Work in progress

Nice clean, sketchy technique :) My only crit is that the head seems slightly large for the body which gives it a slight cartoony feel. Anyway, cool pic keep posting!

yeah thats the definite stand out. It looks like a charictature by a political cartoonist or something. Making sure to get the face an acurate portrayal of the person and then giving them some sort of costume (eg there was one the other day in the age of john howard in a doctors coat and so on).
it does look very good though and the shading in particular is great

Its a really nice piece JohnN - Agree with the above comments though. I noticed that that style of hatching is not your usual ? or it could be the fact that im so used to seeing your great markerwork that I havent come across the pencil stuff yet! It looks good nevertheless.

Yeah, now that i come back to the image the head is too big- an efffect of drawing with my sketchbook at a fair angle away from me maybe! Nothing that i can fix in photoshop :P

Haz: It's sort of an extention of my 'normal' hatching. I don't think I have posted anything with this exact technique before and rarely refine my pencil sketches this much cause most are destine for the pen+marker or scan and colour treatment.

its looking really nice, cant wait for demo :D

This level looks awsome. I can't wait to see what the characters look like.

Hey LiveWire, have you got a website for your game up yet. Id like to get more information about it. My class at the AIE have also made a Mario style racing game.

[url]http://www.aie.act.edu.au/roachrage/[/url] Heres our website.

We will be entering it into the Best Unsigned Game catagory at the AGDC this year. If your game gets finished before then will you be entering it?

we certainly will, we should ahve the game at alpha stage by end of tomorrow so we can send it down. if all goes to plan it will be finihed for agdc and out exhibition in december (i'm at QANTM).

i'll post a link to the website once we give it a bit of a clean up. it's kinda hacky at the moment, we've been spending most of our time on the game. should be fixed up tuesday, hopefully.

edit: just chekc out yours. you have a real nice style going on there. i dont know how many they allow to exhibit in the comp but i'm looking forward to seeing what other students come up with. and now i' looking forward to playing your take on the genre.

cool! what engine are you guys using there btw?

ogre [url]www.ogre3d.org[/url]

dont know much about it, you'll have to ask my coders about that.

Thats looking really cool LiveWire :)
I like that big statue thing in the middle of that first screenshot.
Looking forward to seeing some of the characters :)

Horrah! We made out deadline and got it sent off to AGDC. Fingers crossed we get accepted now...

in game screenies:

[img]http://img8.exs.cx/img8/6361/19717.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img24.exs.cx/img24/5350/12932.jpg[/img]

awesome, hope to see it at the AGDC!

LiveWire what course are you going at TAFE?

i'm at QANTM actually, so not technicaly TAFE, but a TAFE course, so... yeah.

finally finished my two characters. a few more things to do (not to mention a crap load of assessment as well) and the final deadline is fast approaching....

[img]http://img25.exs.cx/img25/6113/lizard2.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img122.exs.cx/img122/1894/dragon1.jpg[/img]

oh, btw, the scooter models were done by another team member, the rest is my work.

nice, like the second guy especially.

Hah! *VERY* cool models livewire! Really like the green guy and the blue scaley bits on the blue guy.

I think both could use a tiny bit more with the depth and shadows - but really good effort for a small amount of time I think, being pressured and all [:)]

The level you have made looks really cool, reminds me alot of Diddy Kong racing..on N64, that had some great levels.

GoLDeN: i did a lot of 'research' with DKR and Mario Kart (classics!)

HaxarD: thanks. what do you mean buy depth and shaddows? are you saying shaddows are to flat or something? or not detailed enough? texturing is not my strong point, particualy shading of skin, so any help would be great.

horah! we've been accepted in the unsigned game comp. releaving new, now all we have to do is get it finihsed in the remaining 6 days...

Dont get me wrong i think the textures are pretty cool - they suit the look of the rest of the game so it might be a disadvantage to have them differ from the look of everything esle around the course.

I just mean that each texture could use maybe anoter pass or 2 refining depth, texture and lighting, putting some history into skin / scales etc.

thanks i'll look into that in the future. no time to change this one now unfortunatly.

thats a really nice painting, you get very nice composition in your work which really helps. I also think your colour is good, although maybe using more contrasting colours in key areas could make your images more striking. One other suggstion is that more detail would be nice, as you've clearly got the skills to achieve a higher level of detail. Other than that i cant see any problems, and im looking forward to your next piece.

Wow man, that is really nicely done. Lots of detial, nice colour pallete and good perspective

Very nice work, good to see some Quake players still helping it out for the commmunitiy. By the way, have you tried Quake 2's Action Quake 2?

Yeah Quake's good, just like the eay it moves. I couldn't really get into quake2 so I haven't played action quake. I do check out a few engines though, http://www.planetquake.com/blur/news.html and http://hkitchen.quakesrc.org/news.php are worth looking at.

