I suppose it's still new Year's day for some folks, so here's to a happy 2015!
Even though its the year of the sheep, this New Year's my mind drifted to thoughts of the pig. I've read that as pets, pigs are super clean, but when penned up where they cant get under a nice shady tree, they'll roll about in the mud to keep nice and cool. Seems like an excellent attitude for 2015. 2014 was chock full of mudholes...but mudholes can serve their purpose for the resourceful. May all your mudholes be cool and refreshing, and, in time, may you find you're rolling in a flowerbed, my friends :)
Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is well and spending time with loved ones, on adventures, or at least someplace cozy and nice at this lovely time of year when so many folks are celebrating so many different things, in so many beautiful ways.
Buzzy buzz buzz. It's a....gorilla....bee...dude. An excuse to play with more fiber-mesh stuffs.
I started out with him on a purpley flower but then I thought, a dandelion would be ideal for packing as much fiber mesh into one session of zbrush as possible, and it still renders in only a few minutes!
(plus, I can probably re-purpose the pupley flower on the lapel of my proper-chap dragon!)
If your nanners have bruises on 'em in the morning, gorillabee was probably fighting crime in your kitchen. :P
Have you seen the well to do, up and down Park Avenue?
This is Sir William Wingsworth, and he travels exclusively by dragon-heated dirigible, as any civilized dragon should. None of that flapping about for him. (although he does secretly wish for a larger wingspan:P)
I'm experimenting with light caps in Zbrush, he's got skin shader 4 on him, and jellybean on the eyes/gemstone...but eventually I'd like to get this guy into maya and see what he looks like with some Metal Ray rendering stuffs, and brighten up those eyes!
Now that I look at it, he really *does* need a monocle.....and a flower for his lapel...ah, an excuse to revisit this later!!
oh, almost forgot....color turntable! His whiskers and eyebrows sparkle a bit though, LOL!
A bit of Zbrush fun this weekend: Jean Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg from the 5th Element, one of my all time favorite villains, from one of my all time favorite movies! Weapons dealer, snazzy dresser, and utterer of the second most famous "I know" in sci-fi cinema history. I'd like to think maybe he's an alternate universe Han. Weapons dealer, smuggler, and CEO...what Solo could have ended up like if he'd never met Luke, Leia, and Obi-Wan? I always feel a little bad for him when the black brain goo starts dripping from under his mowhawk dome. Poor guy got an offer he couldn't refuse and got himself in big trouble. Gary Oldman's self depreciating delivery of the "I know" line cracks me up every dang time. That slight eyebrow twitch, the glance down to think before answering? Hilarious.
I used dynamesh + the nifty extract feature to practice making clothing. He's rendered with the skin4 shader, and the "jelly bean" shader on his plastic hair thingy. I was gonna give his clothes and hair a whirl with some of the other shaders but since it was a caricature I thought it worked better with everything cartoony looking. (I made the neon glowy thing in photoshop! AZZIZ LIGHT!!!!)
Here is a Zbrush dragon I've been working on! Sometimes when I work on characters I like to think up little stories about them, and what adventures they might be up to. When I was making this guy, he seemed like an important, regal, but not entirely unfriendly guy. Fierce looking, but intelligent...as a guardian of something important should be. I hope you enjoy cornball fantasy writing! You're gonna want to avert your eyes, and scroll to the end if you don't! (I've also included a turntable render of my model after the story:)
****************************************
Lan held the
talisman aloft in the dark like a lantern, adjusting her direction when
the glow dimmed. The soft green light cast snakelike shadows through the
tree limbs,surrounding them both in movement as she walked. She kept
her eyes ahead, attempting to ignore the brief glints appearing just off
the path. Were they the eyes of night creatures....perhaps claws, or
teeth? She concentrated on the intermittent soft clicks of Arfund's own
large curved claws on the stone path behind her for reassurance.
The talisman had led them to a dead end.
A sheer cliff
stretched up into the fog, obscuring its height. Lan turned to Alfund,
who already had his wings unfurled. The world has changed much, perhaps
this mountain was not here when the talisman was created, and the path
is now above? Alfund disappeared into the fog above, leaving the girl
alone. As Alfund broke through the fog into the grey morning sky, both
heard it... The low boom, then another, and another, increasing in
frequency until it became a constant rumbling hum. Alfund immediately
dove back into the fog, he hit the ground behind Lan and threw a
leathery wing over her. The source of the hum appeared to be coming from
the solid stone wall before them, but the lichen, vines and dirt had
fallen from the entire cliff face in a mist of grey dust, and the solid
wall of rock now rippled, as if it were a lake into which a stone had
been cast.
Lan crawled forward beneath Alfund's wing to peer out, mesmerized
by the hum, and the sight of fluid stone. Alfund curled his talons
briefly, then lifted his wing so that Lan could stand. As she walked
towards the wall, she turned back..."I know you cannot enter, but I wish
more than anything that you could."
"Dragons cannot enter the lair of another dragon uninvited, it is
the last privacy afforded us since the blessing of insight connected us
all, but I sense no malice from this one..you are safe here...at least
until he knows your purpose." Alfund cast his eyes down, his jaws opened
briefly then snapped shut.
"I will try my hardest to convince him to extend an invite, Alfund"
Alfund
chirped and raised his eyes, Lan laughed. It was nice to have him
along, even if he could not come into the mountain with her.
Lan took a deep breath and held it as she passed through the
stone, as if she were entering a pool of water. She stood on the inside
of the mountain shivering, finding it was quite a cold business to have
passed though a mountain.
"That is a strange greeting, is there something offensive to your senses in here?"
Lan
was so startled she froze. Here she stood, an ambassador for all
mankind, before the guardian of all magic... scared stiff, shivering,
and still holding her nose as she often did when jumping in the river to bathe.
"Step forward, and tell me why you are here."
Lan
stepped forward, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the
chamber, she began to pick out the silhouette of the guardian. He had a
peculiar arrangement of horns she's never seen before that gave the
singular appearance of a crown upon his spade-shaped head.His scales
glinted red, and his eyes glowed ochre and red like fire, far
fiercer than the violet, blue and green she was accustomed to in
dragons.
Lan had never been more afraid in her life.....................
Welp, hope you were entertained!
*Disclaimer: I haven't posted any dragons here in a very, very loong time, but I think it's been long enough that it's been established the stuff here is my *own personal art* separate from work...so get ready for a deluge of dragons!
Oh, and as an extra bit here are some more color scheme experiments!
Hooray! It finally rained! There's a terrible drought going on right now in California, and I was so excited to see some rain, I made this! I call her Mrs Prickles, hehe. Just practicing and learning TVPaint.
I like making art, laughing till I can't breathe, and blowing the fluff off dandelions. When I'm not doing any of that stuff I'm probably playing videogames. Yep.
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