WIP Bot

A WIP of a secondary project I'm running on the background
I'm trying to get multiple things running at once.

Character sketches

Some sketching done for a new class. 
I'm exploring a little of urban sided futurism, I admit a bit of a Tarantino vibe in some of these. (Which I am thankful for my family to feeding me his movies while I was a 10y old kid)
I'm not as inspired in this course, as I already had a tackle at lesson 2's homework and got my ass handed to me, even though I already did client work and personal work with some success, resembling the same exercise asked, it still came out unsuccessful. At least I did the homework, it just didn't come out that good mostly because I'm always over-ambitious and I want to get different kind of work in my portfolio than what everyone else does for the class...




But some friends are kinda nudging me to take an old sketch of mine for class:

Last test frame

I notice now that the background pack of photos I purchased and the teacher used is very good and well shot, but it limited me somewhat to the compositions I could produce, a new thing to improve on my work is to just look beyond what I can use as background and not stick to just the material the teacher is using.
I don't hate it though.

Reloading

Hey all. I hope I don’t bore anyone to death with my extensive ‘development notes’, they just help me to nail what went good and bad.

As planned, I’ve been trying to finish my course at Learnsquared, here’s another piece, routing towards a more cinematic approach and a less product-like 360 turn around shot, like the other one I posted. It’s tricky to pull off this 1 point perspective, because it’s something I do not like to have in a composition, unless the storytelling is some sort of foreign concept to the viewer. I think I’ve settled to present a shot like this and shrug it off, because I’m imagining a pursuit of the mech to someone, and then have her pause in time to reload and use her wits for the next move... or that’s the way I like to think, to get away with the 1 point perspective and mold it into a fitting theme! It’s also tricky because the image can get flat pretty quickly.

I experimented a lot with curves adjustments in photoshop, which I never liked to use much, as they quickly get out of hand. I’m more of a guy to use levels instead... but you know, homework is about experimentation, breaking barriers, and I think I was surprised at the end with the result, since I was skeptical that curves would work to balance values just as good as levels. I got out of my comfort zone, and that alone is great, regardless the quality of the end result.

Subcultures / Cyberpunk medic design

Hey ya'll. I really meant to post this online early, like, waaaay early, but life has been chaotic. I switched studios in the start of August and it was very complicated to adapt to a new pipeline, at least in the first few weeks, but I got the ball rolling, and I hope that nothing can stop it now!

I didn't stop thinking and using the techniques I learned at Learnsquared and employ them in my client work as well, it worked flawlessly,  even though I didn't finish this homework, (no time!) I found an immense value in employing these techniques for prototyping concept art, I don't know how many concepts I've done so far using Alex Figini's techniques, but it was a blast. Both the art director and me are happy with the results, so I'll keep on using them for a while, build on top, hybrid the process, and until I research on something else.

About the concept, I'll produce a few more later, I hope! Not sure when, but I'm excited to finish this course and pick a new one! I had so much trouble with setting the environment settings right, it was insane, but after countless renders of smaller concepts for work, I got the hang of material graph and other keyshot settings, came back to this homework and re-rendered everything.. so many render nights gone to the trash can! Practice makes perfect, I guess!

Overall I'm experiencing a bit of introducing subcultures and other life experiences I had to my work. Dreadlocks was a mark in my teenage years, so here's to those.

There are still issues with it, issues that I wouldn't have done if I was going to start over again or went back in time, but I love my experiments, as I would an ugly child. The wrong answer is the right answer in a different context, and I feel this in this work.

Mech Arm WIP

About the concept... to be honest, I restarted around 3 or 4 times, I just wasn't getting the sculpt right, the process was messy and bruteforced, so I reset the sculpt until I got it to a stage that it sucked less.

All the time while working I was cursing myself for not doing this in Maya, which is the software I'm more comfortable on, but I did it, powered through and used only Zbrush for this... the reason being that process is more important than outcome, (for a creative anyway, not a client), if you rely on outcome, you already know where you'll get at, but if you focus on process, you may not know where it'll take you, but you know you want to be there!

Here's an arm.

It's also another part of the mech that I'm not shy to show, but it's still gonna get improved later on. There are somethings in it still bugging me.

Sculpting prototypes!

Here are some WIPs!
I'm sadly not able to commit to these as much as I'd like, (time-wise) because I've gotten a job as concept artist in May, my time is limited when it comes to personal work. :(

Nonetheless, I am pushing it as far as I can and not having that as an excuse not to keep shooting at it.I'm learning a ton off the record, I had to learn how to model hair with fibermesh, cards, Xgen, so much stuff, that I doubt that I will use in a regular base, but knowledge is power, right?

For now, here is a rough sculpt, I was going to show the rest of the body, but it's not as showable as the bust, there is a lot of details that I need to pinch together from the neck down, a lot of frankensteining to do before I show it all... I just wish a day had more than 24 hours... And I think I must have started over like 3 or 4 times on this sculpt all the while cursing Zbrush and everything that is digital...Anyway, after this chick is done, I'm hoping to do a couple of faster ones, with what I learned so far and turn them into a case study, as with this one I'm focusing more of design language, while the next I intend to explore other things, like storytelling, and really go home with the storytelling, as I feel that a image that tells a great story will always overshadow one that is synthetical well made, with all design theories there.
We'll see.

I feel there is a long way to go until this is done, but sharing WIPs is crucial for me, it helps me get a sense of what I'm doing, who I am exposing myself to.