Second ZBrush Practice

Practice at sculpting a face

So before I started making my final sculpture for my project I wanted to get a little bit of practice in so I was used to the software. Instead of going a little crazy like I did on my dragon head, I decided to practice making a female face in my art style. This usually consist of big eyes and a small button nose so I started working on these element first.

As you can see this is far from being finished as I need to work out how to add eyes to the sockets and then add more clay to create hair and eyebrows. I will definitely keep working on this as I am really pleased with how it's turned out so far, even if it does look really creepy at the moment.

 

 

Zbrush Practices

Zspheres

These are a few random practices I did using Zbrush to get the hang of the Zspheres which I will be using to create the body of my character so I thought it was important to have a little experiment with them.

For the first two I was practicing with creating a seahorse as I thought the structure of it would be nice and easy to start off with. This is a model which I may go back and complete if I find the time. The middle pieces are just me mucking around with different creature designs but 10 - 13 are of a stylised human body I was having a practice with creating. I think it turned out quite nicely for a first try at creating a body in Zbrush and could be a design that I carry on in my free time.

 

 

 

 

 

Design Ideas

Colour Variations

 

After completing my values studies and choosing my favourite I decided to wanted to do some really quick colour variations to help me get a feel for the piece and see everything in detail. When I showed my design in our latest group crit there was a little confusion and people thought the 'wings' at the back were too low down. Just to clarify they are actually a decoration on the back of the dress as the sprite has the ability to fly without the need of wings.  I was shortly told after this that colouring your model was not mandatory but I may watch some tutorials and give it a go anyway to see how it turns out.

 

 



Concepting Process

Value Studies

After completing my silhouettes and image research I started working on my value studies. I always find these the trickiest part of the design process as I love working in colour and with neat line art so I always struggle to get these done quickly. Although this time I am really pleased with how they turned out and I believe they are a huge improvement on the ones I did for the last project.

I used my image research to help with the detailing of the wings and come up with possible dress designs to stick as closely to my nature them as I could. My favourite value study is the bottom one and I am planning to use this as my final design as it looks subtle and soft in design.

 

 

 

 

 

3D modelling

Zbrush Practice Number 1

At the moment we are learning how to use a 3D modelling programme called Zbrush which I am completely new too. As it's similar to sculpting with clay you have to push and pull shapes and draw onto them to create a character unlike in Maya were they are built up of shapes.

This is a rough character I modelled as a little bit of practice and to try and get used to the controls which I am still finding tricky which explains why the camera angle is a little titled. I have decided that it is some sort of dragon or seahorse. I think watching some tutorials will definitely help me with getting used to Zbrush and improve my skills.

Design Ideas Research

Nature Images

After looking at my image research on fairies/sprites and before I started on my values studies I wanted to have a little look at different aspects that would make up my character. Looking at the silhouettes I created I could see a lot of wing like shapes so I had a little look into different insects wings. Butterflies were the obvious choice to their colourful patterns but I also really like the simplicity of clear insects wings so I could possibly merge them together somehow to create one designs.

I then though about what my characters clothing would be made out of and I decided that it would be petals and leaves as they have a nice shape to them and there are hundreds of types of plants and flowers. I made sure I researched into common and rare plants to get a real variety of images and design ideas. Now that I have a wide collection of inspiration I can move onto my value studies with confidence.

 

 

Further Research

Nature Images

Now that I know what idea I am going for I did a lot more image research to be able to expand my design ideas and make sure I am looking at every possibility available. I started my image research by looking at generic fairy designs, this helped me get a starting point from where my ideas could expand.

 

 

After this research I had a understanding of what most people portray fairies as but as my creature was going to be leaning more towards a spirit or sprite so I needed to expand my research. I then started looking at different types of fairies/sprites for artistic influence.  

  

 

 

Flower Fairies

 

Flower fairies were a set of illustrations produced by the artist Cicely Mary Barker, which were later turned into books.  I used to absolutely love these books as a child and they were an obsession of mine for many years. It thought it would be a good idea for me to relook at these illustrations for a bit of influence and nostalgia. I like the concept of each fairy representing a different flower which is something it could incorporate into my design work.

 

 

 

 

 

The Spiderwick Chronicle's Sprites

 

The Spiderwick Chronicles are a set of children's books, created by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black that were later adapted into a film and video game. In the story one of the characters writes and draws in a field guide about all the wonderful mysterious creatures he sees and I remembered there were some beautiful illustrations of sprites in it so I did a little image research of them.

 

Similar to the concept of the flower fairies, different sprites represented different types of flowers but were mixed with foliage and plants too and this was to help them camouflage into there surrounding so they weren't seen by the humans. This made them look as if they were actually part of the plant and this is something I want to focus on when creating my character, I want to show as little human attributes as I can.

 

 

 

 

   

Guild wars - Sylvari

 

After looking at the sprites from The Spiderwick Chronicles I realised that some of the designs looked very similar to the Sylvari from the game Guild wars. Guild wars is a online role laying game that was developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSoft in 2005. Due to its popularity the series produced a second game in 2012.

 

There are different types of races available for you to play as in this game and the one which I am focusing on are called 'Sylvari'. The are creatures that looks like plants which help them to match their environment. They don't represent any flowers or plants in particular that we would recognise as they like in a fantasy world were the environments/plants/flowers are all different from the ones found on earth. This factor is something I will be adding into my designs as I want the character to be as eye catching as possible so having strange and new types of plants in he design will defiantly help this.