below is some sort of insect looking dragon. I started it from a squashed version of the 3d model of the balloon dragon that you can see at the bottom of this post. I’ll get to this technique later.

I’m not happy at all how the balloon dragon sketch turned out. I really like the thumbnail and the initial idea of how the dragon will fly by inhaling a lot of air and filling up his back sack with hot air and gas. Maybe I’ll do another take on him. Here it is how it looks right now, not very cool:

Now, here are two images showing the process I told you about. In the first image you can see how the butterfly dragon started. I’ve take one abstract thumbnail that I did not so long ago and mapped it onto a flat 3d plane. Then I cut out some shapes and extruded them and finally deformed the whole plane using FFD box and soft selection. The interesting thing about this is that by moving the camera around the object you can get with new and interesting shapes and they will be in correct perspective which is a nice bonus.

To wrap up this post here is a turnround animation showing a similar experiment, this time using the balloon dragon thumbnail as a base, fleshing it out in 3d as quickly as possible and posing it. The insect dragon above came from this 3d model with a little bit of squashing and deforming.

I would love to hear your opinion in the comments :) Cheers! ]]> http://vertexbee.com/weird-dragon-creatures-part-2/feed/ 2