Action Quake 2 is available stand alone now, so you don't need Quake 2, it is around 57MB, the Web Site link to it is, http://slacker.home.cosmic-cow.net/ltktbm/ltktbm17beta.exe , if you need help with the game, or if you want some Action Quake 2 Server IPs in Australia, my E Mail and MSN is codyalday@hotmail.com . Everyone on this forum should give it a try, a very good mod I have to say.

ROFL 'Boognar', man that name makes me laugh, sweet stuff man i like :)

Hiya Falco,

Overall its a pretty good model, Some good polyflow starting to happen there.

A few comments:

Overall his design is really simplistic and you probably could get away with retaining 90-95% of that silhouette with ~1500tris, something to think about for future models.

The 1024 x 1024 texture is lacking alot in defination - we should be able to see alot more texture in the material wrapped around his shoe or the cloth around his loins and neck.

If you like the texture the way it is with that simplistic coloured look, then you could easily get away with probably a 256 x 256 x 2 and loose no quality over what youve painted there.

A good start, but i think it could be made better with another detail pass or 2 on the texture [:)] Hope that helps!

Bugger, couldnt get the pic to show up strait away, there is just an attachment. If any body reads this could they let me know what im doing wrong.

HEY man, thats pretty cool.
Fingers look a bit small.
As for suggestions, you could just do some armour then give it that swirly designs that the legpads have.
I like the boots she has.

You have to wrap the location of the image with image tags..

(img)http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Falco/2004101964620_High_Poly_Wo…

Replace the rounded brackets with square ones with the image tag though.. so use [ instead of ( and ] instead of ) for (img)(/img)

edit your post and give it a shot...

Thanks very much Souri. Ill get the hang of this even if it kills me.
Your right about the hands Mack, I ripped them off an old model. I think I'll model them on properly.

Wires?
Why don't people post wires?

The hands as mentioned are too small, her upperarms are also too thick and long and her lower arms too short.

She also has no real definition of her muscle contours, don't know if your going for that or not but a warrior would have some, well alot actually, sorry just a pet peeve of mine [:P].

Great job so far, only one thing I really noticed was his left leg kicks up rather quick after lagging behind his right arm, whereas the opposite limbs are in synch. Bear in mind though it took me a fair few viewings of it to pick that up so it's a pretty small crit.

yeah i agree with wiz, the leg does kinda kick up there. Other then that its great :) looks very awesome on loop

its really good, apart fromt the forementioned problems the legs are very nice. the only thing i can add is that it seems to lack a bounce in its step (it does have it in the legs but not really in the body), acentuating it a bit might help to make it even more natural. thats all though, otherwise its prety top notch

woah i like the design dude. nice work.

for the walk cycle. Its looking pretty sweet. a couple of things i see though, the fast right leg as was said before. also the right foot steps on the left hand "thumb" of the creature. The right hand seems to try to grab the ground as it comes forward, but the left hand sotr of just swings foward.

I would like too see sum more animation of this. Maybe a jumping one 0.<

Cheers for the comments guys.. you all have a keen eye for details thats for sure... ;)

Been working on this integration exercise for 3d at uni.. its hardly finished... more of a beta than anything.. I've been fighting with maya at the moment... the 'lil biaatch has been playin up.. Godamnit!!!!

so theres lots wrong with it.. but I thought I'd show it as a WIP!

[img]http://student.ci.qut.edu.au/~n4675215/misc/HH_Render.jpg[/img]
---
Link Here to Movie.. approx 1Mb
---
[url]http://student.ci.qut.edu.au/~n4675215/misc/HellHound_360x288.mov[/url]

Cheers Guys!!

thats pretty awesome, heres my two cents
the drain cover seems to sorta fly away on its own accord, it looks like the hound barely touched it.
He seems to sorta.. move on the balls of his feet sometimes without any actual joint movement, like his geometry is sliding along.

something else though you appear to go to the same Uni as a friend of mine, you wouldnt know a luke muscat would you?

yeah, its coming alon well, a lot of the movement in his arms head and upper torso are really good, evn his legs are nice. what really stood out for me when he was jumping, there was quite an evident weight to his movement, he sort of floated along, with no real change in velocity as he leaped from point to point. other than that though its looking promising, keep it up

Thought I might resurrect this post.. and re post my latest work on this piece..

[img]http://www.jamietelford.com/weblog/wp-images/hh/new_HH.jpg[/img]

I've reworked the animation, improvements in the timing etc.. and fixed up the ground texture...
The Hellhound I applied a Quick MR skin material.. and rendered the whole thing out MR..

