Live Action PATLABOR

Massive Black workshop demo from Fri, some sort of live action take on PATLABOR, one of my favorite animes...... can't go wrong with old Mamoru Oshii! :)

3D blockout in ZBrush + Photoshop paintover. Keen to do a few more shots if i get time, take more time planning/modelling/finishing than i had time to in the demo, would have liked to group all the pieces on the model to get better base material render out of Keyshot to paintover in PS instead of just all grey that i started with here. Everything came down to the wire and ran out of time but was fun stuff regardless, glad everyone had a good time, will figure out a way to get the files to everyone that attended the workshop. Look forward to the next one! :)

Finally got around to uploading the layered file, the DL link can be found in the store section of my site. Enjoy!

http://www.artofben.com/Store

Initial 3D blockout from ZBrush.

ZBrush for concept artists Vol. 2

This feels like it was done a lifetime ago, cool to see it finally coming out though! ZBrush for Concept Artists Vol. 2 coming very soon! Keen to see Vol. 3 wrapped up which will be sculpting and illustrating the dual hammerhead looking creature, posing scenes and all that fun stuff. Will think of some other goodies and freebies to include in the last 2 volumes. :) 

https://gum.co/blue2

Free models/tutorials :)

Quick robot arm and hexapod study from earlier today for practice based on some of the reference i posted a few weeks ago on Facebook for my students.... DL link on my website if you want to mess around with the models.....Because sharing. :)

www.artofben.com/Store

For the robot arm, it's all decimated down to keep the file size low, but you can 'split to similar parts' or 'group split' in ZBrush to get the individual pieces and re-dynamesh to get a more dense form to modify and build something more complex.

Gorilla Tank

In-Class demo from this week. Painting up the final 'gorilla robot' in a clean version more like a Bradley tank also did a quick digital camo variant but maybe i will post that later. Probably a bit overkill from an illustration/focal point standpoint but the main purpose is just to showcase the model/design in an environment.... will get to some more fun illustrated stuff soon.

You can view the development and work in progress on the model for this in my ZBC sketchbook:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?149695-Ben-Mauro-Sketchbook/page11

In class demo from this week. Most of the demo's so far have been showing how to use ZBrush to create detailed finished art over a slightly longer period of time but this week i just wanted to demonstrate how we can quickly block out some basic forms/design then do a paintover using photos/painting to get a finished production illustration in a few hours.
 

So here was that really blurry guy way in the background on the first illustration next to the soldier fleshed out a little more, some sort of smaller carryall type bot..... i call him the CHIMP. Might go and do a more refined 3D/Keyshot version of this guy after i refined the design more in ZBrush working everything out to the same level as the Gorilla or higher. We'll see how everything works out over the next few weeks.

A robot sketch i did earlier this year during Khang Le's demo in AUS, not related to the more realistic gorrila tank robot i did in class but thought i would share instead of letting it collect dust on my HD.

Orangutan forest scene

Full body sculpt of the Orangutan.

Some of the 3D comps i did for environmental paintovers.

Orangutan's

Few renderings of the models from last week in preparation for my class tomorrow in Singapore. First one is a combination Fibermesh + Photo + Painting on top of the model. Second one is a combination Photo + Painting over the model, no Fibermesh. Third is the split skull view of the model, wanted to make some cool illo that you might see in a NatGeo mag.

Demos V3

 Some more class demos and things from last week, Primates! Everything was started with a dynamesh sphere and sculpted from scratch.

The more detailed one is the class demo, but i ended up eyeballing a lot of the forms based on photos and reference....which didn't feel accurate to me.... like something was slightly off. While i could always justify some of the forms based on many of the variations of Orangutans i was looking at, something still felt off to me and it bugged me into the weekend. So for personal growth i decided to model a simple orangutan skull so that i was building the forms around it to allow everything to fit where it should, this was a much more logical way to work and allowed me to understand how all the muscles and skin fit on top of the bone to create the forms i was seeing in the reference photos. The less detailed one was done with this process which i feel looks much more accurate. Then after all that was in place i sculpted an expression i saw in my reference that i thought was pretty hilarious... fun times! I modified the teeth and things based on the reference photo which was pretty interesting as well, one of its lower teeth had been knocked out so the remaining 3 had shifted to the center and many of the other teeth were moved around and shifted at odd positions from years of use in the wild. Really cool stuff to put into the visual library for future use. 

Autumn Frost

Some early weapon designs from 2011, final direction in the film went elsewhere at the last minute. I was starting to mock them up in ZBrush to give the Production Designer a better idea of what they might look like right as they were scrapped, fun to do regardless!

Demos + Warmups V2

More class demos and warmups for class.

Warmups

Some more warmups and things, sort of a realistic take on a slightly future MGS/Eva/GIS/Appleseed inspired humanoid SWAT robotic soldier for the military, i imagine it would be completely autonomous and/or have some soldiers mind downloaded into this vessel so a team of these guys could be extra lethal with years of combat training augmented by a superior body. Haven't put my designs in environments in a while...a bit rusty to be honest. Mostly 3D with some refinement in Photoshop on the transition areas between the artificial muscles and the robotic areas. Pushing myself to build more detailed/refined hard surfaced stuff in 3D this year after seeing what guys like Vitaly/Furio/Fausto/Gavril/Fields have been smashing out lately...definitely takes a while to get into but seems to be speeding up. Should have much more to share later this year.

