Digital Sculptures and Models - Adam McMahon’s Experiments of the Cartoon Kind

Archive for the ‘Digital Sculptures and Models’ Category

Relearning Anatomy - The Skull

February 5th, 2009 | Author: Adam McMahon

So now that I've gotten into a more sculptural program, Zbrush, I'm finding that I want to do more realistic sculpts. I've quickly discovered though that I've spent too much time over in cartoon land and most of that knowledge of anatomy that I learned years ago has escaped from my brain and is running amuck somewhere. So I'm going to start the process of relearning anatomy and hopefully jogging my memory. Tonight I started to rough out a skull in Zbrush. I started from a polySphere though, which is one solid surface, and of course the skull and the jaw bone are separate pieces and the skull has a "hole" in it, or more like a bridge on it, namely the zygomatic arch (ha, I still remembered that). So, now I want to go in and rebuild my model so I can include these features properly. I'm going to attempt to rebuild it entirely in Zbrush to force myself to learn what the program is capable of doing. I'll update the post and let you know the results soon. Here is the rough skull so far.

Click the image for the larger version.

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Zsketch - Eye

February 1st, 2009 | Author: Adam McMahon

Well, I have a long, long way to go yet. I can see I need to learn about the different brush settings and alphas and such in order to get a better result on the wrinkles, hair, etc. I did, however, figure out how to make use of the subTools by putting these two surfaces together, the eye and the surrounding facial forms.

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Mad Scientist Value Study

January 31st, 2009 | Author: Adam McMahon

I tried to render out my Mad Scientist design to get a sense of it as 3d forms. He help up pretty well from what I can see, there are two areas I'm not sure of yet, being the bags under his eyes and cheek volume. If you click on the image you can tell each side of the face doesn't really relate for those two areas. I'm sure I'll sculpt him or model him soon though so then I'll be forced to make a decision on what the depth of those features should be.

I'm posting a small picture of it to see if he is still easily readable with all the shading, to see it larger click on the image.

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Ztiki

January 25th, 2009 | Author: Adam McMahon

Another Zsketch today. I tried using the primitives this time, a cylinder to start with. Then used a masking technique along with the Layer brush to help build up the well defined forms easily and all at the same level. I also used flatten and pinch to help define the angles and shapes better. He's still lumpy, but I just ran out of patience on tweaking out the details. I kind of like the lumpy sculpey look he has right now though.

***UPDATE***

Tiki-Topo

I successfully retopologized the Tiki head tonight. It wasn't as much as a pain as I was expecting. I had hear that the retopology features in Zbrush were difficult to use but I think it depends on your approach. I could see what the topology should be with this guy pretty easy so maybe that helped too. If you have to do a lot of editing to your new topology while you were creating it in Zbrush I can see how it could become a frustrating experience. If thats the case then it could be easier to start by drawing the edgeloops on the surface first as a texture perhaps. I'll have to try that in the future. Anyway, this does mark one more step in my quest to learn Zbrush.

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Zbrush - a beginning

January 24th, 2009 | Author: Adam McMahon

So I'm finally taking the plunge and am learning Zbrush. Zbrush is a program that aims to mimic the feel of sculpting clay in the digital realm. The program is quite unique in the 3D world, and it's interface takes some getting used to. I'm watching a tutorial dvd to help me out. Introduction to Zbrush 3 from The Gnomon Workshop. So far I'm about a quarter of the way through it and am finding it very helpful and informative. While I was watching it I was putting the information to use on a sculpt and this is what I came up with.

For this guy I only used 4 brushes. Standard, Move, Pinch and for fun I tried out the Slash brush and gave him that scar over his eye. So I could get pretty far with fairly little. I'm curious to find out what the other brushes will allow me to do.

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Horton Hears a Who! on DVD

December 9th, 2008 | Author: Adam McMahon

Horton Hears a Who! comes out on DVD today! Hooray…. I mean, Who-ray!

Check it out when you can. This is the first feature length animated film I had the pleasure to work on. The design team at Blue Sky created some amazing artwork that I was able to take part in bringing to three dimensions as a modeler.

Also…

if you haven't seen it, a new trailer for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was released a couple of weeks back. You can view it, and the previous teaser over at Apple's website. Click the link below

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/iceagedawnofthedinosaurs/

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Old Works in Progress

December 6th, 2008 | Author: Adam McMahon

I was digging through some of my old files and I found a few gems that were showing some signs of progress. Why I stopped working on them I can't remember, but now that I'm seeing them again…. maybe I'll go back and finish a few. These are all 3d models, all based on another artist's designs.

The Genie from Disney's Aladdin. This was based off a maquette I found a picture of at http://www.mousetreasures.org/maquettes/genie.shtml. I wish I could see the maquette or at least more pictures from different angles because I remember the facial scture being difficult to figure out. Especially the smile on his left of his nose.

The Tazmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes. Based on this terrific sculpture. I wish I knew the artist behind these sculpture as he really does a great job of translating these 2d characters into three dimensions. See more of his sculpture at http://www.cartoonstore.net/ These two models were done in a time when I was really studying how to bring the appealing designs of 2d cartoons into 3d. During that time I also modeled Scrooge McDuck, also sculpted by this guy, that I posted about earlier. You can see it here http://www.adammcmahon.com/blog/2007/06/20/scrooge-mcduck/

The next two characters are based on Tony DiTerlizzi's illustrations of Mary Howitt's The Spider and the Fly

I was trying a different approach with the eyes by modeling them shut. I honestly can't remember my thoughts behind it now though. Hmmmm. I think it had to do with how the geometry of the eyelids flowed into the area that would make up the crow's feet in a smile. Oh, I remember that I modeled him smiling because that was such an integral expression for him that I needed to be certain that his geometry would allow it in a nice looking way. After I got this expression working I would have to go back and sculpt the face back to a "default pose" using the same geo though.

And here you can see the sculpted hair look I was starting to work on for the spider.

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Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

April 14th, 2008 | Author: Adam McMahon

If you didn't go see Horton Hears a Who! (shame on you!), then you missed the trailer for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs that played before it. Well, Fox has officially made the trailer available online now. You can watch the youtube version of it above, or you can go see it in big, beautiful, glorious HD over at AOL by following this link:

http://movies.aol.com/movie/ice-age-dawn-of-the-dinosaurs/30172/main

This will be the second feature length animated film I will have worked on, the other being Horton Hears a Who!, both by Blue Sky Studios. I work as a modeler there, bringing the designer's brilliant visions into three dimensional space.

I hope you enjoy the trailer, and let me know what you think!

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