[URL]http://www.jamietelford.com/weblog/wp-images/hh/new_HH_low.mov[/URL] Low Bandwidth ( 584Kb, 192x144 )
[URL]http://www.jamietelford.com/weblog/wp-images/hh/new_HH_mid.mov[/URL] Medium Bandwidth ( 1.1Mb, 384x288 )
[URL]http://www.jamietelford.com/weblog/wp-images/hh/new_HH_high.mov[/URL] High Bandwidth ( 4.5Mb, 768x576 )

After this I'll be looking into making the integration work alot better..

Cheers!

Sorry I'm not getting any pics coming up. It might be just me.

yeah, the post isn't showing but the web link is...
really nice model and very well rendered, very stylised and full of character. no crits as it all seems fine, the rain coat is very well done and some animations would be nice to see. looking forward to more work

Ok, decided to invest the effort in clicking on the link and I'm glad I did, real nice work there man, great use of materials. Would be good to see this dude with a suitable background.

Like Conundrum I can't see any real crits, hmmm, well except for maybe the specular level on the raincoat being a bit high for my liking, but that's picking real hard.

wow thats a really great character, i love it! its got a real great mix of themes in there
id agree with wiz about the spec though

aww, I was looking forward to midgets too [:(]

good start, main point I'd give is to firstly give her head a bit more brain room in the back (looks like you may have overcompensated for her mass of hair), and she looks to be suffering a little from "three quarter referance syndrome" (looks good from the front, and the side, but the depth and volume suffers a little from mostly perspective correction from referance).

You were right JI, there was a proportion problem, she was the right width but not the right height, all seems fixed now and it's onto detail modelling and some hair, also face needs a bit more work.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Wizenedoldman/20041020231939_Wil…]

Wires:

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Wizenedoldman/20041020233625_Wil…]

Minor update showing basic colouring/ materials as well as having tweaked a few things like small hands and fat lower face.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Wizenedoldman/20041021520_Willow…]

How about some creases on her pants?

Update time, nothing huge cause I've been busy.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Wizenedoldman/2004111061_Willow_…]

Fiiiiinally got around to adding some hair after finding a decent tutorial on how to do long hair. Still a way to go with some tweaking needed on the fringe (and of course the other side of her head) but I'm happy with the progress.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Wizenedoldman/2004122134433_Will…]

Let me know what you all think.

coming along Wiz :)
Her propertions look good, i like the cloth across her chest.
Not a big fan of the open mouth look though.
Her hair looks alright, but it seems alittle thin and very light, like there isnt many layers of hair underneath. Though this myabe cause it isnt finished yet! :P
How are you going to tackle the various folds and wrinkles on her clothes?
Will you be texturing her?

Cheers Makk, I'm happy with her proportions too. I don't think anyone ever is a fan of the open mouth look but it's helpful for later steps like texturing and animation.

You could be right about the hair, I think it may be due to a lack of shadows though, I'll try and get a thicker more lustrous look going on.

I've already been modelling in a lot of wrinkles and folds in her clothing and it's a very time consuming process for me (mostly cause a lot of it involves experimentation) so stay tuned and I'll post some more results on that soon.

Of course I'll be texturing her, the question you should be asking is, will it be any good? ;)

just a quick tip, if you're using shag, try playing with the strand thickness renderer -- it's default of 1.5 is evil, and results in the muddy look when you get a dense heap of hair... only really useful set at that for faux and fur type o' stuff.

By that do you mean the thickness spinner in the parameters rollout of the shag:hair effect or is it something I'm missing? I think I may have found it, is it the thick render dialog in the Shag:render rollout? I'll have a fiddle...

Some progress:

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/Wizenedoldman/2004122821293_Will…]

Still need to fix up her part in the middle. This hair is damn fiddly stuff...

Does her hair have to part in the middle of the head ?

Weird that is, went and checked the reference pic for the hairstyle which I thought was parted right down the middle but it's actually slightly off to one side, thanks for bringing that to my attention xyz, I'll be correcting that soon, should give it a more natural look.

It's been a while but she's back in business. C&C welcome.

[img]http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/pwiffen/reel/Willow_wip56.jpg[/img]

Really need to add hair but shag:hair doesn't work with Brazil, what to do...

Figured out that the best way to put hair on her is to render a hair pass with scanline and her body with Brazil, then composite the two images in PS, works well.

[img]http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/pwiffen/reel/Willow_wip60.jpg[/img]

That looks good. :)
A bit hard to see since the pic is a bit small. Nice detials and its rendered well.
You might want add some more colour into it and the composition is a little closed in.

yeah thats a kinda small watermarked pic, a larger one would be better

Nice work dude... very moody!

welcome to Sumea as well.. you must be our first resident Venezuelain

cheers

Well, thanks for the replys.. and for the welcome.. right know i'm doing some 3d works.. so i'll be away from Analog for afew days... :(
Rizo [:D]

Fantastic structural design and I love the muted colours.
I love it when the implausable seems totally believable, great work. [:)]

Reallly cool!!

