Happy New Year! [2012]

First doodle sculpt of the year! Done in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Jan 1, 2012

*Joe is in his pyjamas in front of the window, holding a steaming bowl of oatmeal, while Rocky Balboa's theme blasts in the background. Bring it on 2012!

...Admiral Ackbar's Skinny Cousin?

"It's a trap!!!" <- obligatory

Still working on the Fishboy short with Nadia & Azman in whatever free time we have.

To start things off, Nadia sent me a base model with the proportions we all agreed on.

Then I sketched out the rough forms, trying to get a feel for the general body parts and basic look.

Once it was agreed upon, went ahead and sculpted some anatomy details in. Parts which are gonna be covered by clothing and gear are less detailed. Still a work in progress - all the tertiary details are still missing [scales, wrinkles, folds, webbing, etc.] and it doesn't really hold up to close-up shots... but banged out a couple of isometric renders for Nad & Azman so they can start doing some concepts for the clothes & equipment & color tests.

More to come, hopefully! Juggling so many things, I could be a circus clown.

*Joe still hears the 'Asteroid Chase' theme from Empire Strikes Back when he's rushing to the bathroom

Arrr... Shake Yer Booty

Great. Now we're doing pirate jokes.

Really quick 10-sec dance animation demo done for the animation class I'm teaching [topic of the week : identifying keyposes from reference video]. Link for original reference video [starts halfway in]. Playblast & wires below.







Song : 'Moment 4 Life' by Nicki Minaj
Choreo : Olivia 'Chachi' Gonzales [crazy talented crew member of I.Am.Me, ABDC Season 6 champions]

*Joe is out of breath. Fasting month and all.

Smoking Leads To Gill Cancer

This is what you get when you're sketching too many fishheads and just watched 'Paul'.

A quick model I made for last week's 'Setup & Rigging' class. Construction stuff below.


*Joe felt sad when Mel exclaimed "It looks more like a cockroach than a fish!" 0_0

And I'll form.. the head! *cue theme music*

Yay, managed to successfully use an obscure 80s cartoon reference in context [if you squeed 'Voltron!', then give yourself a pat on the back for being old].

Aaanyway... Some quick head concept sketches for the Fishboy project Azman, Nadia & I are working on - Nadia's working on the body details, Azman's doing hands and feet studies. Together, we're gonna see what works and frankenstein a character together from all these parts. So.. sooner or later, there should be another post of the finished thing.

Inspiration came from all sorts of things... manta rays, sharks, frogs, octopuses [octopodes? octopi? octopuseses?], fish, squid, turtles, and other underwater squiggly things.

*Joe just realized that 'Fishboy head' sounds like a weird sexual favour

Snoop Froggy Frogg

A lizard-doggie-thing, modeled over a couple of free nights. Still not too happy with the textures, spent 2 hours just slapping them on... looking back, I wish there was a bit more variety in colors [green just seems so... cliche] :(






... and a couple of wires, for those who are into the construction stuff :


*Joe wants a robot polar bear to guard his house

Forgotten Work

Woah. Totally forgot about these guys. They were done near the end of 2009 [...holy crap. How time's fun when you're having flies]. My wife helped me with modeling the basemeshes for these guys when I was scrambling trying to get some other stuff done too [*muahs!*].

These models were done for a university art exhibition, my entry was focusing on low poly character models and the use of textures to add more detail than the geometry allows. I'm not putting up the final artworks, but these are the models used in the posters. So.. first up:

Mr Rock Golem. Weighing in at 1041 polys. This was the most... unplanned model. Was literally just a lump of rock with stuff extruded from it which ended up being the limbs and stuff.

Arrrrr. Or 'garrrrrrr'. Captain Redrumm, be weighin' in at 3001 polys. I know, I know.. 3000 isn't really that 'low' :( Very influenced from the pirate captain from the Gobelins 'Pyrats' short.

..and lastly, Samurai Sam [yeah, I know. Sam? Yup... Sam.] with a polycount of 2374 faces. This guy was slightly trickier than the rest because of all his accessories and costume details that weren't part of the body - had to figure a way to optimize everything.

*Joe needs to put up stuff as soon as he's done with them. He's a forgetful old man.

Huzzah!

New update! Old news! Last month at the MSC Malaysia Kre8tif! Digital Content Awards 2010 [what a mouthful], Glue Studios won in the the 'Best Short Animation Production' and 'Most Promising Start Up Animation Studio' categories.

*Joe is happy that all the hard work paid off

Starting Over

Alright. Been pretty miffed lately by the fact that I haven't posted up anything in ages - sure, I've had a lot going on [uni stuff, studio duties, research projects, freelance jobs, the baby, etc.]... but then again.. who doesn't have a lot going on?