Some little teaser images i did testing out Keyshot before going in and detailing the model more (you can see how rough the model is in these images). 

Spent a little more time on the model based on where the paintover went and did some more finished renderings out of keyshot, this is mostly straight out of the program with a little PS work on the decals etc (though you can do that in the program). Could have taken things further, but that's all the time i had to spend on it this week (and probably all the time i will have for a while). Mostly a technical exercise getting some new processes for building complicated hard surfaced designs and rendering pipelines down for class next term, took a bit more time than i would have liked messing around with each program and figuring out how to get both to work together efficiently (on a laptop!), but i think for future designs it will be a really effective combination to create some highly detailed renderings very rapidly, when you see your design looking photoreal in real-time in the keyshot viewport.....its very addicting.

 Grey renders of the model, still not super detailed but fairly resolved for a concept, would definitely like to push the level of detail much further on future designs. 

 Polygroups on the model before exporting to Keyshot. I am doing everything on my macbook pro so i needed to use decimation master a lot to get the polycount down as much as possible, though i ended up building parts of the lower legs separately then merging them (and not dynameshing into one mesh, i think because i was only planning on doing the upper torso so it was detailed ahead of time then decided to do the full body last minute) so the parts of the body are a bit more dense than i would have liked but i just didn't plan ahead as well as i should have and time had run out so i just had to deal with it. A note to myself for future work when doing this sort of thing.

ZBrush for concept artists Vol. 1

Thanks for your patience, the tutorial is now live!
https://gum.co/blue1

On top of the 3D files, layered .psd and the custom UI created in the demo i have also included 2 additional layered .psd's so you can see how i handle rendering different materials in Photoshop. Enjoy! :)

You can view a short preview here:

Yellow

Doing some warmups before getting into IP stuff the rest of the week. Will do a bit more of a writeup on the character when i post the body in little while.

THE HOBBIT: WARGS

Neato, we finally got clearance to show work that was in film 1! Here was one thing that i know made it into the movie, i will have to go back and check if there was anything else worth showing from the art of books but i wasn't as involved in the films as some of my co-workers. There are a few things here and there that made it through but i put more of my time into ELYSIUM for obvious reasons. ;)

I will try to showcase the basic design process that lead to the Warg (heads) seen in the film. This is actually one of the first things i did at Weta Workshop with ZBrush so excuse my rough as models! Weta Digital did an incredible job bringing them (and everything else in the film) to life. Most of this stuff is pretty standard production art, there wasn't a ton of time in most cases to do sexy paintings/renderings....but that's how it goes a lot of the time.

There were some initial designs done by the fantastic Nick Keller for this version of the film, but Peter seemed to respond to one of the Warg designs from a Gus Hunter environment painting (crop of which can be seen in lower right corner).  My job initially was just to bring this into 3D as that's what we thought he was after. As this design looked very much just like a wolf and less like the hyena looking creatures from 'Lord of the Rings' i created a few other options that bridged the gap from the more wolf looking direction to the hyena looking ones seen in the earlier films. (i will spare your eyes from some of the mankier ones i did!)

First design trying to match the illustration.........and yes, i was asked to draw the glowing eyes and lines coming out of its eyes.

One of the variations attempting to link these wargs to the ones in LoTR.

 After some feedback we learned that Peter did in fact want to go more in the wolf direction but he only liked the illustration i was given as a starting point. He wanted the Wargs for Hobbit to be more of an exaggerated theatrical embodiment of evil and not something that was just an over-sized anatomically correct wolf where the initial illustrations were going. He referenced the 'Darkness' character from LEGEND as a good example of this idea, if you look at the forms on his face none of them are necessarily 'anatomically correct' but they enhance and embody the evil nature of that character, it is much more iconic and stays with you long after the film is over.

 So with that in mind i again did a few more options taking it in that direction, starting more subtlety then increasing how prominent the exaggerated features were in the other options. (again i will save your eyes from the really manky ones!)

 ...and a more intense version, definitely started to look pretty evil in the bottom left view but maybe getting a bit too much in some of the other angles. I think it was a good call though, really made them stand out visually even though we toned things down significantly from this version in the final.

 After that, one of the more toned down options was selected and i was asked to sculpt it with a closed mouth which we milled out at the Workshop to build a full size prop/rig of the albino matriarch for the actor playing Azog to sit/act/roar on while on set. I'm not sure if this was the final model used to mill out, i recall being asked to widen the head a little in the back so it was a bit more broad right before i handed it off, will try to track all that down and see if i can find the others. This model and a few of the others were then supplied to Weta Digital where they worked their magic making them extra menacing/realistic and absolutely fantastic in the final film!

 Showing a quick comparison of the final Weta Digital models. (seen in the art of book)

Quick screen grab from the film.