I think you did reasonably well with the original pose. What I would do is determine what this character will be used for / how he will move in game - and build it in a natural pose thats pretty much half way between the maximums of his movement ( but keeping it neutral at the same time to balance the difficulty of modelling Vs animation / deformation etc.

Dont give up [:D]

If that makes any sense [:P]

What comp is this conundrum? Looks good so far, just one thing caught my eye, is he wearing shorts?

Maybe give him a little goatee instead of a full grown beard.

if you go onto the cgchat.com forums, the the game development thread you can read about and start posting wips there. its something to do until the next comp here (which i don't think is for a while)
the overhanging bits are where im going to use alpha maps fo fur.

first of all, pan = coolest mythical character ;P
secondly its coming along well, looking good

Looks Great conundrum - your improoving your mesh building skills at a good rapid pace - keep at it, and you will find your way into a job. Still to early to really crit anything - what i have noticed tho is that your hands tend to be really detailed in your models.

It looks as though they are either 6 or 5 sided extrisions there - for that kind of poly count you can easily get away with a 4 sided finger and single extra row of polygons around the knuckle, joint at the underside. Give it a shot [:)]

hazard: thanks for the suggestion, ill take that into account for future models, although seeing as i have a roomy polycount (its 2500 and im only at 2000) i think ill probably leave it for this one unless it becomes necessary.

i thought id try painting the face as ive never done one before, im fairly pleased with it, although i think ive got a fair few more passes to go. my main problem is the colour, most of the shading comes with constant refinement, but i find the colour really difficult to get to grips with. any way heres the flat.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/20041014104144_uvmap-h…]

looks pretty awesome but its amazingly soft and fuzzy

yeah, im trying to get all the colours and basic shading done efore putting down too much detail

a bit of progress
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/2004101592526_uvmap-he…]

Thats looking better :)
Try getting some dark reds and browns in there for the shadows.

ive done a bit more and tried to add some of the red tones mentioned, so here is a screen grean of what ive done so far.
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/200410174347_uvmap-hea…]

it seems a pretty good start so far, mybe use a bit less polys on the claws. other than that nothing really stands out as a problem to me. perhaps you could post some front and side images just to get a better feel for the model.

it's quite similar to Chimaera, except that also has a goats head

Bullet21 : Or a Cerberus without a 3rd head and a snake for a tale [:P]

Overall its really good construction! But as conundrum said you can kill a good swag off the count by collapsing a few of those verts / edges from the claws.

Will be good to see this one pan out [:)]

It is Orthos, Cerberus's brother, two-headed guard dog of Oxen of Geryon. I love mythology[:I]

Thanks for the comments guys,

I've taken your advice & dropped the polycount from the claws. I've also changed the mane of snakes from the concept just to get a lower polycount. Let me know what you think.

Still need to optimize the model & join the halves (still mirrored), plus I also have to join the heads to the body.

Polycount at the moment is 2910.

You're exactly right Rapid.... this is Cerberus' brother [:)]

Here's the pic (I hope it's ok to post 1024x768)

[img]http://dbz3dworld.homestead.com/files/orphusangles.jpg[/img]

its looking great so far, although perhaps the heads are a bit to large for the body, looks slightly unbalanced. in regards to the polycount, its always going to be hard to keep it low with 2 heads, that said there are some areas on the flatter regions of the heads which could lose a few polys. keep it up though as its progressing pretty well.

Thanks conundrum, I followed your suggestion & knocked some polys off the head plus some more from the snakes on the back.

I've managed to bring the polycount down to just below 2500, it will be less once I join the halves. Unfortunately there won't be enough polys leftover to give the snake tail more character
(I'll try though)

I turned the snake tail around for skinmapping & also the belly should be under this way. Once I finish the skin I'll pose it.

Two pics:

http://dbz3dworld.homestead.com/files/orphus8.jpg

[img]http://dbz3dworld.homestead.com/files/orphus7.jpg[/img]

i actually like seeing the snake out that way better (perhaps with more natural curve though). Hes looking good :)

improved for sure

first thing, that banner up the top whilst cool is really huge height wise, id really take that down. Also it might be cool if it had some sort of background to it other then plain blue (on the banner, not behind the main page text)

secondly, theres two navigation menus... i know a lot of sites do the top is usually for group headings (ie sumeas "coder, modeller etc") which take you to different sub sets, this seems like it could have gone all down the left hand side

lastly basic is cool, it make it simple for the user. But visually i think your really going to need a lot more in graphics simply because your promoting yourself as an artist. So if your page looks plain, its your first impression gone sour.

im no pro web designer so thats just some things i thought of (waits for souri and others to make actually benifical comments :P ) but its looking better then last time, keep it up!

