In Three!!!

I'm hired!!! Providing that I make all the cuts through training. So far so good! In Three Inc. uses a proprietary process to give regular 2D movies depth and volume. This could be a wonderful experience for me on so many levels. If I make it through training then I'll have a place working with everyone else on the company's first feature project. Unfortunately we can't divulge what movie that is but...it's a big one.

UPDATE -- Three months after getting hired as a dimensionalist I was promoted to Keyframer which is way more fun and creative.

Jack Skellington's head

In honor of the forth coming corpse bride I decided to sculpt one of my all time favorite movie characters Jack Skellington. A few things are to make note of compared to the head sculpture from last post.

The first and most important is that this is my first painted model. It's a bit sloppy on account of my not knowing how to feather brushes in zbrush. His eyes, mouth and stitches are all painted a proper blue/black color and his face is painted a white. I also picked a shader that I felt provided a pleasing sheen to his 'skin'. This was all done using projection master. Finally I decided to make this fun four pane Andy Warhol format image to present some different views of the model as opposed to the unwieldily smattering of different sized images from the last posting. Additionally this model was done with the Zbrush 2 demo which pixology has finally released.

The flip-side is that I wasn't able to smooth or 'crush' the geometry in his mouth so he's got this weird 'tooth' grin appearance. The other problem is how fuzzy his stitches are and how bumpy his neck is. These are all things I should be able to figure out once I get more experience with Zbrush 2 and can finally afford to buy the full version (and therefore save and uprez models).

DON'T FORGET: Click any image on this blog to enlarge!

First Successful 3D model!

Here is a series of snapshots of a 3D head that I modeled in the Zbrush 1.55 demo! This has by far been one of the most liberating artistic experiences in a while. To finally be able to model something in 3D allows me to translate things the way my imagination has been seeing things for a long time.

Sunrise Canyon

So here's another matte painting. This one is more in the vein of a 'create the entire landscape' as opposed to an extension. This is also too lacking in fine detail to ever be considered a finished matte painting. It exists as something more between a low detail final and a thumbnail/color sketch. My favorite portion is the clouds and the cliffs farthest in the distance. As the cliffs get closer they are too cartoony. I realize that the colors are too garish but I wanted the mountains to be fairly monochrome and since the pink sky sets the palette, purple seemed like my option. The detail was kept low to try and maintain focus on the horizon/sunrise and to avoid an unrealistic hyper detail look (especially since backlit foggy mountains at dawn would look flat and low detail) but somehow it just helps with the purple to look fake. I have to find out how to balance focus with detail.