There are so many others out there who manage to squeeze in a little time between all their junk just to work on their own personal stuff, even if it isn't much. I have so much respect for the people who have done that - they're constantly inspired, and don't let the business of the world get in the way of that. So... I really am out of excuses. And what does that make me, boys and girls? 10 points if you guessed 'LAZY JACKASS' [congratulations, give yourself a pat on the back].

Anyway.. I'm trying to get in the groove again. So here I am.. in the middle of the night, in bed, with my baby sleeping next to me, trying to work on something... anything. But... so sleepy, lah.

*Joe is now a qualified baby-burper

Wonewy Negwected Bwog

Oh gosh. Last post on Sept. 2009?! Aih....

Hello people, it's been a while. And a lot has gone on since then.. freelance jobs, exhibitions, projects here and there.. hopefully one day I'll find the energy to hunt them down and put them up proper here. And the reason I've been so tired lately? Behold, my newest creation! :D

[ Not a solo piece. More like a collaborative effort :p ]

Say hello to Seri Celestial! Not even 3 weeks old, but has already developed the ability to cackle!

*Joe had a nightmare of drowning in baby formula last night

Drumstick

*Yawn* Monday morning, class in a couple of hours, haven't slept much. Finished the leg yesterday. Now polycount is 1300, if you duplicate the leg for the other side [*gulp*.. it's creeping up]. After work, gonna work on the head & torso.

*Joe keeps hearing Ra-ra-Rasputin! in his head.

Shake Your Booty

Oh my kosh-b'gosh. Not a single post since July?! Grr.. shame on you, Joe [*spank spank spank*]

Aaanyway.. yeah, I've been busy. With boring stuff. However, one interesting thing coming up soon is an exhibition that me and some others in the faculty are gonna participate in. My work deals with low-poly modeling, so I'm gonna be churning out a few characters for that event - no animation, just big big printouts.

I'm fascinated with low poly modeling [been trying for years to master it and still haven't come close to some of the stuff you see online] and I have the utmost respect for game artists - they manage to churn out some of the most awesome stuff using the least resources and make some really beautiful stuff using all sorts of dirty 3D tricks. Go ahead, check out gameartisans.org... I could get lost in that site for hours.

I just started modeling yesterday [what??! so late?! come back here! *spank spank spank*] and finished the boots for the first character (some kinda mechanical dude). The polycount is around 250, and all the details are through textures. I'll post the model in bits.. hopefully I can finish all four characters before time runs out [with Raya round the corner, and exam week, and all the stupid meetings during the student's holiday aiyooo.. things look grim].

Aaaaanyway. Back to spanking. *spank spank spank*

*Joe's ass looks like mangled play-doh after all the spanking... and you can take that image out of your head right now. No really. Do it. Now.

Quickie : Lemony *Snikt!*

Those of you who have been visiting this blog for a while should know that now and then, I feel bad for relying too much on Zbrush... so sometimes I just feel like tackling something old-school style, modeling completely in Maya.

So here's a cartoonish, Bruce Timm-like version of our favourite psychotic mass murderer. Gonna move on and model the whole body whenever I got some empty time to fill up.

*..ever wondered why Logan's teeth aren't coated in adamantium?

GoZ! GoFasterZ!

Zbrush 3.2 with GoZ was just released!.... for Mac OSX users only. Only a matter of time before it swings the other way.. either that, or we gotta wait for Zbrush 4 :p

...but seriously... 3D workflow is forever changed with this stuff. Dammit - this is one of the times I wish I was a Mac user.

*Joe is clapping his hands jumping up and down like a little girl. He's THAT excited.

Goldfish Memory

I totally forgot about this guy.

Semester started around 3 weeks back, and things were already going into full gear - the rest of this guy [since the last update] was literally done in a couple of hours; I had to rush because the students were going to use this model for their assignment.

The total polycount for the whole thing was around 1500 - a lot of the details was lost because of this, but I wanted to make sure that this model was friendly to computers of all ages.

All maps were just 1k [AO, normal and cavity]. No time to do any colour textures :(

Super quick rig

Last thing to do was a deformation test to see how pose-able it could get.


So... that's it. Really unhappy with how this turns out 'cos it was rush job... but there are a lot of other university things I gotta focus my attention on [and other stupid things that keep coming back to haunt me... that's right.. I'm looking at YOU, stupid KPI monsters and MAPS contracting grrrr].

Dunno when I'm gonna be able to post up anything else.. I see lots of unpleasant things to do in the near future.

*Joe wishes he had 8 arms and 3 heads