Thanks :) I used the top part as if it all went along the side it got quite crowded and looked ugly. They're links to other 'places' of the site I guess, so I'll just leave them there ;) I thought of putting a few images of some work down the bottom just before the copyright but I'm not sure?
Thanks again,
James

The first thing I thought of when the page was loading was "gas and electricity". I think it's the orange blue and white. Also the pixelation in JAB IGP looks yukky. So, I would suggest thinking about your colour palette and increasing the resolution of the title text. Keep going :)

The links to other 'places' probably should be at the bottom, just above the copyright, where many websites put them these days or integrated into your menu on the left. I also agree with moonunit that the banner at the top is too high and its probably why the JABIGP looks stretched as well. You need at least some images of your work. First impressions are everything. You don't want potential employers/clients going to the page and wondering if they're at the right place. I'd probably also shrink the images for your partner sites or move them off the main page, unless they're examples of your work.

-kul

they are all really great sketches and concepts, your shading and characterisation is really effective but seeing as you want crits ill try my best.

- on the first image, try to make sure that the parts of the body further from the camera are smaller than the front, i find the larger right hand quite distracting.
- the stomach of the second one has too many muscles of equal value, try either using less mucles or punch out the important ones and recede the lesser ones more to make it less cluttered.
- the third could probably do with a few more crisp lines as a soft airbruch can look too blurry at times.
-the final image might also need more sharp lines in either the rider or bike to seperate them a bit more.

thats all though, to tell you the truth i wouldn't be able to draw and paint this well, my crits are just what ive read in various threads around the place. on the whole, these are some great images, i really like the frog and the biker in particular, keep it up.

Good start Conundrum, but I'd like to offer a tip that is a process I always use when modelling. When I get to the stage that you're about at now I tend to sit back, have a look, and go 'What's the worst thing about this model?', then I go about fixing it. Hope this doesn't sound like I'm up myself, but it works for me. Get plenty of reference pics and if you get stuck, go check yourself out in the mirror.

Obviously though you're still far from finished so it's really too early to criticise.

probably shouldn't have called the a thread "head model" as im doing a whole character. Anyway this is my progress so far ( colours are just to show different parts of the clothing), as i said my targets around 3000 to 3500. This is the basic character done now im going to go about about fixing thimgs and adding detail etc.
im aiming for half life 2 so ill be making a highres for the normal map, plus larger texture sizes. once again. crits welcome

polycount:2371 tris
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/2004105104832_Whole-Bo…]

I think his brow needs to come forward a bit, the side profile of his face is a bit round, either that or make his eyes a bit more deep set in his head. I also think his eyes are a bit wide, and large to be realistic.
I really like your model, the design is pretty cool and I like his body shape, I hope you show of the high rez version :)

Hey this is nice work so far. Keep it up!! I am no expert with this 3D stuff, but maybe you could lower the count on the hand? It seems to have a lot of polys compared with the rest of the figure.

Good Start [:)] The knees and elbows definately need some deformation work - they are going to look quite square and blocky when they deform as they are at the moment - and ill also be very keen to see what happens to that shoulder armour when his arms fly up in the air when hes been shot [:o] Are you thinking about attaching that shoulder pauldron to the collarbone or to the actual upper arm bone ? either way i think youll end up with some interesting results [:)]

thanks for all the help, ive improved the head from all your suggestions. I think ill probably attach the pauldron to the collar bone, then attach the other two arm guard to a bone each so they dont get distorted. i will also try putting a constraint on the rig so the arm can only go to a certain point in ragdoll, hopefully stopping the arm from going into the pauldron (if thats possible). and ill work on improving my joints.
thanks again

[edit] Update: 2842 tris
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/2004106122647_Whole-Bo…]

Hey Conundrum this guy is coming along, but I'd have a look at your poly distribution, I missed the polycount before - and not to dampen your spirits but I'd expect a character with that amount of detail and silhouette to have around 1000 tris at most.

The density of the hands and ears are taking up a hell of a lot of that count and unless they are specific areas of interest on your model youd be best to remove as many of those as possible and use them in places like the front of his face, detail in his armour, joint deformation etc etc.

