Z-brush Idea Generating

I been having fun generating a bunch of silhouettes in z-brush using the techniques of the talented Cesar Dacol Jr. of Phoenix Atelier. I purchased a stream of the workshop from The Stan Winston school website, you can check it out here. This technique involves generating a bunch of silhouettes very quickly and altering each slightly using z-brush's layers. You end up getting a bunch of variations of your design pretty much for free. Lots of "happy accidents" occur this way. Here is an example of a page of thumbnails that I put together very quickly using this process. You kind of just free your mind from worrying about anatomy or anything technical while you put together shapes by pushing and pulling the digital clay around. I could have then decided to sculpt one of the thumbnails, but in this case, I just carried them over into photoshop for refining and painting. Below is an example of what I did with one of the many shapes I came up with. thanks for stopping by, enjoy!!!!

Basket ball playing Mechs, Androids, and Robots

Here are a few speed paintings I did all with a Mech theme to them. This first concept is an homage to basketball great, number 23 of The Chicago Bulls, Michael "Air" Jordan. This started out as a quick digital sculpt in z-brush to pull out some interesting shapes that I could paint over. He even has his Nikeez on:) next, this concept started out as a photo bashing, then painted over to give me a Riot police of the future. Not sure if it's a droid or a man in the suit. and last but not least a sexy cyborg:) Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!!

Beastman

A creature I came up with. incorporating techniques I picked up from watching Scott Patton , Bryan Wynia , and Josh Crocket tutorials. Done in z-brush and composited in Photoshop. Thanks for stopping by, enjoy!!!

Mech Suits and Plein Air Painting

I finished up this Mech today after taking my laptop to the park for some Plein Air painting. The Mech sort of reminds me of the anime Guyver. I still have a bunch of the VHS's somewhere:) These thumbnail studies were done for Noah Bradley's 12 week summer boot camp. This was not easy to do digitally. I took an umbrella with me to try and block the glare on the screen, but to no avail. I could not tell what colors I was using at all. Still it was a great exercise and I will definitely do more when I can, hopefully with a better set up.

Zbrush Ant Creature

An Antman that wears a slug on his head???, Why not. I did this after watching the awesome Bryan Wynia do a few demos in a CG Workshop that CG Society released recently. Started out as a sculpt in z-brush, Then taken into photoshop and duplicated several times to come up with some variations on the same theme. I picked the thumbnail I liked the most and went back into Zbrush to sculpt and Polypaint a final. From there it's back into photoshop to composite some of the renders, paint over and add some more textures. Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy!!!

Ice Giant

A speed paint I started awhile back. The big guy with the cabin on his head was a Zbrush sculpt I never did anything with, so I decided to put him into a background:) Thanks for stopping by. enjoy!!!

Z-brush test

Taking the new desktop for a test drive. Playing around with dynamesh in z-brush 4R5

Minotaur Concept

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull". He dwelt at the center of the Cretan Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze-like construction designed by the architect Daedalus and his son Icarus, on the command of King Minos of Crete. The Minotaur was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. Here is a concept of the creature that I sculpted in z-brush and painted in Photoshop cs6. Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

Painting the model

I decided to paint my speed sculpts from an earlier post. Here is the first one.

Alien Speed Sculpt

Another speed sculpt about 45 minutes to warm up this morning. Trying hard not to put an actual face on this one:) Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

Z-brush Monsters

Here are a couple of quick blocked in beasties done in z-brush 4r5. I usually only take these so far, then carry them into photoshop for painting. I am getting more comfortable with digital sculpting though, so I may try to slowly push it further as I progress with the program. For now I am faster at painting, so I continue to concept that way. Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

Cartoon character sculpt

To warm up for some serious art today, I decided to try to do a quick block in of a cartoon cop character I drew sometime ago in one of my sketchbooks. I got to watch a webinar demonstration this morning by artist Danny Williams of the pointpusher blog. (He makes it look so easy), and I learned a couple of things that I was able to apply to my workflow. This is by no means a good refined , finished sculpt. In fact it's pretty bad in my opinion, but I learned lots doing it, and I can refine it from here if I choose to. The point was to do a speed sculpt of the concept drawing I used as reference.  I will definitely keep practicing my z-brush skills whenever I have time between jobs. Thanks for checking it out.

Some more speed sculpting

Here is some kind of wierd Alien mutation thing I came up with during my breaks at work today. just kind of sculpting away and testing different brushes to see what they do. No real direction was planned, but I kind of like the shapes that I came up with. I think it's pretty freaky looking , so I am sure I will want to render it out in photoshop. From the side it looks like an alien pooping out another alien, lol I guess I want it to be more of a morphing mutating thing.

Centaur

Messing around in z-brush 4r4 again. This time a centaur creature concept. I am starting to get a little bolder with my sculpts now, but not quite there yet. It serves it's purpose though, as I'm gonna carry the sculpt over to photoshop to come up with variations and textures, and renders. Below the face variations are the turn arounds and the process shots showing the z-sphere , z-sketch, and some early sculpting and shape exploration. Thanks for stopping by, ENJOY:)

Google Sketch_up compositions

Here is a few thumbnails generated using google's 3D program Sketch-up version 8. Just simple shapes obviously nothing special here, using the same model and lighting it differently and zooming and panning around the model to generate some interesting compositions that will later be used as a base to paint over in photoshop. Below that are some more creature design explorations and the beginning of a dinosaur model done in z-brush.

Alien concepts

Here a few Alien concepts done in z-brush and photoshop. The one on the top left corner was the quick/sloppy z-brush sculpt and the rest are variations derived from the original sculpt. A nice quick way to sketch a bunch of character designs with little effort. Any one of these can be refined and taken to a polished state at this point.

Some More Z-Brush practice

Here is some more progress shots of the z-brush model for Michael Defeo's course on Schoolism. This time we added some eyes and mess around with the hair a little.

Stylized z-brush sketch

A quick Z-brush sketch before bedtime. This one was loosely based on the Gorillas from Kung-fu panda. I carried it over into photoshop for some paintover work, but this was just practice so it remains a sketch.

Z-brush class with Michael Defeo

I just started a 9 week Z-brush course at schoolism.com with instructor Michael Defeo. Very excited to take these classes, the instructor explains everything in a very user friendly manner. He has done character design for Blue Sky studio's Robots, Ice Age, Despicable Me and much more. You can see his work on his blog, some very cool stuff. http://michaeldefeo.blogspot.com/

The first assignment was to sculpt a rough character bust based on Defeo's drawing. We will be adding hair and other geometry as we go on. Below is the beginning of my assignment.

Mech_Beast

I created this one using Z-brush to digitally sculpt then carried it into Photoshop for a paint over.