Hope that helps [:)]

hazard and cwans:
yeah, i know what you mean, (1500 polies in the hands and head alone[:p]). I should be able to fix the ears but where i have come into trouble is the hands, i cant seem to maintain the silhouette and deformation when i try and reduce them. thanks for the suggestions and help though.
P.S, even though it doesn't make a huge difference, the count above was actually 2531 tris

Coming along well, he's got some character in him now, he looks very French. oui!

well, i was getting bored of removing polys (got to 2090) so i thought id start working on a highres for the normal map. this what ive got so far.
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/200410854721_highres1…]

pretty cool
the hands look like they need a lot of work tho, the wrist is really thin and the hands themselves look flat overall, no knuckles or curved palm and so on.
its coming together really well though

yeah, the hands are definately bad, need to put some time into that. anyway, here is a test of normal mapping i did on the head, there are a few problems (rim of the cap), but overall im fairly happy with it.
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/2004109384_Head-normal…]

You can't read any responses to your threads on Macs??! That definately is weird. No idea what's happening there, sorry [:(].

The buidings picture is absoltuely incredible, and the picture of the man below has so much character in his pose and proportion. I just noticed that you've posted in the looking-for-work section - I seriously think if you walked into any studio in Australia (and if they had an opening), you could get the job like-that. Your work is inspirational and to a standard of professionalism that I think not many of us will ever reach for a long time (or perhaps never reach). Heck, if the local game studios won't take you, I'm sure the film industry would grab you with open arms [:D]

Note to local industry Art Directors** grab this guy as fast as you can!!

that is some icredible work, i think your colour work is awesome and the sense of scale is great too. i would say that its probably the best painted reflection ive seen in a long time. keep up the good work, its really inspiring to see all the paintings you are creating.

The environment pick reminds me a lot of the great Fantasy artists like Vallejo and Bell, but with buildings instead of busty maidens on tigers. It's cool.

p.s. I didn't know Sony had built the PS2 towers ;)

amazingly well done, you should know that were all stoked by now :P

PHWOAR!! I love the environment :D especially the sky. Though the ground area is a little bland.
The character design is good too, though the head is a bit small. Not sure if you were going for stylised propertion though.
Bah! who am I kidding, these are fantastic and you should have very little trouble seeking employment :)

Dam... I love that landscape/environment. How long did it take you btw for the buildings to materialise?

the building are great, very painterly- A look that I personally like a lot.

Thanks for the comments people.
Souri: Yeah, I only able to view my threads from a PC, this is a shame as I have to go to a friends house or Sydney Uni to respond to the thread. Its a bit of a hassle, but it seems I cannot view my threads from any mac (I have thried with a Imac, G4 and G5). I suppose its one of hose mac things
Cwans_art: the Enviroment took about 3 full days ( to me a full day is about 12 hours)and the character took about a day.
Cheers

a really nice concept and its very well painted. my only crit would be that the head is slightly too round and not quite defined. other than that its great though.

Thanks, Yeah I see what you mean about the head being a bit too round, something to watch out for I guess. Thanks again.

Pantmonger

Looks good :)
I really like the weapon and they way it has been painted.
Wouldnt he need more armour though? His left forearm and wrist area looks a little funky as well.

im a bit confused by the weapon, how is it supposed to be weilded?

i think most gladiators didn't have a lot of armour to ensure thtat they were killed in an easy and entertaining way.

gladiators wernt often killed. they cost alot of money .. if the person hosting the even wanted a death they had to pay for that gladiators replacement (iirc)

well i based my comment off movies etc. so thats interesting to know, i still dont think they wore much armour though

some did depends on how good u were and how long u lived

the better u were the moe it cost to replace u so u get better stuff ( from reading different history books)

here is a frame from the avi, it looks better in motion tho:

[img]http://home.iprimus.com.au/colmdoyle/threadpics/fly_by.jpg[/img]

d/l avi here: [url]http://home.iprimus.com.au/colmdoyle/threadpics/fly_by.avi[/url]

thanks

pretty cool, though the camera shake initially makes it look like the water is having its own radicical movements which is a bit odd. Visually though very nice

Cheers moonunit, yeah the water looks a little funny, and when the camera stops shaking at the end its all a bit sudden, tho ive changed this now fade out the shaking a little better (just need to re-render) and also added sounds which helps i think and changes the file size to 1108k !!!

more comments / help ? anyone ?
Cheers

yeah not a bad effort there Doyle! but kinda boring camera movement really... If I was you i'd storyboard a little sequence utilising the camera more.. have a few cuts say with first panning up from the ocean to show the island.. at which point the camera picks up the shadow of the plane streaking across it, and then have the plane scream past at close range.. you see what I mean? You wanna tell a little story with the whole thing to make it more interesting..
anyhow keep up the good work!

cheers

Not bad man, just a few things I noticed. The camera shake starts way too early, it should be used to indicate something like a shockwave eminating from the plane going past and should slowly fade away on the planes passing.

Have you got the noise controller attached to the camera target or the camera itself? it looks like it's attached to the camera but would give better results attached to just the target. Give it a try.

Maybe try speeding up the plane too?

Cheers for the input

Me109: i will have to think of a little storyline to go along with the plane, ill try get this shot done and take it from there. thanks for your ideas!

Wizenedoldman: yeah the camera shake is attached to the camera it self, ill change it to the target and see the results ! thanks, ill def. need to play with the noise controller a little more !

thanks
Colm

Look SWAT like :)
have you considered making the vest appear more armoured? It currently follows the figures contours quite closely.

Looks good, but just one crit. All the straps and stuff look ver tight, like blood circulation cutting tight, prolly just make them look a bit more loose or thick so they dont look like their hugging the skin so much. But other than that great work.

Looks cool.

I?ve got a crit and a couple of small suggestions:

I think the feet would look better if you show the entire high cut boot, with the trouser legs tucked into the boot. The way it is now it looks like the trouser ends hang over the boot, which is very unrealistic (they don?t want their pant legs to get wet and slimy!)

My other suggestions for improvement would be to consider giving his pants cargo pockets instead of seemingly pointless straps, and maybe giving him a set of goggles, even if the goggles are just on top of his helmet, they seem to be the accessory of choice for those swat type guys.

Oh, and he should have a holstered pistol on his belt also.

Hope my suggestions help. Nice drawing [:)]

goggles or a visored helmet would be cool - you could just do an alternative head with different options to see if they might work or not. You could do the same for leg details with alt. straps and cargo pockes etc.

First of all thanks for all the comments guys :)

JohnN: yeah i figured itd be kinda tight but then again i suppose not so nescarily, i was going to make it have a sort of ribbed appearence upon texturing when made.. i may look into that (its actually hard to get good ref pics). I might do some variations as the model itself is going to be used for different characters, im not sure if im going to use texture and colour scheme for variation entirely.

Bullet21: heh heh maybe so, i dunno its supposed to be elastic which goes as tight as youll let it :P

palantir: hes actually wearing large shin gaurds, its hard to see in that drawing because i has no colour but you can see the rim of them below the knee. The shin gaurds go down to the ankle where his shoes are, which arent supposed to be high above the ankle type army boots. The straps are all there for a purpose bar one, the one on his upper right leg which i just kinda whacked in for consistency, but maybe it should be removed. The rest are either wrapping around the shin gaurds to hold them to the leg or for pouches, also that pouch that is on his left leg was going to be a holster (note the shape of it) but i decided against because UT2k4 by default does not have any pistol weapons and i didnt want him like carrying around a gun or something and then have him never use it, so it became a pouch. Cargo pockets might actually be a good idea for his upper arms. I was thinking about goggles but i decided against again because of the use that this model is being put to. This is going to be a model that will vary colour schemes and also facial appearance in texture so that it can be used for a team of characters, so i wanted to leave the face as exposed as possible (the balaclava is there because if mouths arent covered, i have to animate all the different mouth movements :o )

good setup Moon. I recommend a tactical vest as it makes all the difference in cool factor. Also a gas mask would be wicked. You can find samples in those army surplus types on the internet.
I did an urban warfare guy before so check out the basic layout.
http://www.xyzstudios.com/ftp/azza/templates/imageAssault00.htm
keep the setup clean and dont clutter up with too much gear.

ah, that was the magic words, "tactical vest". Searching with those words is yeilding a lot more results, thanks

cool :O!

hehe biscit

cookies = counter oogly oogly krazy idiots eating sausages
.... my attempt at a cool acronym ;/

ok so i finally bit the bullet and was bothered to download the plugin and everything.
thats pretty cool, i liked the way that the little bug things seemed to just be flying about of their own accord, they looked like they were behaving naturally.
that being said they actually visually looked rather confusing, they were kinda just red sticks.

pretty cool, good work :D

thanks MoonUnit, the little animals are pretty unreconisable, the resolution of the plugin version is pretty low, makes it hard to distinguish, but yep, flying sticks! :)

i found out how to make it into a screensaver, so here it is!
4 different resolutions so suit different everyone (hopefully!)
1024x768 - http://home.exetel.com.au/tmc/ego/works/game002/1024x768.rar
1280x1024 -
http://home.exetel.com.au/tmc/ego/works/game002/1280x1024.rar
1280x800 - http://home.exetel.com.au/tmc/ego/works/game002/1280x800.rar
1680x1050 - http://home.exetel.com.au/tmc/ego/works/game002/1680x1050.rar

just uncompress the contents to your system32 folder(winxp) or windows folder(win9x).

ciao

Very nice, the first two are very Frank Miller 'Sin City'-esk, which is a good thing. The secoond two are quite breath taking in scope. Great stuff.

Pantmonger

i love it, seriously both types of pictures are fantastic, my fave would be the pinky orange tinted apocalypse peice though.

The figures actually remind me of chaos marines from the warhammer 40k tabletop game, their weapons do not though

SHHHIIIITT!!, HOLY CRAP, those are nice. I luv the ninja, how did you get that effect, was it all done with brushes?

Beautiful work. [:)]

all looks very good. the two painting must have taken quite a few hour to do! I particually like the grey 'dead' look to the last one.

Great work, outsanding I have to say. I like all of them, keep it up.

Wow, I love all of these. I really like the last one the most though. Hope to see more.

Brilliant work, I love the style of the weapon and the characters head in the front, great. His pose reminds me a little of a sandman, I imagine you do this for work fulltime?

Awesome work, with the ninja's you've really captured the brush and ink style fantasticly! I am a sucker for post apocalyptic stuff! The grey one makes me want to dust off fallout!!! I have to say, I always love the addition of people in landscapes, makes them feel more... real. If that makes sense, especially in this one, I can almost hear the echos of their lonely conversation!!

The end of the world pieces, are fantastic pieces of art. You have managed to convey the theme so powerfully - like Pantmonger mentioned the scope is fantastic. This is the kind of art that that a person could actually sit down, stare at, and write a story too.

Well done Gerhard [:)]

That is some of the best locally made digital painting work I've seen. Fantastic and inspiring work [:)]

!!! man they a GREAT i wish i could paint like that !!! can you tell us abit about how you created them !!!

GREAT WORK !

Fantastic work :D

AWESOME WORK !!!
Hey have you ever considered looking at the artist that did Metal Gear Solid 'paintings'? 'Coz thats what your style reminds me of (the first two).

The last two just blew me away. So much details in so little time!!

Thanks all,
The first two images were fairly quick studies, about 2-3 hours each. While thw landscapes were a bucket of work. The grey scale took about 3 full days while the amber image was an epic; it took 5 days.
Lots of work in each of them
Doyle:The trick with heaps of detail, is really heap of texture. You have to attack the canvas with texture, photoshop brushes are great for this when you start to play with all the possible brush variants. You have to cover the entire canvas with paint, before you can get into detail.
I start with a simple line drawing to work out the basic composition.
Then I paint in the canvas with texture, using the line drawing as a basic guide.
Then when the canvas is covered paint, I start with the sky or background, as this will give you the mood of the picture.
The work towards the foreground.
The last thing is to paint the characters.
Then refine and refine
I guess the most important thing is to be deterimined to finish the image, cause in the begining they all look shit, but you have to persist.
Cheers

I'd like to see a game done in B&W with these sort of graphics. a ninja game in comic style animation. It would be something new!

Oooh, and the whole game could be B&W except for the red blood, that'd be stylish, great idea.

hey awsome work righ there. do you post over at conceptart.org ?

I'm just adding myself to the list of people in awe over these great drawings!

groovyone / Wizenedoldman: I really like that idea! I'm (very slowly) working on a Mortal Kombat-inspired game, and I think that style would fit right in. I've been playing with shaders over the past few days trying to reproduce that effect, with no luck as of yet. Would be truly awesome to have in a game, though!

i think theres this game being made to look like a living old japanese ink painting thing. You know the ones you see on scrolls with characters down the side and a man fishing in the middle. The game itself sounds like a cross between zelda and black and white (interesting i know), because your a god (who's physically a dog...) who does adventuring and does the whole gathering beleif and power aswell.
Cant remember the name for the life of me, anyone?

Hiya Gerhard, I sincerely urge you to enter this competition ( if you havent already )

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=178327

I think youd do really well!

not many views so far, but heres some more sketches ive been drawing, any crits are welcome. i am also hoping to start colouring the second one.
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/200492675053_Kronk-wit…]
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/200492675659_The-Pet-M…]

here is my colouring so far, its not great, but its my first shot at a really painting in photoshop. having trouble with choosing colours for the backround so i havn't gotten that far yet.
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/2004927102348_The-Pet-…]

I like your choice of colour, and the concept you have come up with in this picture, the wood plating and the like is quite cool. However you do need to pay more attention to realistic anatomy, even if the design you are trying to make is a hybrid of real and imagined. Don?t be afraid to use reference, look at where the muscles sit and then distend and distort them to fit your design, but remember that if you are making a basic humanoid that moves in the same way as humans then the structure will be quite similar through necessity.

Pantmonger

Looks nice to me, well established lighting and very good feel to it. I take it that you done it in Adobe Photo Shop?

mmmm. brown... interesting backdrop too. All up I like it :)

Thanks guys.
The Ink work is done on paper with a bottle of ink and a brush, but the 'colour' is added in Adobe Photoshop.

Pantmonger